Your experience with ticks

D

damib

Joined
Jul 7, 2021
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119
Hello,
I had fortunately like 2-3 ticks in my life and I can even crawl through overgrown grass on my stomach or move through really heavily infested small areas and don't get one. I inspect myself thoroughly everytime I am in nature so that's not the reason why I've been so lucky so far :). I found out that I am living in an area quite infested with ticks last year, so I am now using some really good repellent spray now, but I think that I won't see any change.
What about your personal experience with ticks? Are you using repellent spray? Or something homemade? Are you vaccinated? Do you live in an area infested with ticks?
 
I don’t use any special repellant or anything, although I bought a bottle of permethrin a year ago with the intention of treating my clothes with it. Haven’t done that yet.

I usually get a tick per week, had two on me yesterday. They’ve never given me much of a problem. I just make sure to inspect myself carefully before my shower every evening, and then I remove the ticks with some tweezers if there are any.

From what I understand, you’ve got about 36 hours from the point the tick attaches itself to you until the point at which it poses a danger. As long as you inspect yourself daily there’s no need to worry.
 
Enzo’s Woodshop said:
I don’t use any special repellant or anything, although I bought a bottle of permethrin a year ago with the intention of treating my clothes with it. Haven’t done that yet.

I usually get a tick per week, had two on me yesterday. They’ve never given me much of a problem. I just make sure to inspect myself carefully before my shower every evening, and then I remove the ticks with some tweezers if there are any.

From what I understand, you’ve got about 36 hours from the point the tick attaches itself to you until the point at which it poses a danger. As long as you inspect yourself daily there’s no need to worry.
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That reminds about what I read like a year ago about people living or working whole life in forested areas. They are supposed to be somewhat immune to some tickborne diseases from what I understand.
 
I crawl around tick areas and haven't experienced a problem. I use a bit off deet, I think for mosquito's.
 
I treat my woods clothes with Permethrin, as I am pretty certain that the diseases that happen here in Australia would get missed easily. The thing with tick-borne illnesses is that the really minor ones are really minor, and the major ones are not. We also have a venomous tick that some people tend to get more reactive to over time, so I do my best to keep bites down. Plus the same habits help with the tropical mosquito-borne illnesses, and several of those can become chronic.
 
rhino said:
My experience with ticks is mostly seeing them when they're not attached to anything, fortunately. I'm shocked hoe hard they are to kill by smashing them. The last couple that got within range of me on a hard surface got Spydercoed in two.
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I, too, cut them with a knife edge. It’s far easier than smashing them, which I’ve never successfully done.
 
rhino said:
Same here.

Does permethrin kill them or just discourage them (like DEET)?
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Permethrin does kill ticks, but that can sometimes take time. The practical effect it has is that it totally incapacitates the tick, and prevents it from biting. If the article of clothing is properly treated with permethrin, the tick will just roll right off as soon as it touches you.
 
Enzo’s Woodshop said:
Permethrin does kill ticks, but that can sometimes take time. The practical effect it has is that it totally incapacitates the tick, and prevents it from biting. If the article of clothing is properly treated with permethrin, the tick will just roll right off as soon as it touches you.
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Good to know!
 
Nothing beyond plucking them off my dog at times and squishing them with my boot against a smooth hard surface. One of life's great pleasures.
 
I started using Bifenthrin on our property last year and have no ticks, spiders, ants, crickets or any other small critters. I spray twice a few days apart and get very good results.

​

 
Our ticks are pretty large I don’t do much other than use off with deet when the mosquitoes are thick the ticks are out, luckily it’s a short season. Dogs are tick magnets, in bright light I saw several crawl from tall grass onto the shiny black coat of my dog and I was flabbergasted as it was simply on the edge of the road and he was barley in the grass.
 
If you sit outside on patio chairs at my parents house.....

You can literally see armies of them marching towards you.

5-6 per day. Not even trying.

