Ticks on my deer!

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11-18-2005, 12:51 PM

#11

MikeVT

Typical Buck

Join Date: Sep 2005

Location:

Posts: 857

RE: Ticks on my deer!

There tend to be a lot of ticks on the deer up in my part of the country. I have found that if you hangthe deer overnight, the ticks will drop off as the carcass cools. I take a piece of cardboard, cover it with flypaper, and lay it underneath the deer. Any ticks that fall off get stuck and are easily disposed of.

11-18-2005, 04:20 PM

#12

jerseyhunter

Giant Nontypical

Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: the woods of NJ.

Posts: 5,643

RE: Ticks on my deer!

You can buy a cheese cloth bag that slips over the deer and keeps the ticks in and the flies out. Then just skin over a large plastic bag and toss.

11-19-2005, 05:21 AM

#13

kim398pl

Join Date: Oct 2005

Location:

Posts: 74

RE: Ticks on my deer!

Quote:

ORIGINAL: SyPTo

Quote:

The taxidermist said he sees it all the time, but when I asked him about lyme disease he said not much has been said mugh about it lately.

freezing at -18 C for a few days or heating it up to over 160 degrees Cwill pretty much get rid of any diseases and virus that are found in the blood/meat..

then again any meat can have some diseases in it...lyme disease is by no means a "Easy" fixer upper, i have had it about 6 years ago and it put me under and out of work for well over 3 months...there's really no "fix" for it in the way of medicine , all they can give you is an antibiotic , and your body has to do the rest, it takes from a few weeks to a few months in some people for the body to start making anti bodies to fight it..i never got antibiotics as i wated a long time before going to the doctor, once i went 9after about 4 weeks) my body already started making a anti-body and the doctor told me the medicine wouldn't really help me at that point.

not sure what exactly lyme disease does to your body , all i know is that you will runa fever for weeks , you slepp about 18-22 hours a day and even the 4 hours you are able to get up you feel like you just worked 20 straight hours.. ooh yeah and your lymph nodes are swollen up the size of golfballs...

don't be alarmed though , very low % of the deer tick actually carry the lyme disease , same as with the west nyle virus..and even a smaller % of bitten people will actually get the disease... it's like the flu...some catch it , some don't..

Yes it is no fun. I a recovering now as we speak. On top of that I have rheamatoid Arthritis. It is very rough. In my line of work I am a customer service rep. I work from home and usually works 8 hours days, straight through. I can't do that right now, it kills me. All I want to do i sllep. I feel lile I have been hit by a Mac truck,my body aches (worse than the flu) it is miserable. I manage still somehow to go hunting. But by the time I get back to camp, I am completely and utterly worn out. We get home and I got to bed.

Did you get the red bullseye mark on you that they say is common after a tick byte. I never got it, then again I did not realize I had been bit by a tick either.

Now we had to pull and huge tick out of my 3 yr old heads a few weeks ago and now I am worried about him. I am in ga and I think it is pretty pick here. HOw long did it take you to recover. I have been on anitbitotics for almot 2 months now.

11-19-2005, 05:38 AM

#14

Leafrivermac

Giant Nontypical

Join Date: Mar 2004

Location: South Mississippi

Posts: 5,233

RE: Ticks on my deer!

I live and hunt in S Ms (bug/tick heaven), and this thread has made me wonder why , out of all the deer I have taken (lost count yrs ago), I have no recollection of having ever found a tick on any deer. Usually our first seasons here are very warm, with cold weather not coming in until the last part of Nov.

11-19-2005, 07:30 AM

#15

Bassman4940

Spike

Thread Starter

Join Date: Sep 2005

Location: Maine

Posts: 75

RE: Ticks on my deer!

Quote:

That's the same situation I've seen here in Maine. I have taken a good number of deer and always butcher my own, but this is the first one I've encountered with ticks. He was just covered with them behind his ears, and while he was hanging in my garage to age I found several more.
This year wasn't a particularily bad year for ticks, so it surprised me to see this deer so covered with them. I would kind of expect to see them on deer during bow season, but now that the weather has turned colder I would think that the ticks would have dropped off.

I any time I handled this deer I have always checked myself for ticks afterwards, and haven't found any. I'm used to picking them off of my dogs and (so far) they have all been of the wood tick variety, and from what I've heard and read, they aren't the ones who carry Lyme disease, only deer ticks do.

I guess that's just one of the risks of being in the country and being a hunter. I have another question maybe someone here can answer. Do you have to actually get bitten by a tick carrying the Lyme disease virus to get it? Or can you become infected by coming in contact with the blood of a deer, and having a cut on your hand for instance?

I'm sure the answer can be found on the Internet somewhere, and I'm gong to do some research, but thought this would be a good discussion for this group since I'm sure I'm not the only one who is in this particular situation.