Speaker 1: As a guide an hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. It's springtime. It's a great
Speaker 1: time of year to be outside and be recreating. After
Speaker 1: winter has worn off, hopefully some of these quarantine restrictions
Speaker 1: start lifting and we can get out and enjoy the outdoors.
Speaker 1: There's so many awesome seasons to take advantage of this
Speaker 1: time of year. We've got turkey season, bear season, depending
Speaker 1: on where you live. It's also the start of many
Speaker 1: great fishing seasons. But overall, it's just a great time
Speaker 1: to be outside. However, there is one season this time
Speaker 1: of year that I do not like, and that's tick season.
Speaker 1: If I really think about it, Ticks are probably one
Speaker 1: of the more dangerous things that a majority of hunters
Speaker 1: encounter just being out, especially in the spring. It's because
Speaker 1: they're disease vectors for things like lyme disease, rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: spotted tick fever, which can actually kill you, as well
Speaker 1: as a lot of other diseases that cause sickness and
Speaker 1: other complications. I mean, ticks can be a huge problem,
Speaker 1: but there are great methods and best practices for prevention.
Speaker 1: Over the years, I've developed a system that seems to
Speaker 1: work really well and just allows me to go into
Speaker 1: the woods with a lot more confidence. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, I want to share a story that
Speaker 1: involves three things ticks, giraffes, and paintball guns. When I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about ticks stories, a lot of them came to mind.
Speaker 1: I was thinking originally about this bear hunt with my
Speaker 1: buddy Brett where we were pretty much fighting ticks off
Speaker 1: with machetes, and then another hunt where I decided to
Speaker 1: go spring bear hunting in Montana and shorts, And by
Speaker 1: the time I reached a couple of miles into where
Speaker 1: I wanted, I had counted over a hundred ticks in
Speaker 1: a region that I'd prefer never to see ticks again.
Speaker 1: But of all the tick encounters and experiences, one completely
Speaker 1: stands out from the others, and it takes place in
Speaker 1: South Africa. Quite a few years back, I would pretty
Speaker 1: much try to find guiding work wherever I could, and
Speaker 1: I would travel around and kind of made it a
Speaker 1: year round job. Going to New Zealand, traveling to different
Speaker 1: states hunting spring seasons, and one year I actually found
Speaker 1: some work in South Africa. Just starting out. I was
Speaker 1: on this reserve that had a lot of animals, but
Speaker 1: in this particular reserve they happened to have giraffes as
Speaker 1: well as I mean, there's a lot of different species
Speaker 1: in this particular area. There was zebras in Yala, kudu,
Speaker 1: water buck, drafts, some other just like smaller animals, dykers,
Speaker 1: and just a lot of different species. Now on this
Speaker 1: particular place, they did have a problem with tick born diseases,
Speaker 1: killing a lot of the animals, and the drafts were
Speaker 1: especially susceptible to this. I don't know if it's just
Speaker 1: their body size, but some of these animals you would
Speaker 1: find so many ticks, like in their crotch region, in
Speaker 1: their armpits. It just looked like these massive growths growing
Speaker 1: and they're all from ticks, a combination of disease from
Speaker 1: the ticks, and then I think just so many ticks
Speaker 1: getting on these animals. I mean, I just I couldn't
Speaker 1: see how they could live and it was becoming a
Speaker 1: really big problem. So this particular place, while trying to
Speaker 1: help out a lot of the animal populations on this
Speaker 1: piece of property. Hired hunters or professional hunters to inoculate
Speaker 1: the animals and they use these they call it douse,
Speaker 1: So it's like, um, it's a chemical that you know,
Speaker 1: people use on cattle as well. It kills a lot
Speaker 1: of parasites and does kill the ticks as well. So
Speaker 1: they would use this douse to inoculate and kill off
Speaker 1: the ticks to help these animals survive some of the
Speaker 1: tick born diseases and maybe just give them a better
Speaker 1: fighting chance. Now, if you're running cattle or whatever, you
Speaker 1: can bring your cattle into the yards through a squeeze shoot,
Speaker 1: spray little douse on the backs of them and send
Speaker 1: them on their merry way and do that once a
Speaker 1: year and you'll be fine. However, it's pretty hard to
Speaker 1: round up wild animals like zebras, giraffes and y'allo water bucks,
Speaker 1: all these things that are extremely spooky living in the
Speaker 1: wild in the bush. That's just not possible. So the
Speaker 1: delivery method for this douse was a paintball gun, and
Speaker 1: these paintballs were filled with the chemical that kills the ticks,
Speaker 1: and then hunters would you know, myself. I would take
Speaker 1: the paintball gun around owned try to sneak up on
Speaker 1: animals and shoot them with the paintballs to inoculate them
Speaker 1: from the tick disease. And if you've ever shot a
Speaker 1: paintball gun, they don't go very far. It's like shooting,
Speaker 1: I would say it was even it is probably like hunting.
