In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps of making and using the deer fly trap umbrella. In addition, there is a video I made in 2011 about my deer fly trap umbrella. The video demonstrates how to assemble the trap and shows it in use. Here is the link to that video:







The trap is simply a black-and-white umbrella that is adorned with blue plastic cups. The alternating black and white panels of the umbrella make the trap an irresistible visual stimulus for deer flies (which are strongly attracted to movement) while I walk around with the umbrella, rotating it as I go.











Each cup is attached to the umbrella with four twist ties evenly spaced around the perimeter of the cup's rim.











Here is a view of the current configuration of my umbrella with four cups attached. These fixed cups stay securely attached to the umbrella and do not need to be removed or replaced. The four loose cups that you see in the lower left-hand corner of the picture are used to support the sticky surfaces that trap the deer flies that are attracted to the umbrella.











This is the product I use to create the sticky surfaces that do the actual trapping of the deer flies.









Tangle-Trap is indeed very sticky, so I put on a pair of nitrile gloves before preceeding any further.



I cover each loose cup with a plastic sandwich bag.







The sandwich bags allow me to create a disposable sticky surface, so that the disposal of trapped flies is quick and easy and clean (you'll see that further down in this posting).







I tuck the extra length of each bag inside its cup. This prevents the bags from blowing off the cups after the loose cups are placed onto the umbrella trap's fixed cups.



I cover each loose cup with a plastic sandwich bag.The sandwich bags allow me to create a disposable sticky surface, so that the disposal of trapped flies is quick and easy and clean (you'll see that further down in this posting).I tuck the extra length of each bag inside its cup. This prevents the bags from blowing off the cups after the loose cups are placed onto the umbrella trap's fixed cups.



The bag-covered cups are then evenly and thoroughly coated with Tangle-Trap.



