Ticks are in all 50 states, and one bite can ruin your health. Ticks can attack while turkey hunting, mushroom hunting, shed hunting, or just walking in your backyard. Unlike a mosquito bite that hurts and lets you know you’ve been bitten, ticks excrete a form of novacane that numbs the bite area so that their blood-sucking antics are painless.
Dress for Insect Success
One of the best ways to avoid tick bites is to wear proper clothing when hunting, hiking, or any activity outside. Wearing long trousers helps keep bugs from crawling up your legs, and tucking your pant legs into your socks creates a barrier between your bare skin and the ground. This is also a huge help with chiggers, which don’t usually carry disease but are a painful nuisance and difficult to cure.
Beware the Bullseye
An early indication of a tick infection is a circular rash around the bite, often called a bullseye. After a successful deer hunt, I found this marker on my leg and immediately saw a physician who gave me a massive dose of antibiotics. Luckily, I caught the problem in time and did not get Lyme’s disease.
Outdoor Allie shares her most productive tick-fighting procedures in this short video that is easy to follow and duplicate:
