Between the months of April and October a plague of insects descends upon the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A variety of biting and blood-sucking bugs, flying and crawling, lie in wait in the woods for unsuspecting visitors to lash out. Swamps, rivers, hills, beaches: no place is safe. Rumor has it that 2014 is one of the worst years, though the same rumor circulated about 2013 (and even 2012 was pretty bad).
Over the course of my hikes in the UP I’ve dealt with all types of biting insects and have worked out a few strategies to avoid them. Typical blockers, like DEET bug spray, does little to hold them back. You need to get creative. Some bugs will bite through clothes while others will aim for specific areas of skin. Here’s a breakdown of the bugs to watch out for.
Deer Fly
Also known as Cutter Flies, these things are some of the most annoying creatures that you’ll run into in the northwoods. They are fast, usually buzzing around in tight circles around your head, though they land silently and take a bite out before you notice. Their bites hurt, not itch, and may swell into a painful bump that can last days (depending on the location). Oh, and they are tougher than a normal fly and may last through a half-hearted swat.
Deer Flies have a relatively long season, stretching from late May through September, and can be found in thick forests. A good wind will keep them back, so hiking along bluffs or a breezy shoreline will deter them. Otherwise covering up seems to be a good option. They are attracted to exposed skin and hair, so as long as you wear a hat (and maybe a bug net) and long-sleeves only their incessant buzzing will be an annoyance.
Black Fly
These little guys look like harmless house flies but pack a serious punch in swarms. Better known as Stable Flies (or Sable Flies in the Grand Marias area) they tend to keep to farm animals, piling upon their ankles and slicing small cuts to drink blood from. Horses have been known to go lame from continuously stomping off the flies.
Black Flies also stick around for a long time, from June through September, though they are not as resilient as Deer Flies are to temperature swings. Their spread through the woods is sparse, making them a minor threat, until the ‘south wind’ phenomenon shows up. A southern wind will shove all of the flies north to the shoreline where they swarm on hapless Lake Superior beachgoers.
The best defense is thick clothes. They will bite through some fabrics, especially lighter colors, so the old ’tuck pants in socks’ trick for ticks make an appealing target for them. Jeans, jean jacket, and maybe even gloves will keep them from biting. Their bites do not hurt for long, more sharp needle stings that quickly fade, but when you’re stuck in the middle of hundreds of Black Flies slicing you dozens of times per minute it doesn’t take long for them to get to you.
Horse Fly
Rare and gargantuan, these flies are like tanks of the woods. I’ve only seen a handful of them, mostly in thick woods during the month of July. They hurt, though. They will bite through anything and leave a very painful welt that makes Deer Flies seem like mosquitoes. They are also surpringly quiet for their size, able to find you, land, bite, and take off before the pain sets in. There is no good way to avoid these things outside of wearing plate armor.
Mosquito
Of course, there is the Mosquito, the state bird of Michigan. They have a long season that lasts most of summer. They are susceptible to harsh weather, though, and a good cold stretch will give several days of respite. Mosquitoes tend to favor wet areas more, swampy land for easy breeding, and will come out in greater numbers before/after rain and during sunrise and sunet.
Bug spray does help against them, though I haven’t been able to find a spray that is effective for longer than an hour. The best defense is just to keep covered. Thick clothes, bug nets, gloves - whatever it takes to keep their proboscises out of skin. Their bites are annoying but, if you can avoid itching, may fade after twenty minutes.
Gnat
One insect with a shorter season is the Gnat. They only last in early spring, waking up during the melt and sticking around for maybe a month. Small, whiny, and without much bite, they often escape most people’s notice.
When a Gnat bites it will usually go for protected, sweaty areas: behind the ear, under the brim of a hat, etc. They will usually crawl around after landing, which may give away their location, allowing ample time for preventive measures to be taken. Where they really get annoying is when they aim for the ears and nose looking for moisture. A small swarm of tiny Gnats biting your forehead and crawling into your eyes can be just as maddening as the more prevalent Mosquitoes.
Tick
There are bugs that don’t fly that are also a nuisance. Ticks come out in the early summer and crawl around on foliage looking for passing animals to latch on to. After grabbing on they’ll crawl around, looking for a way past clothes, and after finding some good skin will hold and bite deep, sinking their head in to get a good grip.
Ticks are one of the few bugs that also carry disease. Lyme Disease has been slowly spreading across the Midwest, and while there are no reported cases in the UP that I’ve heard of, is still something to watch for. Sure, Mosquitoes can also carry things like West Nile, but I don’t think that’s as much of a concern so far north.
There are several good ways to work with Ticks. Pants-tucked-in-socks is a good look that happens to block them from crawling up your legs. Also, tucking in your shirt. A few may find a way in or, if they are ambitious, may get up to your hair and/or drop down the back of a shirt. A good tick-check is helpful to make, both when getting back in the car after a good hike (they may still grab onto your clothes in hopes of getting a free ride) and when settling down for the night in a tent/house. Their bites are not too bad, mild itching at best, though you don’t want to leave a tick embedded in you for longer than you can help it.
