Ticks Suck - Talking With The Tick Terminator

This week on the Missouri Woods & Water podcast Nate & Micah get to talk with Brian Anderson, the founder of The Tick Terminator about all things ticks.  Brian talks about how he got into the tick world, what a tick is and how it lives its life, how to keep them off you, and what to do should you get bitten.  This show is full of useful information about how to keep yourself safe against those blood sucking creatures.  Thanks for listening!

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast with your host, Nate and Micah. What up dude? What up brother? Manam, I feel

oddly good about where I'm at with ticks after listening to Brian. This is a lot of good information. The older I get, the more worried I am about them. Yeah, I can hear you that I can see that. Definitely. Because some of the diseases that they carry around, they can affect you for the rest of your life.

Yeah, they're nasty. If I ever got that what's it called? Where you can't eat red meat anymore. I can't. I can't. He said it. Yeah, he said it. I don't know [00:01:00] what I'd do. I'd probably lose some weight. That's true. You can only eat pretty much chicken. Can you eat pork? Is it red meat? Good. Pork's red. I don't know if it's still can considered red meat.

Consider meat, red meat. I don't know. I doubt it. I don't know. Somebody let us know. Yeah. But yeah, we have Brian Anderson, who is the tick terminator on. Yeah. Full disclosure, we stole this idea from our buddy Josh Rayley with the Wisconsin Sportsman. He actually recommended him to us and we went with it cuz this is the time of year that these freaking jerks are all over the place.

I've pulled a handful off me already. Hell, we pulled ticks off us in March. Yeah. Whenever we were doing our coyote hunt with the Missouri disabled sportsman. Yeah, I can see that. And now I know why. Because they don't ever really go away. They never go away. Even in the wintertime. So we get into that during the show.

Funny. So we talk about this in the show, but, and I might even said this to you before, but [00:02:00] do you have a vision of what heaven is in your head? Sure. Yeah. So I do too. And one of those visions is I would hopefully just get to sit down with God and just ask him questions.

Just like a little like the four year old son asked you, right? Daddy, what's this? What's this? What's that? Why'd you do this? I just, and the, I've already got like a few questions I really want to ask him and one of them is gonna be like, listen, I love you so much. You are, but why the tick?

What's up with mosquito and ticks? Yeah. What going on? How come, I just wanna say why. And he's gonna be like, listen, my son, don't question me, bitch. But it's, it is funny cuz I've thought about that just what purpose do they serve other than making everybody sick? I could give a shit about a Turkey eating them.

Okay. Find something else to eat. Yeah. There's plenty of, yeah. Other bugs that they can munch on. I want to get into a little bit of news some updates, some things that have been going on. Okay. Before we hop into sponsors and then today's show. So first I wanna talk about an iTune review that we got last week [00:03:00] or the week before.

It's hilarious. And I wanna say thank you to her. Yep. I dunno if it's hilarious. But from Miss underscore, a s w first time listener and love your focus on Missouri hunting and fishing as the wife of a conservation agent, former MDC and state park employee and passionate outdoors woman, I have a unique appreciation for the topics you're covering.

If you ever need any funny warden wife stories or fact checking regs, don't hesitate to message me. I don't know where message, where she's talking about. So what I'm saying to you, get a props from a warden wife, get ahold of us. We would love to have you on. You and your husband on our show would be awesome, I think.

No, that be great. That would be a fun show if he wants to. Yeah. And if not, then you can just come on. So get ahold of us. That would be awesome. Thank you for the, and also thank you for the five star review. Appreciate that. Yep. That was nice. I usually don't read 'em well. No I pretty appreciate 'em on occasion.

I'll check on there just to see if there's, I don't check very often anymore, but [00:04:00] I did the other, they do help. Yeah. So keep giving up those five star reviews. We appreciate it. They definitely help us out. Yeah. But we appreciate that. We got some news for our listeners. Yeah, we have it. It's launched.

It's out there. We have a website. It's in the world. It's on the web. It is real. It's on the line. It's on the line. Missouri Woods and water.com. There you can find links to our show. You can see our reviews, some pictures. And one thing we're really excited about, which will take some time we're building it, is we have a thing on our page under our About Us page called Our Gearbox.

We get a lot of listeners asking us what we use, what we do what product, like what we Yeah. What we're using what pack are you using? Yeah. Whatever. So the idea is we're gonna build out all of our, all the stuff that me, you and Andy use, right? Each of us have our own sets of stuff we like.

Yep. There's gonna be links to all of those [00:05:00] products that we use. There's going to be a. A little typed thing about why we use it and what we use it for. And then eventually we're gonna do reviews of all these products and they're gonna be on our YouTube channel, right? Which is Missouri Woods and Water.

If you wanna subscribe there and those links are gonna be in that gearbox. So anyways, on our website, you can check us out. There's a little bit about us. Yeah. Our partners are all on there where you can find your discounts, links right. To the partners how you can get ahold of us that sort of stuff.