Spring is worse, but I've even had them in winter.
Maybe it was hiding behind their TV, waiting for me
 
I hear most of the danger in getting a tickborne illness comes from improper extraction. If you extract the tick in time and you do it safely, then your chances of being infected are really low.

In terms of how long the tick is attached, I've heard anywhere from 24-48 hours is where you're mostly safe, but beyond that your risk of getting a disease starts to get high. I'm really not too sure about that. I think 24 hours sounds like way more than enough time for a tick to transmit a disease.

There's people who swear by these special tick extraction tools. They look like little plastic crowbars. They say it's the safest way to remove a tick without causing it to vomit. The tick vomit is what has the highest risk of causing an infection.

Other methods like using vaseline or trying to burn the tick are all actually really dangerous as they cause the tick to vomit, and pulling the tick with tweezers improperly can also result in the tick's head being ripped off and left in the wound, in addition to... you guessed it: vomit.

Ticks are scary. I've really only had maybe half a dozen ticks, and all of them before the age of 10. They don't seem to like me that much anymore. Mosquitoes still love me.
 
bayouace said:
Does the dishwashing soap on a cotton ball applied to the tick work?
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I honestly don't know if that would actually work or not because I've never heard that one before.

I still wouldn't try it. Too risky. Think about it this way: any substance you use to try to upset the tick to the point that it would want to back out prematurely is probably just as likely to trigger the tick's vomit reflex. You don't want that to happen because the tick vomiting into you makes an infection way more likely to happen.
 
I have had a few tick experiences. As a child, guess I was about eight, I got bit behind my knee by a Lyme infected tick. Sitting all the next day in school suffocated the little bugger, but not before I got a lovely red bullseye rash! Fortunately, the doctors in that part of New York were well aware and when mum phoned the office they told her to just take me to the pharmacy, they were faxing a prescription, and she should get the first dose into me then and there, not wait to get home.

I attribute my enthusiasm for permethrin to that early experience! Since then I have largely managed to avoid ticks. My permethrin armour kept me free even when my bushwhacking western KY hunting buddy collected about ten. I had the pleasure of finding a UK deer tick walking on my treated shirt, and getting to watch as it got woozy and eventually keeled over and waved its legs in the air for the last time.

In 2018 I visited a friend in Brunei (little jungle clad, oil rich sultanate on the island of Borneo) and I encountered a local jungle tick while we hiked in to a camping spot. While most ticks we know are small, sneaky devils, that are hard to see and try to creep up under clothing, that Borneo tick was something else! I alway think of it as the tick equivalent of a pit bull. Even without feeding, it was the size of my little fingernail, and it didn’t bother trying to find a opening and a tender spot, it touched down on my thigh and promptly had a go at biting me through my pant leg! Happy to say his mouth wasn’t long enough to reach me through my Helikon ODTPs, but they were tough enough to pull up a little tuft of nylon upon his unceremonious removal!

Chris
 
C_Claycomb said:
In 2018 I visited a friend in Brunei (little jungle clad, oil rich sultanate on the island of Borneo) and I encountered a local jungle tick while we hiked in to a camping spot. While most ticks we know are small, sneaky devils, that are hard to see and try to creep up under clothing, that Borneo tick was something else! I alway think of it as the tick equivalent of a pit bull. Even without feeding, it was the size of my little fingernail, and it didn’t bother trying to find a opening and a tender spot, it touched down on my thigh and promptly had a go at biting me through my pant leg! Happy to say his mouth wasn’t long enough to reach me through my Helikon ODTPs, but they were tough enough to pull up a little tuft of nylon upon his unceremonious removal!
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I've seen plenty of ticks that big in the northwest. I'm talking about the kind that make a loud crunching sound when you squish them, and then they try to crawl away when you're not looking. So you squish them again, this time harder, and you think they're finally dead, and you look away, only to have them try to crawl away again.

:eek:
 
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