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Comment by cm2012 | Hacker News Reader

cm2012

And with them, deer ticks have taken all the magic out of being outdoors. At least where I live in the north east, if you go for any kind of hike, not even going into the brush, you'll end up with a bunch of ticks on you.

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One thing you can do in tick prone areas, if you are wearing the clothes for it, is to avoid walking on the "easy" deer trails and instead crashing straight through big bushes and brush to get through and otherwise giving a real wide birth from the edges of wood and brush lines. Ticks climb up plants right to the tips of branches and leaves to overlook cleared openings and trails to find prey. But there will be very few ticks in the middle of dense brush and bushes and they aren't sitting there ready to pounce.

If you see a wall of inconvenient brush but a clear animal trail that breaks through at one point or where they skirt around the edge to get to a break, it is natural to want to follow it yourself. But that opening is right where ticks hang out to best find prey. And the same goes for the overall trails where there is clear ground beneath overhanging branches

Obviously don't do this in public faced nature recreation areas that people come to enjoy the views and wreck it all up. But on private lands or deep in the woods where 20 other people aren't going to try to follow your path, just full send it and go through a less convenient spot.

Ticks tend to be concentrated in specific areas even within the same region. I'd be hiking the Long Trail or the Appalachian Trail in Vermont, and could go for miles or days without finding a single tick. Then walking through a different section and pulling five of them off within an hour.

As a side point, if you have a tick issue at your own property, look at keeping some Guniea Fowl. They are great for keeping tick numbers down.

But good grief those animals make sound annoying sounds.

Another alpha tick predator are possums.

I hear that comment a bunch but it doesn't bother wife or me. Occasional dust up when they get loud but that's fairly infrequent. I must have gotten some easy going ones.

I've been in NH/VT/MA a fair bit and I've still yet to find one on me. Either I've been getting them and not noticing or just hiking/biking in the wrong (right) places?

Hiked mt washington last week, no ticks. Makes sense, very few deer/game.

Walked across a small grass abatement between my office and another office building, two ticks.

It's kinda random but definitely more than I ever recalled growing up.

Spray your pants with permethrin (and DEET too).

And yet for years we get to hear about how scientists could simply population control or even eradicate ticks by releasing genetically modified ones. And they never will. It'll just be a little carrot dangled in front of the masses. Into perpetuity.

Yeah f that. Just use Balsam pine needle essential oil on the land you want to control the ticks on [1]; it's very effective at killing ticks and quite safe (though it can impact other insects so best to spray in winter)

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dalhousie-study-t...

it's being done with mosquitos, why not w ticks?

Gonna need a citation on that one. I'm quite familiar with mosquito eradication efforts, but not ticks.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220215113405.h...

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