Speaker 1: I would compare it to hunting with a traditional bow,
Speaker 1: because you had to get pretty close to these animals
Speaker 1: to be effective or to to make a good shot.
Speaker 1: You could hit them anywhere because the oil from it
Speaker 1: would I mean, it's strong enough that it could pretty
Speaker 1: much cure a larger cattle sized animal with one or
Speaker 1: two paintballs, and some of the other animals like giraffes
Speaker 1: or real social animals that rub up against each other
Speaker 1: would actually spread it to each other as well, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have to make like a vital shot or anything.
Speaker 1: But you had to be pretty close and without obstructions
Speaker 1: of brush or anything else to actually hit these animals.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons that they hired hunters.
Speaker 1: They're really good at stocking to get in and inoculate
Speaker 1: a variety of animals that were extremely spooped, had been
Speaker 1: hunted and pressured fairly hard and did not allow people
Speaker 1: to get very close. I was also given a four
Speaker 1: wheeler where I could drive around, so I was mostly
Speaker 1: on the four wheeler. I would have the paintball guns,
Speaker 1: so if I was driving around and saw some I
Speaker 1: could shoot them with the paintballs, or even try to
Speaker 1: chase some of them down with the four wheeler and
Speaker 1: shoot him. The trouble was not a lot of roads there,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like the type of terrain where you
Speaker 1: could drive off road and chase them and get them,
Speaker 1: so for the most part it was spot in stock
Speaker 1: and then a lot of night work with a spotlight,
Speaker 1: especially for some of the more nocturnal animals like the
Speaker 1: bush bucks, the in Yala's just a lot of different
Speaker 1: animals at night. They're mostly concerned about getting the drafts,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, this is gonna be super easy
Speaker 1: shooting a draft with a paintball gun. Like I just
Speaker 1: didn't had no real experience with the giraffes at that point.
Speaker 1: They were the hardest thing to sneak up on, and
Speaker 1: I think until this point, I'm not sure anybody had
Speaker 1: really shot the giraffes with paintballs their giant but they
Speaker 1: can see forever and they were extremely wary. They did
Speaker 1: not like people getting close. They were not like friendly
Speaker 1: zoo grafts. They would see you from a long ways off,
Speaker 1: and then they would just constantly keep jogging out of
Speaker 1: range of the paintballs. So one of the first nights
Speaker 1: I would would drive around, and I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but I was never able to locate a giraffe at night.
Speaker 1: I I just thought, oh, they'll be easy, I'll go
Speaker 1: find some drafts at night. Maybe it was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, being unfamiliar with where they hung out. I
Speaker 1: didn't really know where I was and mostly just kind
Speaker 1: of sticking to the roads on the flour wheeler with
Speaker 1: the spotlight because it was the one that plugged into
Speaker 1: the battery. I didn't have a cordless spotlight, so I
Speaker 1: drove around all the roads that I could find. Kind
Speaker 1: of after I knew the area, spotlighting, shooting some of
Speaker 1: the more nocturnal animals with the paintballs, but not seeing
Speaker 1: any giraffes. So I ended up starting to figure out
Speaker 1: where the drafts were hanging out. I had spotted some
Speaker 1: giraffes one one morning, after having quite a few failed
Speaker 1: stocks on them, like okay, because at first I just
Speaker 1: thought I'll just walk up and shoot these things with
Speaker 1: the paintball it would be great, and that was not
Speaker 1: the case. So I let him calm down. I go
Speaker 1: stalking some other animals, inoculate of a water buck, which
Speaker 1: was like a pretty cool stock, and hunt in some
Speaker 1: real thick stuff, and then I go back to where
Speaker 1: the drafts were in their feeding. I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: So I start sneaking in and there's about five or
Speaker 1: six girafts in this one's spot. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to plan out my stock where I can
Speaker 1: get through this one little creek where I can get
Speaker 1: close enough, and they're kind of feeding away like backs
Speaker 1: and really focused on eating this tree. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, this might be my best chance. So I
Speaker 1: gotta shoot as many of these things with the paintballs
Speaker 1: as I can. I get close, I get lined up,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, all right, sweet. I think there was
Speaker 1: five giraffes, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: these three close ones, and then as the other you
Speaker 1: come out, I might try to hit him on the run,
Speaker 1: so I get lined up. I shoot the first shot,
Speaker 1: hit the close giraffe and the butt with a paintball,
Speaker 1: and I tried, I'm trying to get maybe two paintballs
Speaker 1: on each giraffe before I moved to the next one.
Speaker 1: Was the first one that pop pop got him twice.
Speaker 1: The next one pop pop got it. But at this
Speaker 1: point they hear the gun going off. I'm fairly close
Speaker 1: and they don't like it, so they start running. I
Speaker 1: shoot the third one one time, and now they're standing
Speaker 1: out at a distance like looking they're they're not liking it,
Speaker 1: you know, like, guys, I'm just trying to help you
Speaker 1: out here. And then they start taking off again. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I can get that one one more time.
