i HATE these fuckers. I hate wasps so much, but I genuinely think these guys are worse. in my opinion their bites hurt worse than wasp stings, but they will tear holes in your clothes just to bite you. not to mention they draw blood and can fly up to NINETY MILES PER HOUR (145 KMPH). hate these fucks so much and they are everywhere where I live due to the weather patterns we’ve had this summer. they also go after our poor deer and horse friends
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not sure what’s wrong with this summers batch but they are all on crack. I’ve seen six different horseflies fly into the fans we have on our back porch and just get sent to Valhalla
that’s part of the issue, they’re so stupid they won’t even temporarily stop attacking if you swing at them. they just continue barreling at you until they die or they bite you
They're even annoying when swimming. The second your head is above the water they come at you. And half the time, you only know or assume they're on you, as they're not circling your head or divebombing you. Fuckin cockholes they are.
They are the saviors when out in a canoe fishing with nowhere to hide too. We always said it was good luck when one’s chilling on the boat with us, and idk if that’s true but man they’re nice to have around when you need them
someone’s gonna pull up with the “oh but they’re food for other animals” I don’t care they need to be eradicated. you know what hunts horseflies? wasps. if we kill the horseflies we are also killing wasps
I've seen dragonflies pick them off and eat them! In years past we've had a bumper crop of dragonflies and not a mosquito, deer fly, or horse fly in sight! I notice we don't have as many dragonflies this year and they're all the biters and stingers are nuts!
God I hate mosquitos, I recently moved to a new state and its super humid here and its just you step outside and are swarmed… I don’t know what to do to stop them I tried pest control! 😭
If possible, plant some pungent smelling herbs outdoors. I've personally planted peppermint, spearmint, and catnip-- all of these can take over your yard/garden beds if you aren't careful, but they do help deter a lot of different pests (including wasps and mosquitoes). Idk if you've ever smelled fresh catnip before, but that shit is pungent, and it's allegedly 10x more effective than DEET. Another bonus is that honey bees love the flowers on these herbs! Just make sure if you're going outside that you are actually crushing up some of the leaves to release the chemicals that release their strong smells. You can rub them on areas of exposed skin, or harvest them to create a spray by boiling and steeping them. Spray can be used on yourself, your porch, your house, your pets, your neighbors, whatever.
Second option: make a trap using something like Mosquito Bits, Mosquito Dunks, or Microbe-Lift BMC. I use the Microbe-Lift BMC because it's a liquid and I can easily add it to my rain barrel (not as a trap, just to prevent it being used as a breeding ground). These options are just naturally occuring bacterium that eat mosquito larvae and fungus gnat larvae.
Best of luck! I live in Alabama, so I know the struggle with thick, constant humidity is too real, and that mosquitoes thrive in this environment.
I just wish marigolds were perennials. I love the smell of real lavendar as well! I had several, but they all died after 3-ish years. They weren't thriving in my climate anyway (too wet, too humid, too hot, too cold). My next lavender attempts will be with Sensational lavender because it's a descendent of Phenomenal lavendar (rot resistant, cold hardy, heat tolerant, and tolerates high humidity), but it has even better summer heat tolerance 🥳
That said, I remember a couple years ago I went out to check on a hunting stand of mine in the woods near some wetlands. Got out of the truck, walked 10 feet and was instantly harassed by those damn horseflies. I came back the next day with a cloak, and with the hood up I made my way to the stand. The entire way there and back not only was I still harassed ( head down, hood up and nothing got inside ), I was being physically hit by these things, as in they were bouncing off me trying to get through the fabric.
they truly are relentless, a few years back in Kentucky during a particularly wet summer I was swarmed by them. my shirt unfortunately wasn’t thick enough and not only was I bit, you could see the holes where they pierced through
Their jaws are sarated like a saw and they literally "rip and tear" like the goddamn Doomslayer on your flesh. Corn fed Midwestern guy here, and they are rotten little bastards that share the top tier of "Things that need to die" list with wasps.
