Gear for Louisiana Summer

>>953734
What's your job and what are your outdoor goals? A head net and wide brimmed hat might not be a bad idea if you can't take the mosquitos. Other than that, unless you're planning on hunting it's the same gear you'd need to sleep in any other dump around the country.

I've spent several weeks in southern Louisiana before. I'm a Pennsylvania man, as far northern in PA as you can get even. Louisiana was crazy hot for me.

The humidity alone was suffocating for me. Granted I was there like 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina so we had no AC, and the second time I was there was for hurricane Gustav, which we had limited AC.

My advice is to bring a towel or rag to continually wipe sweat off of you, seriously.

Louisiana is beautiful, and the people are awesome. I loved it, but the humidity is nearly unbearable if you're not used to it.

>>953734
Fishing shirts. Columbia/academy brand/bass pro shopsnbrand.long sleve fjshing shirts.


Next, snd i shit you not, is aveno skin so soft.

Louisiana native here. Bring a few Gallons of 99% deet. Stay hydrated.

Get acclimated as soon as possible. Embrace the suck...Spend as much time way from AC as possible.
Keep hydrated and watch the locals. Most of what they do and the gear they choose is for a good reason, which may not be totally obvious to you.

Sleeping will the most miserable experience. If possible keep a bottle of clean water cool (put the lid on tight and leave it submerged in a swamp or creek if you have no cooler). At night, take a bandanna, get it wet with said water. Lay out flat on your bare chest while sleeping on your back.The evaporation of the water in the fabric will get you cooler.

First off, never eat a banana between March and November again.
Just don't. Really. Never.

Second, summertime in the South is a whole different animal, especially when it's swampy and hot. When it's the peak of summer, GET THE FUCK INSIDE. High humidity at greater than body temp (98F+) heat defeats the intended effect of sweating. There's literally nowhere for your sweat to go, and the extra wetness on your skin only acts to increase heat conduction INTO your body from outside, making awful things like heatstroke likely.

There's a reason why people do most of their summer work in the mornings before 10am or evenings after 4pm-it's just too hot to do anything outside in the peak of he day. Or if they DO have to work outside, they alternate working for a short time, then spending the next 30 minutes in the shade drinking cold water cooling down. Do much more than that and you risk dying.
If at all possible, keep dry. Wear well-ventilated hats (straw hats may make you look like a hick, but they work), loose clothing that breathes, shoes with A LOT of mesh venting and bring extra pairs of moisture wicking socks.

Gatorade and cold water are your best friends. Gatorade was invented in the South, and you'll quickly discover why. Pick up some, but drink it only until the taste seems to change, then switch back to water. The taste changing is your body telling you it has enough of the salts in Gatorade that it needed. Alternate between Gatorade and water that way and you'll be amazed at how much heat you can really handle.

>>953834
Seconded on the Skin so Soft.

I like to go fishing, but I was getting eaten alive by all the mosquitos-after 10 minutes and having gnats get into my mouth and under my clothes, I was just done. Well the wife sells Avon, so you know what she said:
>why don't you put on some skin so soft?
So fine, I did it just to shut her up. And it worked.
Which I fucking HATED admitting...
Now granted, afterwards you're oily and sweaty as fuck and NEED to take a shower. But that's a small price to pay for not having literally hundreds of little itching red welts all over your skin.

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>>954458
What I find works even better is the lemon eucalyptus spray that repel makes. I swear by the stuff, and it doesn't even smell all that bad.

Get used to it in any way possible before you get there. Turn off your ac, spend all day outside etc. Your body will acclimate a little bit, but it's also very mental. You have to accept that you will be drenched in sweat constantly and the air will never be refreshing to breathe.

Ticks suck.

We have rattlesnakes, cottonmouths and copperheads. I don't worry about them, but I do watch where I step and sit.
Rattlesnakes usually warn you unless it's in the morning and they're still cold. I've never seen a copperhead get aggressive unless actually stepped on or messed with. Cottonmouths, on the other hand, can be real assholes. I don't know if they are being territorial or what, but they will actually come after you. Careful if you pull in a stringer of fish too. I don't personally know anyone who's been bit, but my dogs have twice. I've had, what I would call, 4 close calls, but I've been working in the woods daily for 15 years.

Keep in mind that only 10% of water snakes here are moccasins/cottonmouths. They do seem to stray further from the water though.

What area of LA will you be working in? You should get here early and go to Mardi Gras in N.O. if you haven't done that yet.

Laissez less bons temp roulex!