Speaker 1: As I shoot that one, they run into a herd
Speaker 1: of zebras. I'm just like guessing my yardage, but these
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of these paintballs either, and
Speaker 1: I want to conserve them because I think they're kind
Speaker 1: of expensive. So I shoot and I'm thinking, okay, I
Speaker 1: will definitely hit this giant giraffe out in this flat.
Speaker 1: The paintball goes over the giraffe and hits a zebra behind.
Speaker 1: Find it, and I thought that was pretty awesome. How
Speaker 1: many how many people have tried to shoot a giraffe
Speaker 1: with a paintball, missed and hit a zebra? I think
Speaker 1: that that's very low. But that was just one of
Speaker 1: the more fun experiences I've had dealing with ticks, and
Speaker 1: just a crazy fun and interesting look at how bad
Speaker 1: the ticks affect the animals there. And I'm thinking, man,
Speaker 1: I do not want one of these ticks on me,
Speaker 1: because I saw the damage that they did too large
Speaker 1: animals and how devastating they were, and the fact that
Speaker 1: they needed people to come in here and help protect
Speaker 1: the animals by just trying to kill the ticks. Why
Speaker 1: are ticks so bad, Well, the answer is because they
Speaker 1: carry a lot of fairly bad diseases. Let's just actually
Speaker 1: talk about ticks a little bit first, and then we'll
Speaker 1: go into some of the preventions and things you should
Speaker 1: do to just make sure that you don't these things
Speaker 1: don't happen to you. The way a tick feeds is
Speaker 1: it essentially finds a host, buries in, and then draws blood. Now,
Speaker 1: ticks mostly transmit disease through their saliva glands, so when
Speaker 1: they bury into your skin in exchange for taking blood,
Speaker 1: they're also releasing most of the time bad bacterias into
Speaker 1: your body that then cause complications or disease later on,
Speaker 1: or within a couple of days too, sometimes a month later.
Speaker 1: A lot of tickboard illnesses are very hard for doctors
Speaker 1: to diagnose because they have similar symptoms, but some of
Speaker 1: them don't even manifest until a longer incubation time. So
Speaker 1: if you get bit by a tick, you might pull
Speaker 1: it out, not think anything, and then a month later
Speaker 1: get sick and not really correlate that with the tick.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about a few of the most common
Speaker 1: disease eases that hunters or people get. The first one
Speaker 1: would be lime disease. Now, some of the signs and
Speaker 1: symptoms of lime disease are fever, headache, fatigue. Lime disease
Speaker 1: can manifest itself in lots of strange ways. I actually
Speaker 1: have a friend that got lime disease and it manifested
Speaker 1: as a form of meningitis where he had to have
Speaker 1: his brain essentially drained in spinal taps for antibiotics to
Speaker 1: be administered. I know quite a few people that actually
Speaker 1: have contracted lime disease, and a lot of people that
Speaker 1: have had a lot of complications, long term complications with
Speaker 1: nerve damage and other things from the bacterial infection years later.
Speaker 1: But one of the ways to identify lime disease, and
Speaker 1: this doesn't happen. It happens in about seventy of the cases.
Speaker 1: But it's a bulls eye type skin rash. I know
Speaker 1: people that have got lime disease that did not get
Speaker 1: the rash, and then other people that have gotten the rash,
Speaker 1: but it was sort of hard to identify it first.
Speaker 1: So it's not so cut and dry. But the bulls
Speaker 1: eye shape rash, especially after if you know you've been
Speaker 1: bit by a tick, seems to be one of the
Speaker 1: more dead giveaways for diagnosing lime disease. Now, not all
Speaker 1: ticks carry lime disease. Lime diseases carried by black legged
Speaker 1: deer ticks, so the type of tick can actually help
Speaker 1: in identifying the type of disease. One disease that occurs
Speaker 1: very often where I hunt, and actually in many of
Speaker 1: the regions where I hunt. They have done studies on
Speaker 1: this disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. It's called spotted fever
Speaker 1: because a lot of people within two to four days
Speaker 1: after they get the fever developed this really spotty looking rash.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like chicken pox looking, but more kind
Speaker 1: of everywhere, fairly fast, and it just it looks it
Speaker 1: turns your skin spotted. But once you've had that, once
Speaker 1: you're that late in the disease, it can actually be
Speaker 1: a very debilitating, even deadly disease. Um It's been known
Speaker 1: to kill people. You can get a very high fever.
Speaker 1: Some of the symptoms include fever's headaches, the rash, obviously
Speaker 1: muscle pain. It can even lead to things like amputation, paralysis,
Speaker 1: permanent brain damage, just some seriously bad stuff. I just
Speaker 1: second hand known a guy that was in the backcountry
Speaker 1: in Montana. They one of the guys got pretty sick.