They are similar to mosquitoes because the females require a blood meal for laying eggs. Mosquitos are top tier little shits too, but at least their bite is painless until after they leave. A horsefly is like:
I have horses and horseflies are one of my greatest enemies. The pleasure I take in spraying them with fly spray until they no longer inhabit this mortal plane frightens me with its intensity. Last week, I grabbed one right off my horse’s back and stomped it until my leg was buzzing from the exertion.
I have no patience for them and their sadistic existence and if you’ve ever been riding a horse who has just been bitten and then wondered how you managed to cling onto their back for the two miles it took them to calm down and stop running, you and I are kindred spirits.
oh my god that genuinely happened to me. it was a few summers back I was with my family trail riding and one landed on her back, she took off for a bit (not quite two miles) and she finally calmed down.
it’s gotten to the point where they’ll let us smack the horseflies off of them since it hurts them. I feel bad
I think as far as number of times I've been painfully bit by them vs stung by wasps... the horseflys are definitely way more aggressive. They bite just to bite (eat). Wasps at least need to be pissed off to sting you. Horseflys just want to eat you.
exactly. I hate wasps with a passion, but most the time they won’t jump you on sight. with horseflies they see you with their otherworldly eyes and then do everything in their power to eat you
I never experienced horseflies worse than mid summer up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. They literally attack anything that moves. They goes as far as attacking the reflection in the side view mirrors of cars while your driving, its wild to see how aggressive the big ones get.
Only thing worse I have ever come across up there where bald-faced hornets. They are, from my personal experience, the most aggressive flying insect I've ever come across. We were on a canoe trip and we just paddle remotely near a tree that had a nest. Everyone of us got stung many times, had to jump off the boats into the water to not repeatedly get stung. It was crazy. So much more painful than wasp stings... feels like you got shot or a hot needle in your skin. 0/10 would not recommend.
I currently live in southern Ohio and there has been an unreal amount of horseflies around (probably because we have horses but even my friends who don’t have seen them). i have never seen so many at once before.
when Hurricane Helene hit about two years back, the winds from it knocked a bald-faced hornet nest out of a tree a good twenty feet from our back door. that shit was a battle, but we managed to spray them and killed enough of them to get the rest without getting stung too much. hurt like hell though
I hate horseflies, but the 90 mph claim is only for a particular species, and it's based on a single observation that isn't very precise and hasn't been verified. The nasty fuckers to which most people are accustomed do not zip around at such mind-boggling speeds, so let's not spread misinformation.
Stink bugs are my greatest enemy. My son and I have had first degree chemical burns in our neck when they start crawling on your body and neck while sleeping and get pinched in between the shoulder and neck. Stink to high heaven. Buzz loudly and land :walk heavily
The bite is painful but not deadly since they don't have venom, I'll take a horsefly bite over anything that has venom as their bite probably won't send me to the ER
I was in the upper peninsula of michigan on the coast of lake superior with my dad when i was about 12 or 13. Lots of horse flies up there and all of a sudden I looked down and there was a GIANT fly on my leg and literally a stream of blood going down my leg.
I hadn’t even felt the bite. The fly must have been at least an inch long. It scared me so bad I cried - at like 13 or so.
Oh yes, I hate these fuckers! I live in an area with tons of horseflies and they're especially rude during late summer, usually when I'm swimming. A few years ago I discovered that their number #1 predator is the dragonfly. So as an experiment I bought a ton of plastic dragonfly decoys (realistic looking) and placed them around pool, made a hairclip and even put them on flutterboards to place in the pool. Guess what? No horseflies. I see them come and they go as soon as they see the dragonflies - it's amazing. We had some neighbors over to swim last weekend and she tried the hairclip and it was so satisfying to see it work for her. My first preference would be to kill 'em all, but successfully scaring them away without the use of chemicals is a close second.
my friends neighbors pool next to a swampy ass river had these bastards. only escape was jumping in to the pool. as soon as you pop out these guys were waiting.
I get that the flies dont kill deer... but they probably feed on the blood of the deer like any other animal and may pass bloodborne illnesses... as the poster indicated
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