Did ya'll know dogfennel makes a decent Thermacell substitute?

Florida Bullfrog

A couple of years ago I got caught on the stand without a fresh pad for my thermacell. I had found previously that rubbing dogfennel on my skin would do a passable job of keeping mosquitoes off me. Therefore I put some green dogfennel on the hot pad of my thermacell and found out that it works just as well as the commercial blue pad does. I also found out that the indians used to use dogfennel on their camp fires to keep mosquitoes away. Therefore I thought it would be neat to try to make a natural thermacell:

AllenR

Beautyberry works well also (the leaves, not the berries themselves)

bswiv

Some of the naturals ( we tried beauty berry also with some effect ) do work. Would love to hear a positive on the dog fennel as we have more of it that we can shake a stick at. About the only thing we ever see eating it are some of the caterpillars......nothing else that we can think of.

Florida Bullfrog

bswiv wrote: »

Some of the naturals ( we tried beauty berry also with some effect ) do work. Would love to hear a positive on the dog fennel as we have more of it that we can shake a stick at. About the only thing we ever see eating it are some of the caterpillars......nothing else that we can think of.

The trick with the dog fennel seems to be to smoke it. It works ok rubbing the green leaves on the skin, but you have to rub it on very thick and reapply it every 15 minutes or so. Its not very practical to use it that way. I've never tried juicing it to see if the concentrated juice would work. I would think that concentrated juice would work well.

mindyabiness

Try eating it and let us know if that works.
Thanks

RexLan

Nice video ... thanks for sharing that.

BuckDaddy

It also helps as a cover scent if you rub dog fennel on your camo and exposed skin on your way to the stand...

Cyclist

AllenR wrote: »

Beautyberry works well also (the leaves, not the berries themselves)

It does. Helps with ticks too!

Turner River Terror

Thanks for posting...I got acres of Dog Fennel...Acres..

hunterjw

Just make sure you don't pick dog fennel in a very wet area or area after a lot of rain otherwise you will be taking lots of fire ants etc with you.

Good to know though! thanks for the post!

gladesman

BuckDaddy wrote: »

It also helps as a cover scent if you rub dog fennel on your camo and exposed skin on your way to the stand...

Pretty difficult to cover or hide one's scent from a species with a sensitive nose - (maybe impossible) http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/_jthy/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=279