Speaker 1: They're riding out and he just blacked out, fell off
Speaker 1: of his horse. His fever got so hot he kind
Speaker 1: of passed out. They got him back in and it
Speaker 1: turned out to be Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He had,
Speaker 1: you know, some paralysis issues he was he he ended
Speaker 1: up recovering from it, but it was an extremely bad deal.
Speaker 1: Just within the seven days that he was in there,
Speaker 1: he almost didn't make it out alive. And then there's
Speaker 1: the one that I thought I think is pretty scary.
Speaker 1: Is this alpha golf from the loan startick, which is
Speaker 1: actually fairly moore is being looked into it, but it
Speaker 1: caused you to be allergic to red meat. I've had
Speaker 1: people that I know that have contracted this and hunters,
Speaker 1: and now they can no longer eat meat red meat,
Speaker 1: which I'm like, Man, give me lime disease or Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain spotted fever. Don't give me the one that you
Speaker 1: can't eat meat from. The spotted tick fever mostly comes
Speaker 1: from the Rocky Mountain would tick. And then I was
Speaker 1: reading recently a study out of monts Hannah talking about
Speaker 1: Colorado tick fever, which spotted fever and lime disease or
Speaker 1: bacterial diseases. So it's a bacteria that gets in your bloodstream.
Speaker 1: But the Colorado tick fever, although it's not as dangerous
Speaker 1: as spotted tick fever, it's not not deadly. It just
Speaker 1: makes you fairly sick, is a viral disease from the ticks.
Speaker 1: One study, and actually an area that I hunt a lot,
Speaker 1: was saying that one in five ticks were infected with
Speaker 1: this disease, and then of those ticks, about one percent
Speaker 1: contained spotted tick fever, and it is also very possible
Speaker 1: that you could be bit by one tick and be
Speaker 1: given multiple diseases. So with all that information, what we
Speaker 1: really want to do is not get bit by ticks.
Speaker 1: There is a high likelihood that if you do get
Speaker 1: bit by a tick, you can contract some pretty bad stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think that the thing that we want to
Speaker 1: focus on is prevention. And so over the years, especially
Speaker 1: bearer guiding, I mean, I've had a lot of run ins,
Speaker 1: a lot of different experiences with ticks, and especially where
Speaker 1: I guided in Montana, being a study area for Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain spotted fever, I knew that having talked to researchers
Speaker 1: and things, they are like, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: it here, you should be really careful. And I didn't
Speaker 1: take it very seriously at first, but over the years,
Speaker 1: seeing people that I know get lyme disease, seeing people
Speaker 1: that I know get some other just really strange diseases
Speaker 1: from ticks, it really got me thinking about trying not
Speaker 1: to get bit and coming up with some best practices
Speaker 1: and some prevention techniques and just sticking to them in
Speaker 1: order to prevent from even having to deal with the
Speaker 1: initial bite of the tick and Over the last I
Speaker 1: would say four to five years, I've been really successful
Speaker 1: deferring ticks and not having as many. You know, some
Speaker 1: years I would go and get have as many as
Speaker 1: twenty plus ticks buried in me. Now, if I get
Speaker 1: a single tick buried in a season, that's abnormal. Let's
Speaker 1: go into a few ways of prevention. I want to
Speaker 1: break this down into two. What I would call I
Speaker 1: would call prevention, and then best practices. So what prevention
Speaker 1: is just ways to prevent the ticks from getting on you,
Speaker 1: things you can do to hinder ticks from affecting you.
Speaker 1: And then the best practices, what I would consider is
Speaker 1: just like doing the way you do things to prevent
Speaker 1: them from getting to you. So kind of following a
Speaker 1: certain order of things, following a good code of this
Speaker 1: is what I do, This is how I this is
Speaker 1: my measures for preventing ticks, and then I follow those
Speaker 1: measures every time, and by just being consistent with it,
Speaker 1: it prevents it. When we're talking prevention, I think step
Speaker 1: one is to coat your gear. A few years back,
Speaker 1: I started coating my gear in permethrin, and I think
Speaker 1: that that is probably the single biggest factor in preventing
Speaker 1: ticks that I've found it is extremely effective and I've
Speaker 1: noticed a huge difference when I use it. So what
Speaker 1: permethrin is. It's actually, I guess like a we'll just
Speaker 1: call it a bug spray head to turn. But it's
Speaker 1: not like you would sprayed on your skin. It is
Speaker 1: pretty potent, and so I just coat my gear with it,
Speaker 1: allow it to dry, and then use that gear when
Speaker 1: I'm out hunting. The stuff that I've been using late
Speaker 1: least from a company called Sawyer, and they've just got
Speaker 1: like spray permethern. You can buy it at our e I,
Speaker 1: you can buy it online, you can buy it wherever,
Speaker 1: and there's other companies that make it as well. For
Speaker 1: what it is advertised, it lasts for six weeks or
Speaker 1: six washings, which is plenty of time, and I actually
Speaker 1: recode it probably every other week or something like that.
