Honestly, I feel sorry for people that come here to hike and backpack in the warm months. Our State Tourism Boards always puts out marketing that tells people how great a place it is to to day that, and the pictures they use show some incredible scenery, but you can't see the ticks and chiggers in them

When I first moved here I was tore up by those bugs and after reading up on the history of the area I couldn't understand why the old timers didn't mention it. I found the first accounts about being all tick bit in a letter to home from a soldier in the Civil War. That, and accounts of soldiers killing and eating every ground bird they could find gave me clue. I found out our "Prairie Hen" population was decimated during that period and the Great Depression. Clear cut logging has also been a boon for the ticks. When the logged areas turned to Cedar and thick brush, hawks and other predatory birds couldn't get to the ground to eat mice and rats as easily and those little critters offer non-stop breeding opportunities for them. This is what led me to Chickens.

A year before I got chickens I couldn't walk the hundred feet from our back porch to the garden without being covered with ticks. Now, with the chickens, and "Frontline" on all the dogs and cats, it's not near so bad on property.

The forest is hit or miss this time of year. You might not see a single tick, or you might step into a new hatch and find hundreds crawling up your shoes and pants in an instant. In another six weeks the chiggers will hatch. I can't even see them without 1.5 reading glasses and you can't feel them bite, and the bites don't show for at least 1-3 days. After that, you could easily have dozens popping up and itching like crazy. People with a thick epidermis layer might not feel them at all. I guess that means I'm "Thin Skinned"

I went and bought some Permethrin yesterday. I'm not a big fan and even less an advocate of using it, but it is effective and with most all my chickens MIA I'm a bit under siege right now. I'll be getting some more chicks today. The can of Permethrin should last until they're working the field.