What I heard is that they take off backwards, and you must strike them from behind.
The old bug a salt pump just stuns them and pisses them off on the first shot. Instant death on mosquitoes, though.
I spent 2 summers in the rainforest of Belize doing archaeology. The first summer there were hardly any mosquitoes, but we ran into something that was referred to as a doctor fly, I see now that they are horse-flies and usually called yellow flies in the US. Those things gave you a painful, itchy bite. When we found out which plants were attracting them, we did some planning and went on the offensive. This one guy Paul ended up with a pile of about 50-60 dead ones one day after lunch.
The second year was overrun with mosquitoes. Like a heavy rain, you were pelted with mosquitoes every time you moved. 100% DEET every couple of hours and still plenty of swatting going on. Even with smoke from burning termite mounds the swarms were overwhelming.
I may be late to the thread, but I once killed seven with one blow! They even wrote a story about it.
I’ve got one of these bad boys that gets pulled out whenever we’re getting ‘bugged’. Think rock salt shotgun from the fly’s point of view.