I usually hammock, but often sleep on the ground on river trips when the only legal place to camp is on sand bars below the gradient boundary. Fire ants love gravel bars and they are aggressive. These are not your picnic ants, but pack animals that swarm victims and begin to bite simultaneously. Their name tells you everything you need to know about their bite: fire.

Here is the best way I have found to deal with ants in general, including fire ants: Buy them off. I leave sacrifices or tribute at the edges of my camping area - like at the four corners more or less. The ants quickly gravitate to the goodies and stay busy hauling the loot back to the nest. And they stay out of my campsite.

Their favorite appetizer is saltine crackers - nothing healthy seems to interest them. Each sacrifice (each corner) gets one saltine, crumbled into a pile. The main course is oil such as the oil from sardines or just plain cooking oil - whatever is handy. Just pour a tablespoon of oil 3-4 inches from the crackers. It will soak into the ground. That's good. The ants will not usually start on the oil unless they start first on the crackers. I don't know why. They carry the crackers off first, then start mining the oil. This is more difficult for them. They have to lick the oil from each grain of sand or bit of soil. By morning the oil field will be covered with miniature piles of mine tailings. The ants will be gone, sleeping it off, maybe.

When staying more than one night, I renew the sacrifice as needed. Once in the evening ( at all corners) is usually sufficient unless the ant population is unusually high, then I leave another one in the morning.

And treating hammock lines with permethrin is a good idea, too, in fire ant country. If they are working a tree, they will swarm a hammock tied to it. The sacrifices work for that, too.