Ticks want your blood. The moment you step into the woods, thousands of tiny creatures begin plotting how best to extract your vital essence.
It's the cost of spending time in woods. To me it's worth it. But I'm often asked about how I deal with this fact. In short, I tuck my pants into my socks and my shirt into my pants.
Here's why I believe it works:
I need to state up front: the strategy works well, but occassionally a tick finds its way into my person. When they latch on, I don't do anything fancy. I try my best to remove the tick with tweezers and follow the CDC guidelines for seeking treatment.
I've noticed a few things about ticks. First, they seem to spend most their time near the ground. I would guess that 80-90% of all ticks make contact with me below my waist.
Also, ticks are slow. Their ability to make contact is all the more impressive considering their slow walking speed. They seem more slow in the colder months (I could be imagining that).
Finally, ticks generally travel upwards. For whatever reason, they tend to climb higher once they've made contact with a human host.
With these observations in mind, my approach is to buy myself time to find the tick while it is crawling around (usually up) on my body looking for skin. With the socks over pants and pants over shirt method, I usually have a good amount of time to see their shiny black bodies crawling on my clothes before they get to my neck or wrists.
Speaking of clothes, it's hard to see ticks on dark clothes -- opt for colors that will contrast with shiny black dots. I bought a pair of white jeans and, may be imagining, I find less ticks on them. Maybe ticks have a keen sense of their own exposure and white jeans make them feel more of than for the meal.
Obviously my approach involves active observation. I've developed a sense of when to look based on where I am, what plants I'm around, and general habit. That said, I still do a thorough tick check once I'm out of the woods.
After all that I still find a tick embedded once in a while.
Ah to be young and infested with ticks! I miss the glory of nature and chopping the heads off of hogs! Embedded in every essay you write is hidden an underground satirical feel. I hope you and Maren write a book! It is so fun to read!