Speaker 1: But what you do is you you lay your clothes out,
Speaker 1: you spray it with this permethern and then you just
Speaker 1: hang it and allowed to dry. I do the outside
Speaker 1: and the inside of whatever my hunting gear is. Now.
Speaker 1: I know, if you're a bear hunter or a hunter,
Speaker 1: you're mostly you're thinking like scent, and I'm concerned about scent.
Speaker 1: Here's my thought on that. First off, this doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a smell. If you think about the scent that
Speaker 1: deters animals, human scent is the scent that's triggering a
Speaker 1: predatorial response. Think about it like this. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, oh, well, if you're filling
Speaker 1: up your truck at a gas station, that deer' going
Speaker 1: to smell the gas because it's strong, and which is true.
Speaker 1: But they're gonna smell you as well because the wind
Speaker 1: direction and other things. For a long time, I resisted
Speaker 1: using repellent or any kind of anything while I was
Speaker 1: out hunting because I thought, oh, that added scent is
Speaker 1: going to make a big difference, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be successful. And then I started using it and
Speaker 1: have seen no difference or change in success. It's better
Speaker 1: to have something to prevent ticks because that's a real
Speaker 1: and present danger than to think that whatever I'm using,
Speaker 1: as far as repellent is going to mess up my chances.
Speaker 1: And I think that if you try it, you'll find
Speaker 1: that it probably doesn't really affect your success anyways, but
Speaker 1: does affect the success of deterring ticks or even other
Speaker 1: bugs like the nice thing about this is it also
Speaker 1: repels mosquitoes. Whether you're bait hunting or turkey hunting or
Speaker 1: bear it doesn't really matter what you're doing outdoors fishing,
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna encounter a lot of mosquitoes as well,
Speaker 1: and so to have something on your clothing that repels
Speaker 1: mosquitoes as well as ticks sweet awesome. I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: The nice thing about this too is it depends on
Speaker 1: how fresh it is or whatever. It does repeltics, but
Speaker 1: also if they start to get in the clothing, it
Speaker 1: can actually kill the ticks as well. You're probably thinking, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds very dangerous for me. I've read as many
Speaker 1: papers as I can to just research the dangerous to people.
Speaker 1: If you spray it on like that, let it dry,
Speaker 1: it doesn't soak into our skins too thick for it
Speaker 1: to soak into and have negative effects. So I just
Speaker 1: suggested it's worth doing, and you can. You can do
Speaker 1: a lot of different gear with it as well. So
Speaker 1: it depends on the type of hunt I'm doing. If
Speaker 1: I'm just going out from my house or cabin whatever,
Speaker 1: coming back each day, just hanging out in the springtime,
Speaker 1: I'll uh mostly just spray my clothes. But if I'm
Speaker 1: doing like a backcountry hunt, spring bear hunt or something
Speaker 1: like that, I'll spray my tent and then you can
Speaker 1: even spray your sleeping bag as well. You just spray
Speaker 1: it hanging out to dry and you're good to go.
Speaker 1: It's awesome to be able to spray your gear and
Speaker 1: even think about, depending on what kind of seat covers
Speaker 1: you have or whatever, spraying your truck because a lot
Speaker 1: of the ticket bites that I do get every year
Speaker 1: aren't from actually being in the field. It's from having
Speaker 1: my backpack in the truck and then ticks getting off
Speaker 1: that in the truck, and then a few days later,
Speaker 1: when I've got no type of repellent on tick crawling
Speaker 1: on me and bearing in when I'm not looking for him.
Speaker 1: When you're looking for him and being vigilant, that's when
Speaker 1: it's easy to detect them. It's easy to find them
Speaker 1: you're constantly thinking about them. But it's the ones that
Speaker 1: are hiding out later on at you're in your house
Speaker 1: and your vehicle that you aren't really paying attention to
Speaker 1: they get you. So the next step is after I've
Speaker 1: applied the prometherin then when I'm out in the field,
Speaker 1: My goal is to just stop access. So the way
Speaker 1: ticks work is they they don't jump, they don't fly.
Speaker 1: They're just standing on blades of grass, mostly hip high
Speaker 1: or waste like knee high, with their fingers out or
Speaker 1: whatever out um and just waiting until you brush past
Speaker 1: them and they latch on. Once they latch on, then
Speaker 1: their goal is to find a place, a nice cozy
Speaker 1: place to burrow in. So they're gonna probably either crawl
Speaker 1: up your pants um. If they're low on the grass,
Speaker 1: the crawl up your boots, up your pant leg. If
Speaker 1: they're up above, they'll crawl up your shirt or up
Speaker 1: your sleeve, and they try to find somewhere where they
Speaker 1: kind of are are tucked in an unnoticed, unnoticeable I
Speaker 1: find that they mostly burrow in or they just they
Speaker 1: keep crawling up until they stop. So it might be
Speaker 1: at your waistband, it might be your crotch and your armpits,
Speaker 1: or at the top of your head, in your hair,
Speaker 1: somewhere where it's harder to find them, but also where
Speaker 1: they kind of crawl and stop and find a good
Speaker 1: place to latch or if you've got like a backpack on.
Speaker 1: I noticed on my chest sometimes I'll get unbarrowed in
Speaker 1: right where my pack straps are. So the way to
Speaker 1: stop the access is just allow fewer places for them
Speaker 1: to be able to crawl to your skin. What I
Speaker 1: do is I always tuck my pants. If I'm wearing
Speaker 1: tall boots, I'll tuck my pants into my boot and
Speaker 1: then lace my boots up. If I'm wearing shorter boots,
Speaker 1: I'll actually tuck my pants into my socks. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't like hiking around like that because well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things wrong with it. First, you get a
Speaker 1: lot of stickers in your socks because they're outside your
Speaker 1: your low boot. And second, a lot of time when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting in the spring, it might be damp. Who knows,
Speaker 1: like the grass from dew in the morning, some wet,
Speaker 1: and then that just drains all the water down my boots.
Speaker 1: So I'll tuck my pant in my boot or my sock,
Speaker 1: and then I'll just throw a gator over the top
Speaker 1: of that, like a shorter gator. Even though it can
Speaker 1: be a little bit warmer, it just prevents water from
Speaker 1: getting into my boot and also kind of keeps another
Speaker 1: added layer of protection from anything crawling up my pant leg,
Speaker 1: my shirt I tuck into my pants, and where a
Speaker 1: belt just helps keep everything sealed off. I like to
Speaker 1: wear long sleeve shirt kind of keeps the sun off me,
Speaker 1: plus just adds a little bit extra layer of protection
Speaker 1: from the ticks. Then the third thing that I do
Speaker 1: is I will then spray the openings around my neck
Speaker 1: and wrists with some kind of repellent. I prefer deep.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different repellents out there. I know
Speaker 1: it kind of sucks when you're on like a long
Speaker 1: trip or a long hunt, you're using deed all the time.
Speaker 1: So I try to just limit it too. I'll spray
Speaker 1: my hair or my neck area, just whatever, and then
Speaker 1: just around where maybe they might crawl up my sleeves.
Speaker 1: By adding the prometheron, by tucking in my pants and
Speaker 1: then just doing the spray on those few areas, it
Speaker 1: pretty much eliminates most of the ticks that will get
Speaker 1: on me. Now there are the occasional ticks it'll land
Speaker 1: on you briefly or whatever, or be on your gear
Speaker 1: and other things. So I try to spray most of
Speaker 1: my gear down. But that has been probably the best
Speaker 1: system that I found for just keeping ticks off in general. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as the best practices go, I like to
Speaker 1: break it into what I think of as the quarantine
Speaker 1: and the check phase. Everybody now is aware of quarantine.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not thinking about quarantining yourself, but if you
Speaker 1: think about it, if if you're going out for a
Speaker 1: turkey hunt, you're going out for the day, and then
Speaker 1: you come home, even with the repellent on and everything,
Speaker 1: sometimes there's ticks that have landed in something, or just
Speaker 1: they're on your gear, there, on you whatever. It still happens.
Speaker 1: Um it's not that they won't touch you, it's just
Speaker 1: helps take our way, say maybe of the ticks. So
Speaker 1: there is still a chance that you know there will
Speaker 1: be ticks on in your boots, on your clothing, whatever.
Speaker 1: Then you walk into your house, you take your clothes off,
Speaker 1: you shower, whatever. But maybe some of those ticks are
Speaker 1: now inside your house. And that's when you don't have
Speaker 1: any repellent. You might have your kids, your dogs, your whatever,
Speaker 1: you aren't paying attention. You might go to bed after
Speaker 1: showering and pick that tick up at some other point
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about it. And that tends to be
Speaker 1: the ticks that ended up getting buried bury into you.
Speaker 1: So when I get home, or if I'm camping in
Speaker 1: my tent, I don't bring my clothes into my tent.
