I'm in upper Passaic county and it seems we have an unusually bad tick season here.
Short walks around my house or on the local trails in Wanaque, Ringwood and West Milford and I find several ticks on my clothing. Most years I can hike for hours and not be bothered by these little SOBs but now I have to look constantly for them.
Did i mention I hate these little blood sucking bastards?

So anyone else see an uptick in the tick population this year?

Rich V

I hoped the cold snap in the second half of the winter would have kept that down.

Mild winter=Wild tick's    Keep the fontline on the animals and a sharp eye on your bod!

I've had Lyme's disease 5 times here and even with the most arduous personal scrutiny the tiny nymph's are very difficult to spot compared to the adult deer ticks and you do not always get the rash when bitten by these devils

I can't stand the f'ers.  Which reminds me I need to frontline both of my dogs.

In southern NY I've had a much lower tick season so far. It's very noticeable in the areas I frequent looking for morels.

i got a tick on me about a month ago at my range

then next trip after that i got another tick, luckily it hadnt attached onto me yet, it was just squirming around on my pant leg..saw it on my ride home.

i hate bugs

Im in sothern nassau suberbs and i havent seen them in about ten years until now... all over, be carfull

Out at Lakehurst a few weeks back, I would walk through about 100 yds of woods and come out with 30-40 of 'em all over my pants. Seems I couldn't go anywhere with out them coming after me. Even walking dirt roads, they were getting on my boots. Still, after battling them off for 10 hours, I wound up with only one imbedded. It somehow managed to make it all the way up to my belly before he stopped. And I got him out with minimal effort before he even got all the way in.

Not an Avon lady - but really.... get some Avon Skin So Soft!  It works, not only on ticks, but all kinds of &*%$# bugs!  I can't tell you how many times I walked my beagle     in Warren County NJ, came home with a multitude of them... then tried the SSS,  maybe ONE OR TWO!!!!

I found something better, my wife gets it through Melaluca, called the gold bar. I use it just as I would normal soap in the shower. Started using it a week ago, and so far not one tick has even attempted to get near my skin. If it's hot, and I'm sweating, they don't even attack my clothes.

I'm in Malta, NY. They are bad here. I usually have 30-50 crawlers per day, and find at least 2 per week burrowed in. I need to get a blood test because I have been feeling slugish latly. I might have the lyme !

You find 30-50 crawlers per day?  Dude. I guess it's a hazard of the job, eh?

At this level of exposure, you must have had Lyme disease already. I don't need to remind you that it can be extremely debilitating, comes in all sorts of weird forms with weird symptoms, and can take months and months to suppress. It can be carried by those fucking Lone Star ticks too, among other nasty ailments.

As an outdoor professional, I'm sure you know to wear long sleeved pants and shirts (dress shirts are great for this) and tuck your trouser cuffs into your socks. Applying >50% DEET products in rings around knee, chest, and elbow has also reduced the "crawler/embedded" ratio, at least for me.

In southern NY and on LI (especially Shelter Island ) the rate of infection is very high compared with the number of burrowers.

If you're interested in speciating a tick, you can send it to the NY State dept of health. I do this all the time because I still have trouble telling the difference between deer tick larvae and deer tick nymphs (more dangerous). If you would like to have the tick tested for bacteria associated with Lyme disease, you may engage the services of the state of CT through one of their analysis programs.

As far as blood tests go, for some reason Quest labs has delivered more "negative" Lyme disease tests (like Western Blot) than other labs for the same person. This isn't a difference in standards of interpretation either.

I use spray, duct tape, and a lot of inspections. I have only found 1 buried in me this week. I dug it out in the evening. As far as I know I have never had Lyme. I hate those little crawlers.

I get them on my property and one of the best things I found for getting them off my pant legs and killing them is a hemostat. The one with the curve tip funnels the little buggers right between the clamps and then they are toast. I have plucked at least a dozen at time from my pants and crushed and killed every single one.

I never venture on in the back-forty without a hemostat in my pocket. Also, I've notice the ticks are usually bad after a wet spell.

regards,

Luis Leon

I just pick em off and bite their heads to kill em.

What can you do to your property to keep your bug levels downs? I have some wetlands in my backyard that the county won't let me fill and it's a major cause of bugs.

Is there ANYTHING that I can do to get rid of these bastards? Last week I had 14 bug bites on my right leg and 10 on my left leg (knee to ankle)!!

There has to be SOMETHING I can do to reduce the number of these suckers!!

SUGGESTIONS?