The website is live. You can find all of our social media on there. You can listen straight on the website. Can you straight, just Google it and it'll pop up? I guarantee you can. Let's test that theory. Okay. Cause I'd looked You want I tried to look for it the other day. Missouri Woods and Water.

Facebook, Instagram, apple, YouTube. What the hell is our website? See that's what I'm saying. You would think that'd be [00:06:00] like one of the first things that pops up. It's like going through all the podcast things. Yeah. Pod Bean and all that stuff. Missouri Woods and Water, all spelled out.com. Easy to find.

And we're also gonna put the link on our Facebook and Instagram too for you. You put that on Link Tree. I'm gonna keep our link tree. I worked hard on it. I'll put it on there. Actually I did it today, so it's on there. Nice. I don't know how people are gonna find the link tree cause I'm not gonna link it on our stuff anymore.

But we have a website, so check it out. And then I want to congratulate three dudes. I'm sure there's more of our listeners and friends that have done it, but I know for a fact our buddy Tyler Jarvis, our buddy Corey Fells and Scott Wiler himself, our sh our guest last week have all killed some awesome Toms.

Yeah. And since opening day, and I don't know if this is. But I feel like just the social media in general, I'd usually would see a bunch of dead toms by now. Maybe it's just starting [00:07:00] a slow season. I don't know. Dunno I have no idea. Maybe it just, people aren't as, I don't know, but I just, but if you do kill one, tag us in the pictures.

Yeah. Love seeing 'em. Love that. Usually share 'em if I'm sitting around and share it real quick. Love sharing the pictures, man. Congratulating the people. I am not probably gonna be Turkey hunting this year cuz I don't have any turkeys where I go. Same. So I mine, I'd get 'em every once in a while, but I don't have a, and honestly the only reason I'd go hunting is to take Caden.

Just don't have any turkeys where I hunt unfortunately. And it's one farm, it's gonna get even worse. I'm kidding. So there's not a tree in sight, but yeah. So congrats to those three fellas. Good job. Yep. Awesome. Oh God, that was all right. Pro right there. Let's hop into these sponsors before we get into today.

Show black ovis black ovis.com. Use code mww 10 for 10%. Also, I did learn something, one of our [00:08:00] listeners actually messaged us the other day. Apparently that code's not good for on sale stuff. Oh really? I'm gonna check with our contact there and see if that's true or if there was something going on there.

But nonetheless, you can save some money by using that code. Great stuff. I'm actually putting a wish list together right now as we speak. It's in our drafts. I don't know if you've seen it. No, I haven't. See, I'll show you how proved you I'm not lying. I'm sure you have right there. Wishlist. Oh, nice.

Thunder Chick breeder hin. Yeah, I, that's a Turkey hin decoy pair of black op shorts. Ooh, they got shorts. Full zip hoodie, which you don't call hoodie. It's a quarter zip. It's a full zip, so it's just a jacket. It's a jacket with a hood, man. Yeah. So some different stuff that I Skylar kinda wanting right now.

Elevate what's, elevate me. Don't worry about it. That's inside joke. Okay. Skylar's, whatever. Elevate. So use 'em. Yeah. They check 'em out and then their sister company, camo Fire. Get on [00:09:00] the app. Check out the flash sales that they've got going on every damn day. It changes. Do you remember what time it stops?

Yeah, I think in the middle of the night. Isn't it? Something like that. There's two hours left. Ooh, today they got sunglasses. I've always wanted a pair of those little pulled sunglasses to be honest with you. I hear good things about 'em. I know. And they look pretty sweet. Our boys over at working class.

Bow, bow Hunter. They're always talking about theirs. Yeah. Talking highly on 'em. Get 'em for 64 bucks right now on Camel Fire. Pretty good deal. Pretty good deal. Deals, targets. Little bit of everything. Some waiters. It is start to be fish in season. Some decoys, some kinds of different stuff. It's kinda like a little smores board.

Some. Some L e D lights. Holsters. Ooh, I need a new spotlight. What do you need a spotlight for? For the house. Oh, you just keep going around just for you don't, no, not really. I got one sitting ready. The boys usually drain it. Some shooting bags. That's the reason I don't buy flashlights anymore. My [00:10:00] children like to just leave them on.

That's why I hide 'em. And they're I try and then Amy gives it to 'em. Oh, they're scared. Whatever. All right. Check 'em out. Camel Fire. Download the app. Midwest Gun Works. Use the code Woods Water. Four 5%. Hey, that's for ammo two. Just so you know. Anything on that. It's for anything on the website.

5% off. That's pretty badass. Awesome. Yeah. Also I do want to thank our contact there, Cameron. I have thought thanked him for it before, but it's actually been done. He actually helped my daughter softball team on a, Oh, that's right. Or a gun raffle. He really helped us out too on that. He wasn't, we didn't get any money off.