>>955217
P.S. besides heat related sickness and poison ivy, yellow jacket attacks are the 3rd most likely things here that make you miss a day of work. I Know 3 people who have gotten Lyme disease from ticks. Mosquitos are gonna happen no matter what you douse yourself with. If you're lucky, you might have a partner with you with a more attractive blood type. Some guys think eating a bunch of raw garlic hides your scent, but I think they just like to make everyone else miserable with their stank ass farts.

>>953765
I'm going to be doing some research on birds and frogs, so I imagine that most of the work will be either earlier in the day or later at night. Or at least that's what I'm hoping haha. We're going to be watching birds, mistnetting, banding them, and catching frogs and stuff, so it won't be like backbreaking work in the heat of the day

>>953831
Towel or rag sounds like a good idea. I've lived in Louisiana for most of my life, so I'm familiar with the humidity. I've just never had to work outside in Louisiana before, and I've never had to buy gear for working outdoors.

>>953834
I hadn't thought about fishing shirts, that's a good idea. It sucks having to get pants and long sleeve shirts to wear in summer

>>953953
Yeah definitely going to invest in some bug spray, and I've already got a Camelbak

>>953960
I won't have to sleep outside thank god, that would be fucking awful. Our apartment's gonna have AC

>>954423
Haha what's the deal with bananas?

>>954674
Fuuuuck that's gonna suck, I fucking hate ticks

>>955217
I'm gonna be up in Fort Polk from February to July. I've lived in the state for nearly my entire life so I've been to Mardi Gras. It's gonna hurt not being able to go this year.

Is there anything that repels ticks?

>>955263
>ticks
Born and raised in the south and if you didn't know already just heat up a needle or a little twig and poke the tick, shit will get fucked up

>>955271
That shit is retarded.

Poke it and it pukes it's guts all over you.

>>955263
Ticks... guys that really don't like'em wear long sleeves and pants with some kind of bands around the cuffs of both. Some wear leg cordura leg gaiters. Check under your balls daily. Behind ears too. Hell, check everywhere.

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>>953734
suffer

>>955448
Cheap tick gaiters. Check out Forestry Suppliers. U.S. Forest Service gets all their stuff from them. Lots of stuff for people who work in the woods.

http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/Products.asp?mi=69541&itemnum=25092&redir=Y

>>954423
Lol this little bitch. Lots of people work outside all's Fucking day. Stay hydrated, the heat won't kill you.
So many soft hands.

>>955263
Eating bananas is one of the easiest ways to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Bananas have a lot of potassium in them. Mosquitoes can smell the potassium in your sweat and key in on it.

>>956253
I think it's because of a few million years of evolution. Banana trees attract hungry mammals in droves. Mosquitos instinctively know that banana smell means blood. The regular co-occurrence of blood sources and bananas over millenia has hard wired the mosquitos to equate one with the other.

>>956680
This makes more sense. We always lose and effervesce potassium when we sweat. Lots of foods are high in potassium while not increasing your attractiveness to skeeters. Not getting enough/losing to much potassium while working outside is a direct cause of heat stroke and muscle cramps.

>>954423
How do people survive in the tropics if the subtropics are so bad?

>>956680
Lol this is retarded. There are no banana trees in Louisiana, or Alaska, or 90% of places where mosquitoes live. And bananas natural range used to be solely in the Indonesia area.

>>956713
Your perspective is narrow in terms of both prehistoric knowledge, and the scope of geologic time in relation to what exists at present. Accept your insignificance diligently.

>>956707
Peoples who have lived there for centuries physically adapt.
People who have lived there for many years acclimatize.
People who have lived there for weeks acclimate.
People who do none of the above leave or die.

>>956752
Coming from the anon spewing his credulous evolutionary biology hypothesis with not a hint of backing evidence or sources behind it.

More to the point, banana eaters attracting mosquitoes is an old wives' tale. Female mosquitoes do not bite you for blood sugar, they bite you for protein to rear their babies. They can't even determine your blood sugar.

>>956765
Who said shit about sugar?

I didn't come here to educate you. I don't even belive that's possible. "I think" means that I am not stating an accepted fact, much less a law of nature.

If you'd like to test my hypothesis, you're free to stick a banana up your ass and rub DEET on your dick, then see which one gets sucked first. Don't let me know what you find /out/.

>>956752
Even if bananas have been around for "melennia", even if they had range larger than what they currently have, even if all mosquitoes are descended from this ancient banana patch, the adaption would be lost once the banana patch reduced in size. Turd.

>>957915
http://what-when-how.com/insects/coevolution-insects/

>>957915
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1995-04-02/news/9504050567_1_banana-fossil-manchester

>>957915
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/oldest-blood-mosquito-fossil-discovered-2371691

>>957915
https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/10/16/125-million-year-old-fossil-reveals-early-mammalian-hair-and-spines

>>957915
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene