Tick Season in Wisconsin

[steveherrick]

Well, I was out this weekend caching. I got back in my car after a long hike through the woods with some light->moderate bushwacking and discovered I had two ticks crawling on me. Just two weeks before we had two feet of snow on the ground!!!

Be warned!

Take appropriate precautions!

Good hunting and God bless!

[Lostby7]

looks like my number runs are about over for the season …in the country at least 😉 I so hate those little buggers 😕 Thanks for the warning.

[elfdoctors]

We found 3 this weekend also – all deer ticks. The deer ticks seem to get active sooner than the wood ticks.

[hogrod]

@elfdoctors wrote:

We found 3 this weekend also – all deer ticks. The deer ticks seem to get active sooner than the wood ticks.

We each found a couple deer ticks crawling on us yesterday, we were only in the woods for less than a 1/2mile hike.

[elfdoctors]

Northwestern Wisconsin is a hotbed of Lyme disease (particularly compared to eastern Wisconsin which has very few cases) so I have learned a lot about ticks.

Up here we see a large seasonal variation in tick numbers. As a general rule, ticks will become active in the springtime whenever the air temperature is above ~60 degrees. There are tremendous numbers of ticks in late April into June – peaking around the third week of May (my record is picking off 61 in 1 day). After ~July 4th, tick populations plummet. Ticks can actually become quite hard to find in August. After Labor Day, we start to see more ticks again on the warmer days until the snow flies (but to a much lesser extent than in the spring).

Start those tick checks now!

[Jay Mills]

I was a bit surprised to find a tick crawling on my neck after a hike through Falk Park on Sunday, I don’t know what kind it was. I didn’t know they would be out already. I also saw a butterfly and a 16″ garter snake also.

[Team Deejay]

Jay, if you found it in Oak Creek, its probably a Wood Tick. Basically, wood ticks are usually about 1/8 inch in diameter (or in geocacher speak, you could fit four of them on one side of a nano.) The deer ticks are much smaller. If you see a bug crawling on you, that is a wood tick. If you think you see a speck crawling on you, that is a deer tick.

[Team B Squared]

Ticks are about the only reason we miss living in the lower peninsula vs. upper peninsula. When we lived downstate (near Lansing) in Michigan we cached an entire summer without ever finding a tick. Up here you can’t hardly mow the grass without finding one. Growing up near Escanaba, I have several friends who contracted lyme disease while we were in high school. 🙁

[Pto]

ticks? ba – I seem to be invisible to them- I can go out with a group of 20 people, for 3 hours in the woods- and be rolling around in the ground, in the leaves, trees or whatever-
And I wont get a single tick – while the scared-e-cat who stays in the car for fear of ticks will get 1-2-3……

I guess I’m guess lucky that way! (And I check often:)

[Author]

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