These six bugs are the main ones I’ve dealt with while hiking. There’s more up there to watch out for - I’ve run into yellow jackets, wasps, spiders, and more - but these six are by far the most widespread. They are annoying, sure, but they are only around in the summer, which makes winter (and fall) excursions that much more appealing. Plus, they keep the woods fairly free of other hikers in the lush summer.
RB
Nice succinct write-up, bud. I had a sympathetic laugh at your introduction to the voracity of the black flies at Point Abbaye, as I had my first real introduction to them there as well. They've always haunted me at Misery Bay over the years and gave me & my wife fits at Miner's Beach this past June. It gets a little tough to enjoy laying on the beach when you have continuously cross and uncross your lower legs to keep them off the ankles, which seems to be their favorite dining spot, but Lake Superior's beckon is too strong to let them ruin the experience.
Also, just so you're properly informed, Lyme disease is alive and well in the U.P. and appears to be continually migrating north. I did some paranoia-laced research after we got our tick bites from Upper Chocolay Falls in June. Luckily there have been no symptoms to date.
https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/lyme-disease-case-map.html
Looks like that's the newest map available. Also, I hope you got the email I sent through the "Contact" page earlier this week. Hopefully the system didn't reject it based on length. I don't mean to imply I expected a response already, just that I hope it actually went through. Take care and have a great weekend.
Jacob Emerick
Thanks for the info about Lyme disease - I did not know it was anywhere near the UP. I usually just ignore tick bites, as I've hard it takes several hours for the germs to transfer over... not sure if it's true. That's something I really, really don't want to catch.
As for Misery Bay - yeah, I've heard that area is pretty bad. Same with Pictured Rocks. I got lucky on my visit to the latter, heading up there in the early spring before they woke up, even if I paid for that decision with slush and mud many times over. Hopefully Mouth of Huron will keep clear for you, free of both the flies and tourists.
Oh, and yes, I did get your email. I'll be sure to get back to you when I have the time to properly respond to such a well though-out (and verbose) message :)
s
Bugs at Ives Lake are pretty much gone after a ferocious start this year.
RB
Sounds good, Jacob. I know that was a lot to throw at you all at once, so I didn't expect a reply for a while. I think you're generally right about the likelihood of the bacteria entering the bloodstream being more likely the longer the tick is on/in you, but there's always at least a mild risk if the little bastard makes contact with the bloodstream. Come this fall when I take my clinical microbiology course, I'm sure I'll be learning the details on that. It sounds like you're doing your best to keep them off you, and really that's all you can do. Much like the other insect bites, it's just a risk one has to take to enjoy the backwoods, and the reward of the experience is enough to make that small risk worth it.
And s, thanks for the bug info. That gives me some hope that perhaps they won't be so bad anymore on the opposite side of the mountains.
Jacob Emerick
s - yeah, thanks for the info. I've heard similar reports from the Ontonagon area. Maybe we're done for the year :P
RB - thanks for the input about ticks. You're right... there probably isn't much you can do once it gets into your bloodstream. I'll just keep ignoring that and hope that lady luck is on my side as the ticks sink in, risking it as you put it. :D
The Riddler
Sorry for being so graphic here... had a tick in the center of my back for a minimum of a week, possibly a lot longer. My daughter discovered that parasite when she went to rub my back over my tee shirt and she felt it move. She pulled up the t-shirt and totally freaked out. I finally talked her into removing it asap. She tried to remove it three times and finally on the fourth try she succeeded. It was half the size of a dime and I tried to crush it with my finger tips. When I finally crushed it I determined that it had been there for a long time as the blood inside it had the consistency of nasty grape jam. A few days later I got sick, real sick, a different sick. Body aches, headache, fever, total exhaustion. It was the most uncomfortable four days ever. My hitch-hiker was identified as a wood tick, so per my doctor, it was some blood-born pathogen/bacteria not lymes. My brother in law got Lymes out in New Jersey from a deer tick. Messed him up for over a year and he was lucky. Deer ticks are the ones that carry lyme disease. They are tiny like the tip of a pencil. Wood ticks are larger and easily seen. All ticks can cause sickness even death. By the way, a wood tick latches on to host number one, sucks blood, eventually drops off, molts, then has to find another host and repeats. A wood tick has to have two hosts by a certain point in the season to breed. If it never finds it's first host they die. that is what happens to the majority of them. That is why you don't see as many wood ticks in August as you do in June... and when bred, they have thousands of little ones, thousands. What prompts them to get ready to latch on is carbon dioxide that mammals exhale. It alerts them to your presence. I had a wise old man once tell me to walk into the wind when possible. "It keeps ticks to a minimum". That sort of stands to reason.
Jacob Emerick
Wow. Thanks for the story, Riddler. Its easy to forget just how many other diseases those things carry outside of Lyme. Glad it turned out okay, even if you had a rough couple of days there. Oh, and thanks for the advice on walking into the wind - never heard that one before.