Do deer ticks "nest"

[Aaron]

As ive said before i take my son to the pines atleast a few times a week, i usually have a tick or 2 on me most days he has none sometimes 1.

Today after doing the blue trail at Batsto i am infested with deer ticks. On the drive home i picked off 22 on my right leg between my knee and hip.Upon coming home and taking a shower i picked atleast another 80 off my legs so far, and am patiently awaiting my wife to come home to assist with the backs of my legs.

I usually use deet to keep myself relativley tick free, but left it in my fathers truck from our 10 mile appalacia trail hike last week.

Anyone going to Batsto becareful. And ive tried to find on the net whether these ticks nest or colonize and cant find anything, any info would be great thnx guys.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Were the ticks large (adults?)
The larval ticks tend to swarm because the eggs are laid in gigantic masses and they all hatch in the same place. When you find one little baby tick on you, it's likely you have more for that reason.
If you got all adult ticks on you, God help us all. That means the area is totally concentrated. Ticks do not "nest". They are attracted to a certain environmental condition, but I'd say the pines in general are the right environment for them. As larvae, they must bite a host and drop off in order to become the next stage. Lather, rinse, repeat. They go through three stages (called 'instars' in the entomology world) before becoming adults, and that means three hosts. We call the ticks we have around here "multi-host ticks". In a nutshell, that's why they are so good at transmitting terrible diseases.
The hosts move around and spread the joy all over the area. A large concentration of adult ticks in one area isn't a good thing.

 

[Aaron]

Not large at all even for deer ticks they seemed to be very small.

My wife found another 18 on me when she got home, back of the legs primarily, but a few on my lower back also.

We did eventually find 1 on my son. I cant imagine whats waiting for me in my car and in his jogging stroller. I think i may toss a bug bomb in my car

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Phew. That's sort of a relief, but sorry you found so many. Check your scalp and your down belows, too. They just get everywhere.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

By the way, the place you will find the most concentrated populations of adult ticks in the pines will be the savannah areas with high grass. They'll climb out on the ends of the grass and wait for you to walk by.

 

[Boyd]

Wow Aaron, I never heard of anybody having so many ticks - hope everything's OK. Come down to Atlantic County for your next outing, I haven't seen a single tick here in about a month or so...

 

[MarkBNJ]

As ive said before i take my son to the pines atleast a few times a week, i usually have a tick or 2 on me most days he has none sometimes 1.

Today after doing the blue trail at Batsto i am infested with deer ticks. On the drive home i picked off 22 on my right leg between my knee and hip.Upon coming home and taking a shower i picked atleast another 80 off my legs so far, and am patiently awaiting my wife to come home to assist with the backs of my legs.

I usually use deet to keep myself relativley tick free, but left it in my fathers truck from our 10 mile appalacia trail hike last week.

Anyone going to Batsto becareful. And ive tried to find on the net whether these ticks nest or colonize and cant find anything, any info would be great thnx guys.

Repel Permanone is armor against ticks. Walmart sells it in the camping goods section for about $6 a can. They also sell 40% DEET sprays and 100% DEET rollons. Apply the Permanone to your clothing and outer gear ONLY. I usually spray down socks, outsides of boots, pants to the waist, back of shirt. I then hit all the open skin areas with 40% DEET if the flying nasties are bad that day.

Permanone is a pyrethrin-like compound. It's extremely effective in my experience. I learned about it from a friend at the Camden County Mosquito Commission. It's what they use in the field.

 

[woodjin]

I have never heard of that many ticks in one shot either. I thought at first that you were mistaking chiggers for ticks but the fact that you can pull them off kind of rules out chiggers. Bob's dog, Buddy, got hit real hard with a bunch of ticks once. Sounds like what you are experiencing. Sorry that you had to get hit like that.