Speaker 1: And if I'm when I get home, I just have
Speaker 1: a black contractor trash bag that I keep handy. I
Speaker 1: take my clothes off before I go inside. If I'm
Speaker 1: in the garage or whatever, I take my clothes off
Speaker 1: at put him in the bag. I mean, just like
Speaker 1: you don't have to be walking around outside in your
Speaker 1: neighborhood butt naked. But I'm just saying, like, have a
Speaker 1: way of taking the dirty clothes that you were out
Speaker 1: in the field with putting him in a plastic bag
Speaker 1: to prevent the spread of ticks getting into your hamper,
Speaker 1: getting into whatever. If I'm home, what I'll do is
Speaker 1: I'll then take those clothes and I'll just throw him
Speaker 1: in the dryer' you know, from the bag straight into
Speaker 1: the dryer and then turn the dryer on high for
Speaker 1: about ten minutes. Dry heat kills ticks really well, and
Speaker 1: so that method kills him. If your clothes need to
Speaker 1: be washed beforehand, so ticks can actually live submerged underwater,
Speaker 1: So if you just put it in the washing machine,
Speaker 1: that's not going to kill him, and it has a
Speaker 1: potential to get on your other clothes or whatever. I
Speaker 1: figured this out because I did a load of laundry
Speaker 1: and then pulled my clothes out and there's live ticks
Speaker 1: in there, and I thought that sucks. I always thought
Speaker 1: that water killed the ticks, and then I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta look this up. Turns out it doesn't, but the
Speaker 1: dry heat does. So if you maybe aren't going to
Speaker 1: wash your clothes, but you just you're coming in for
Speaker 1: the daytime, maybe you did a morning hunt or you're
Speaker 1: gonna go do an evening hunt, just do yourself a favor.
Speaker 1: Take those clothes from the bag, throw them in the dryer,
Speaker 1: kill whatever ticks might be in there, and then you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, tick free clothes from that point on. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're out in the back country you're camping, it's
Speaker 1: not possible to do that. What I do is if
Speaker 1: I'm coming in, if I'm hunting in morning or something,
Speaker 1: I'll take my clothes i've got. Maybe if I'm just
Speaker 1: like car camping, I'll have a black trash bag that
Speaker 1: I put the clothes that i'm hunting in in that bag,
Speaker 1: and I'll just try to squeeze the ear out, tight up,
Speaker 1: and then lay it out in the sun. I have
Speaker 1: had it, especially if your clothes are sprayed down with
Speaker 1: the permithin. I've found like I'll open the bag up
Speaker 1: and there will be dead ticks in there. Now I've
Speaker 1: also opened the bag up and seen live ticks. But
Speaker 1: I think that that combination of the hot the sun
Speaker 1: and the repellent does tend to get the ticks off
Speaker 1: the clothes. And then if I'm gonna hang out in
Speaker 1: camp for today, I'll do that for a little bit,
Speaker 1: let it sit in the sun, and then I'll take
Speaker 1: the clothes out and just hang them up because the
Speaker 1: ticks will leave a little bit away from where I'm
Speaker 1: camping or sleeping. But I try not to bring my
Speaker 1: clothes from whatever ticks into my tent because I find
Speaker 1: that most of the ticks that I find on myself
Speaker 1: personally with this whole method buried in is in the morning,
Speaker 1: so after I've done a tick check and all that.
Speaker 1: So it's coming in from clothes or other things that
Speaker 1: you just have laying around. So if you follow this
Speaker 1: quarantining the clothes that you're using out in the field,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have a lot fewer instances of ticks
Speaker 1: latching on in random places like in your house. Now,
Speaker 1: the other best practice is checking, So you just gotta
Speaker 1: constantly check for ticks. You know, if if you're hunting
Speaker 1: from home or just recreating and then coming home, you know,
Speaker 1: take your clothes off, put them in the dryer, take
Speaker 1: a shower, rints off, check yourself for ticks. If you're
Speaker 1: out in the back country, it's good to always just
Speaker 1: keep checking. I always call it is your mind playing
Speaker 1: ticks on you. You're out there, you're sitting, you're glass
Speaker 1: and you're constantly feeling ticks crawling around. Once you find one,
Speaker 1: you kind of ever, you start feeling them all the time,
Speaker 1: but getting used to knowing what it feels like, paying
Speaker 1: attention to that checking, and then when you get back
Speaker 1: to your tent every day, you know, separating your clothes out,
Speaker 1: make sure there's no ticks on you, then go to bed.
Speaker 1: If a tick does happen to burrow in. There's so many,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember people saying, oh, you hold a
Speaker 1: match to its butt and let it back out, or
Speaker 1: you put alcohol on it, and they're just like all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways to remove ticks. The only way you
Speaker 1: should ever remove ticks. I don't care what people have
Speaker 1: told you. Do not do any other method than pulling
Speaker 1: the tick out. Tweezers work fine for this. So what
Speaker 1: you want to do is you want to get as
Speaker 1: close to the skin as possible, pinch it with a
Speaker 1: pair of tweezers, not so hard that it squeezes it,
Speaker 1: but just hard enough where you can grasp it, and
Speaker 1: then just pull straight out like you're pulling a splinter
Speaker 1: out of your leg or pulling a hair out of
Speaker 1: something like. Just firmly abbit and pull it straight out.
