packim wrote:
Is it me or are the ticks unusually voracious this spring?
Or was I just stupid to take my Collie (Frontline Plus treated) into the State Gamelands in Thornhurst recently?

I was there just a few weeks ago and had NO, nada, zip, zilch not-a- ONE on me, but...
I spray everything but my nylon undies with permethrin. I don't even bother with Deet sprays anymore.
Permethrin kills ticks. Deet just pisses 'em off, they walk through it and dig in on an area more tastey.

thanks whistler...it's good to feel wanted..lol

I am now on 21 days of Doxycyclene as a prophylactic treatment (my wife hears too many horror stories in her Salon she owns)

I wanted to pitch in yesterday at the CITO but couldn't make it..will prob hit up the Dog Park meeting coming up

Look forward to seeing some of you again

packim

cerberus1 wrote:
Hound wrote:
The last couple years seem to have shown an explosion in the tick population and I'm sure the mild winter didn't help

We'd have to live in Artic conditions to not have ticks. They're out year-round, but need a bit of Sun to get them grabbing for ya. Last year they were awake in thirty degrees with full Sun. Standing on their hind legs, lookin' for a treat. CJ isn't amused when I point 'em out.
Thanks to our Game Commission, this State's wild game populations are healthy and abundant - and so we have ticks.

I'm still intrigued by the whole idea of ticks. I'd heard of them, but never seen one on myself, my dogs, on anyone I'd ever met and only once or twice on wild game despite working for my family taxidermy business while living in the Pacific Northwest. I didn't even know what one looked like until about 5 years ago. Now I see them constantly. Something has definitely changed in a major way

I agree that there are more ticks than ever before. My brother and I played in the woods all day, every day during the summers while we were growing up here in NEPA. We never took any precautions, and were always sitting on logs or rocks or on the ground. Sometimes even lying down right among the ferns or whatever, or lying in the grass in a small meadow near our house. And I never even saw a real live tick until 2005!

I think I'd blame people before a "global warming" trend for the quick migration. We had ticks here (Monroe) for well over a dozen years. Locals would leave deer tails and hide/pelt pieces in the yard, knowing the appreciative Cerberus would tie 'em some nice drys and nymphs for receiving such a prize.
Bags they came in (even in the winter cold) would be loaded with scurrying ticks, warmed by the Sun.
Few who remember the Pocono's years ago would recognize the area today.
Tourists that visited weekends have moved in, pushing game further out as their habitat dwindles from the many developments and strip malls. Manny would shed a tear.
Just look at (used to be) quiet Tobyhanna, full of developments.
The deer have to go somewhere and they take their ticks with them. Unfortunately coming to a County near you.
A deer may have up to 450,000 tick larva on them. How many deer have you spotted today?
Whether it's in your yard or your favorite trail, if you see any signs of deer, you probably have ticks in the area now.
Go online and look at a CDC or American Lyme Disease Foundation maps. Started around the Delaware river in this State years ago and moving further out each year.
Some say this year may be bad, as the mice that are normally a meal for larva are at a low in birthrate and the ticks now need newer, fresher, larger mammals to feed upon.

I believe, like the gypsy moth, this is simply a tough time now, that will die out whenever the cycle ends.
I HOPE IT'S SOON!

Yeah I hear you two

Without dating myself lol I was always in the woods and fields from dawn to dusk growing up in Taylor and never met a tick until adulthood in NJ

Life was simpler then, but what did we do without geocaches?

packim

When I was a kid (the Dead Sea was just sick then) we'd often visit my aunt's farm in Yellow Frame, NJ. She had tractors to ride on and had an old car called a prinz that I could drive through the dirt lanes after we did "chores".
Heaven for a kid from Morristown!
Every time we came too close to the corn rows we'd have a tick or two on us.
And that was in the sixties.

Two weeks ago in the Times News out of Lehighton, there was a long article on ticks. The decreasing rodent population is to blame. Less acorns two years ago led to less mice and rabbits which led to less ticks getting consumed. It's just a cycle that we are unfortunately stuck in.

They also had a good rattlesnake article too!

walnuttripper wrote:
Less acorns two years ago led to less mice and rabbits which led to less ticks getting consumed.
From the article...
"Last year we had a poor acorn crop," explained Susan Gallagher, chief naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Education Center. "The result is many of the little rodents that depend on acorns didn't survive. So, we have a drop in the rodent population, which include white-footed and deer mice."

"Those mice are the primary hosts for the ticks, which spread disease," she continued. "The ticks need a blood meal, and without sufficient mice to prey on, they are looking for alternative hosts. It's not that they are necessarily in greater numbers out there."

She explained that these hungry ticks are looking for a source of food, and that can include blood from people or their pets.

So you see, mice don't consume ticks. They get eaten by 'em.
Also noteworthy is that it's the mouse that actually has the disease and gives it to the tick.

Hmmm, guess I've been lucky . Been to Shuman point a few times now and not one tick.
Got a big bottle of Permethrin last year. Looks like I better start using it again.