 

[bobpbx]

I have never heard of that many ticks in one shot either. I thought at first that you were mistaking chiggers for ticks but the fact that you can pull them off kind of rules out chiggers. Bob's dog, Buddy, got hit real hard with a bunch of ticks once. Sounds like what you are experiencing. Sorry that you had to get hit like that.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Hundreds and hundreds. I had to use a stiff straw brush to scrape them off his legs. He had frontline on, so they were mostly dead by the next morning, but the amount was shocking. They were mostly small, about the size of this "O".

I too, have never heard of someone having that many at one time, and never this late in the season.

 

[Aaron]

Thank you guys for all the info.

 

[Ben Ruset]

I bet you got chiggers and not ticks. I'm able to pull chiggers off one by one when I get hit.

You itching yet?

 

[Aaron]

These where not stationary, they where crawling all over my legs. Dunno maybe they where chigers, i kinda hope they where.

 

[Ben Ruset]

Yeah, if they're crawling around there's a good chance that they're chiggers.

Deer ticks are very, very, very small. Smaller than chiggers. Chiggers tend to swarm you - I've brushed up on something and had hundreds on me once. I'm pretty sure that Deer Ticks - at least ones large enough to be visible - don't hang out together like that.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Only the larval ticks are very small. The later larval stages and the adults look like, well, ticks. They aren't ever microscopic, I'd be surprised if a first stage tick larva was smaller than a chigger.

Here's a photo of the sizes of the life stages of the deer tick

 

[Boyd]

Here's a photo of the sizes of the life stages of the deer tick

If the ruler in that photo is accurate then the ticks are considerably smaller than they appear on my screen. I measure about 5 cm between the marks which should only read 1 cm. So in other words, that photo is magnified about 5 times. Different screens have different dot pitches, so your mileage may vary....

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Well, sure, that's why the scale is there for a reference.

 

[Boyd]

Right Just wanted to point that out because most people in the US aren't familiar with the metric system and in fact those baby ticks are *really* tiny... the attached image should be closer to actual size.

 

[woodjin]

Yeah, a deer tick smaller than a chigger I've never seen. Aaron, chiggers in a bunch tend to look like pepper sprinkled on your leg a little bit. It sounds to be like chiggers. I was under the impression that you were pulling then off of your skin. I guess I was mistaken and they were still crawling about. Hopefully you got most of them. If they are chiggers you should be itching pretty good by now.

Jeff

 

[Pyrodox]

I was out in Wharton with my friend yesterday. The same thing happened to us. We each removed upwards of 90 of the little things from ourselves.

They were swarming all over us when we first noticed them, I sprayed them down with some Deet and that seemed to disperse them, but when we got home we noticed they had crawled down into our socks and started to bite. As well as a bunch on my friend's arms and stomach.

They bit like ticks, just the head being implanted in the skin, and the body was loose and could be grabbed with tweezers. They also looked like small ticks, bigger than grains of "pepper" as someone had mentioned, but not by much. If I had to describe them, the closest thing I could say would be a small tick. They had the oblong, saucer-shaped body, were brownish-red in color and might have had a tiny whiteish dot on their abdomen (some looked like this, but I couldn't tell as it was so small.) They also had "tick legs" situated around their body like any other tick I've seen.

They were biting when we got back, and we had to pull them out with a pair of needle-point tweezers. They came off pretty easily when removed how you normally remove a tick. We had a bowl of wet tissue paper just full of the little things.

I had one remaining on me this morning I had missed, and it caused a raised, red bump, but I was still able to remove it as it's abdomen was sticking out.

This occured along the banks of the Mullica river, not too far South of Atsion.

 

[GermanG]

Once in a while I end up in tick habitat unexpectantly, without having had chance to spray down first. For those occasions I try to keep some rolls of 2 or 3 inch wide masking tape in my office or truck. I wrap it around my palm and fingers a few times, sticky side out, and pat down the parts of my body I suspect got exposed to ticks. It's amazing how many of the larva/nymphs you can get off yourself this way without even seeing them. It works for both skin and clothing, and is especially effective for hairy leg types like me ( must be the Italian/Bulgarian makeup )