Speaker 1: And by doing that, you know you want it to
Speaker 1: pull everything that has out. Hopefully you've caught it before
Speaker 1: it's got too deep, because the most of the diseases
Speaker 1: through their saliva can still be transferred fairly quickly. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, you'll pull it out. You'll see, okay,
Speaker 1: does it have all of its attachments? And then take
Speaker 1: that tick. Let's just say for this, put it in
Speaker 1: a plastic baggy because we're gonna do something with it
Speaker 1: in a minute. But once you pull that tick out,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that there's no other pieces left
Speaker 1: in like if it's buried real deep, people have can
Speaker 1: pull and leave some of the mouth in the hole,
Speaker 1: but it's it's pretty easy to tell whether you got
Speaker 1: the whole thing or not. And then once that happens,
Speaker 1: take some antiseptic, whatever you've got, like alcohol or iodine,
Speaker 1: some kind of first aid antiseptic, and make sure you
Speaker 1: clean out that one. Because most of the diseases are bacterial.
Speaker 1: So then you clean that out and it will help
Speaker 1: whether if there was something there before it spreads. Just
Speaker 1: cleaning it out that way is a great, great thing
Speaker 1: to do. Now, the last thing that I'll do, if
Speaker 1: I did pull a tick that was buried out, I'll
Speaker 1: often take a picture of it because certain ticks are
Speaker 1: more likely for certain diseases. So if you got a
Speaker 1: tick and you're like I was buried in and you're
Speaker 1: worried about lyme disease, but it's a lone star tick,
Speaker 1: well you probably won't have lime disease, But there are
Speaker 1: other diseases that those ticks can carry that might have
Speaker 1: similar symptoms. So being able to identify the type of
Speaker 1: tick if you do end up getting sick later on
Speaker 1: can be a huge help for the doctors diagnosing which
Speaker 1: antibiotics to give you or potentially what you might have,
Speaker 1: because being able to get those antibiotics soon and be
Speaker 1: treated right away is just gonna be way better in
Speaker 1: the long run. It's going to make your life a
Speaker 1: lot easier, and it'll be more accurate in diagnosing potentially
Speaker 1: what you got. One last thing to think about if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be going into the back country, just remember
Speaker 1: to have some tweezers and antiseptic on hand if you
Speaker 1: do happen to get bit. Another thing that I would
Speaker 1: suggest is everybody in your hunting group or your family whatever,
Speaker 1: follow these same best practices, because the best way to
Speaker 1: prevent getting lime disease is just prevent getting bit in
Speaker 1: the first place, and it's super easy to do by
Speaker 1: just following a few steps. By being diligent about controlling ticks,
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't have any problems. You'll be able to
Speaker 1: enjoy the spring and be tick free. I hope that
Speaker 1: helps some people. You know, ticks are something you should
Speaker 1: worry about, but if you just follow a few simple things,
Speaker 1: you can worry a little bit less and enjoy the
Speaker 1: experience a lot more. Before we go, I figured I
Speaker 1: just mentioned some upcoming application deadlines. We've got Kansas deadline April,
Speaker 1: I think um and then Kentucky as well if you
Speaker 1: apply for ELK or anything there and Idaho the moose
Speaker 1: sheep goat applications do end of April. May beginning of
Speaker 1: May Montana moose sheep goat is due, and then May
Speaker 1: four Nevada deadline. So if those were something on your
Speaker 1: list of hunts, time is now. Also, I got a
Speaker 1: lot of questions asking about they remembered I did something
Speaker 1: about applying in other states. That was episode twenty three,
Speaker 1: So I know it's kind of hard to find because
Speaker 1: the way it's labeled UM doesn't really describe it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people have listened to it. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go back and relisten. I got a lot of those
Speaker 1: this week, so that is I'm pretty sure it's episode. Also,
Speaker 1: a question came in from Steve. He says, Heyremy heard
Speaker 1: you're gonna talk about tick protection next week. Will that
Speaker 1: also cover mosquitoes? Yeah. The same chemicals that deter mosquitoes
Speaker 1: also work with ticks, deet, the promether and other things,
Speaker 1: so all this stuff is applicable for mosquitoes as well,
Speaker 1: which is huge problem in the spring. I know, UM,
Speaker 1: the thermo cell. I've used one in South America a
Speaker 1: while back, and it was an older I mean, this
Speaker 1: is like a long time ago, and it worked pretty well.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of guys use those. That's not
Speaker 1: really good for tick prevention, but does work for mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: especially if you're if you're stationary sitting like in a
Speaker 1: in a blind or maybe a tree stand something like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so hope that helps everyone out. Also, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing a Q and A coming up, so
Speaker 1: make sure to shoot your questions over. I've got a
Speaker 1: lot compiled. Some of them might not get to you
Speaker 1: might have to push them to the next one. But
Speaker 1: if you've got any questions right now, shoot him over
Speaker 1: because that's it'llly'll be. It will probably be the first
Speaker 1: of May, um, but maybe I'll just decided to do
Speaker 1: it for next week. So shoot those questions over and
Speaker 1: we'll get those answered until next week. Don't let your
Speaker 1: mind play ticks on you. Catch you later.