ticks

i've gotten 8 ticks on me this season, 2 of which who've bit me. I feel like walking into the woods in Massachusetts is getting on par with walking into a whore house and potentially leaving with a disease considering how common these fucks are.

so i wonder, how many ticks are you guys encountering in other NE states?

im on the North Shore of MA btw

I've had 1 bite/embedded in me so far this spring. Central MA.

People say they are out in southern RI, but I haven't seen one yet and I have been out in the woods a fair amount. I could just really need glasses though.

I've had a few on from southern nh and northern ma

The tiny deer ticks are the ones to worry about. The others are just a nuisance like other Northeastern pests.
IMO, chiggers, blackflies and skeeters are much more of a problem.

AML wrote:The tiny deer ticks are the ones to worry about. The others are just a nuisance like other Northeastern pests. IMO, chiggers, blackflies and skeeters are much more of a problem.

All types of ticks can carry call types of tick borne diseases (NOT just deer ticks). I got about 6 or 7 ticks last summer. 2 of them were embedded, and I ended up with lyme. I worked in a field crew and it seems about 1/3 of us contracted it.

Don't mess with the bugs in the northeast! I've learned my lesson in spades. I will only hike with gaiters around the Gunks. I know too many people who got infected to chance it.

P.S. We were required to wear bug gaiters, deet, long pants, long sleeve shirts, and perform tick checks every few hours. Obviously a field crew will be more susceptible to these dangers than the average citizen, but hikers, backpackers, etc are still definitely at risk.

I'm away from a computer for the next few days, but I am involved in research at a university on the topic. My project is not Lyme, but two of my ode friends are working with tick borne diseases. The lab has found that all types of ticks can carry all tick borne diseases. Note I did not say they are vectors for all of them. They may be dead end hosts, but the research is still new. I'll try and find one of the newer publications for you when I return from vacation.

Edit: John, your direct quote seems to prove my point to begin with.

ive had two on me thus far this spring and pulled one out of my dogs neck last night. this is crazy. This just from walking around the driveway (i live in a wooded area of nj)

I've had 2 ticks so far, and had lyme disease last year. Be careful!

i wish there was a way to be careful! even when i don't go in the woods I can get these bastards on me like cms829 said. I guess the only way to be careful is to stop climbing and work twice as hard so I can move back west asap... the land of no ticks and where dreams come true. blahaha

chiggers are so gross...

Tick apocalypse with the snow!

The area I climb in VT, higher elevation, seems to have almost zero deer ticks, and very few wood ticks...20 miles east or west is an entirely different story. Deer ticks everywhere at lower elevations and tons of lyme disease. I keep doxycyclene on hand and just dose if I have an attached tick. Only happened once last year. Hoping that with 35 days below -10f and 15 days below -20f we'll have less bugs this year...

I spotted a tick crawling on my arm Monday when I was doing yardwork at my house in Bridgewater, VT. The few times I've been up to Deer's Leap or hiking around in the woods along the rte 4 corridor I haven't seen any others yet this spring. Hopefully the cold snap we're having this week knocks a few more down.

-Josh

These things are the bomb when it comes to ticks: tickkey.com/

They'll remove the tiniest tick with head intact. Make it part of your rack.

I actually got a tick in socal that was too small for the tick key to work (it was in the back country north of Ojai). My friend had to use a pair of tweezers in order to remove the blood sucker.

Josh - It's pretty interesting...I get them on me in the white river corridor and the Ottaquechee corridor but not up here around Killington or Pittsfield...The only reason I can think of is slightly higher and colder?

I almost never see them at any sort of elevation, either. I picked one off of me after a quick Pico hike a few years ago, but outside of that, I never see them up above 1500ft or so. By the way, check your PM's, I've got some new stuff I'm scoping and I was wondering if you guys had been in there yet.

-Josh

They're everywhere in CT, literally.....and as many Deer ticks as Wood ticks, nearly impossible to find but I usually do by feeling them. I've had lyme disease once, and had many friends get it.....f#*king sucks here in the summer. I prefer to climb all winter and train inside much of the summer....not to mention trap rock is terrible to climb in hot/humid weather