Is bug catching still a thing?

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fralexandr

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Apr 26, 2007
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There aren't many people that do collections like that, from what I can tell. Most of the people I know work with insects for a living, such as my former boss that dealt with agricultural insect pest detection, or people who work/teach entomology at the college I went to. Someone my parents know has a butterfly collection, but I don't remember much about it.

I had to do a bug collection for entomology class, and there was an option to keep the collection afterwards. Some of my classmates kept them. I didn't keep my collection.

Random trivia: Some insects can survive more than a night in the freezer, cranefly legs tend to fall off, and some of the ground beetles and ironhide beetles have really tough shells, making it really difficult to put a pin through them.

If you want to learn about insect collecting, you could probably visit a nearby university that has an entomology collection and ask them about it.

Just don't go collecting insects while in line of sight of park rangers :p
 
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Dr. Zaus

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Oct 16, 2008
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There aren't many people that do collections like that, from what I can tell. Most of the people I know work with insects for a living, such as my former boss that dealt with agricultural insect pest detection, or people who work/teach entomology at the college I went to. Someone my parents know has a butterfly collection, but I don't remember much about it.

I had to do a bug collection for entomology class, and there was an option to keep the collection afterwards. Some of my classmates kept them. I didn't keep my collection.

Random trivia: Some insects can survive more than a night in the freezer, cranefly legs tend to fall off, and some of the ground beetles and ironhide beetles have really tough shells, making it really difficult to put a pin through them.

If you want to learn about insect collecting, you could probably visit a nearby university that has an entomology collection and ask them about it.

You really need to eather-ize them.

I did a bug collection in high school.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
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With modern cameras, most folks just take pictures now. Some die-hard university types still insist that it doesn't count unless you kill them.

Anyway, on a warn night hang a white sheet on the clothes line and shine a light on it. Wait for the bugs to land on the sheet and take pics or kill them.
 

lxskllr

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Nov 30, 2004
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Last week I collected a praying mantis until it flew away. I only kill ticks, mosquitoes, and sometimes wasps, but I'm not interested in keeping them.
 

tortillasoup

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Jan 12, 2011
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and here I thought this thread was going to be about people who seek to be infected by the HIV virus from "gift givers".
 
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