There was no, but what he was able to do for us was made it to where, cuz we didn't have any money. The softball team doesn't have any money, so we didn't have to pay for it till after we raised the money. Oh nice. And that was really awesome. Yeah. That was cool. And good people over there, man.

Yeah. So really good people. They took care of. My daughter's softball team. Thank you for that. It raised some good money. We might do another one cuz people like guns. [00:11:00] Of course they do. America. Yeah. Remember that Listeners, you could win a gun. You never know. So use the code Woods water. 5% off, like Micah said, Midwest Gun works.com.

Rivers edge tree stands holy. We got some work ahead of this. I should not buy. Ladder stands rivers edge. Tree stands. Rivers edge.com. Use the code Missouri. 10 for 10% off. Plus free shipping. Yeah, free shipping on all hang ons and ladder stamps. I think that's still good. I need to ask Gabe. I think, yeah, I think so.

I think it's still, that's a hell of a discount. That's. Like 20 plus percent off. When you think about if you buy a, especially a ladder, stand the shipping on those freaking things. I don't wanna know how much one is, you don't have to worry about it cuz it won't cost you anything. Exactly. So check them out.

Use that code Weber Outfitters. I can't No. I wanna talk about like my truck, the back of my truck. Oh yeah. We had it weighted down cuz we got our shipment of ladder stands. [00:12:00] Hang ons and everything else that we got. Yeah. And we kinda went a little crazy and bought some shit this year. Yeah. We got, we wanted to be prepared.

We're hoping to get a lease. We wanted, that's less and less likely every damn day. It's getting cutthroat out there for sure. I don't want to talk about leasing companies. Yeah, we won't. We won't. Okay. We won't talk about 'em. I won't say a freaking word. Yeah, bastards. But yeah we have, we, how many did tonight?

Like I got five, I don't know. And I have the tower from last year that I haven't put together. Yeah, you got a lot of stuff. But you know why I bought all those ladder stands? Yeah. For the boys. They're all doubles. Got 'em For the boys. Yeah. That you and the boys can go. I can take the boys in a tree easier.

I did not get one double this year. See, I don't think I'm gonna buy a ladder stand anymore. That's not a double. I didn't buy any ladder stand either. That's true. I bought all hangs. Yeah. I want all hang ons this year. Which is rare for me cuz I'm usually a ladder stand guy. I went all in a permanent setting.

In a permanent understand. Yeah. But I switched it up this year. I'm like, nope. I like these hang ons. I'm gonna go with those. I agree. [00:13:00] They got some really comfortable big hang ons. They do Now. They're not running gun stuff. No, but it's a hang on. That's comfortable. Which is nice.

So check 'em out. Yeah. Weber Outfitters newer sponsor of ours. We're super awesome guys down there. Yeah. We've been talking to him down to Bridge. I'm excited to meet Josh. I'm really excited to meet. He's a jokester. Yeah. And I like that. Yeah. So I like that. I'm excited to meet him. We're actually gonna be going down there hopefully soon.

Andy is doing a lot of planning right now, and so getting away from Andy's being a little bitch. That's why Andy's been home is you know what though? They've got some 31 and a half inch straw. Know Bo options. He for a lefty. Yeah. So that's good. But we're actually gonna go down there and I think all three of us are getting news bo new bows this year, I think.

Yeah, we don't know about Andy. He, like I said, he's pretty, it's hard for him cuz he is. He's got 31 inch straw, 31 and a half, 31 and a half left hand, left-handed. Left-handed. Yeah. Those aren't [00:14:00] usually in stock a lot of places. So he's happy with his, I wouldn't, I, it wouldn't shock me if he just kept with what he's got now.

It isn't, it's a newer bow, so who, why does he need to change it? Yeah. Yeah, we'll just see what he wants to do, what he does. But we're gonna go down there, record some shows with him, show shows we don't really know, honestly. Check it all out. But check him out. Webber outfitters.com. Facebook just Google.

Webber Outfitters. They YouTube as well. They have YouTube. They put videos out there, so check that out. And if you're ever near Hawk Point, Missouri, stop in and check 'em out. Yep. Athlon optics ridiculously good optics for ridiculously good price. Please stop saying that. They're just badass.

They're pretty sweet. This weather, I don't know what it is about this weather. I really just wanna go out and shoot my gun. Like I know I need to be shooting my bow, but I really want to take my guns and oh, I would like to go see how out hunting soon. See how far I can get out there. Pups are on the ground, man.

Yep. And if you listen to Tory Cook and Oh, funny. You should. No it wasn't to cook. It was to, it was Big Al Big, big Al and John Collins, they were on the [00:15:00] Fox Pro Podcast and they were talking about it, about, about Palm today and all that. It was really good. A lot of pups are hitting the ground either already or by the end of the, right around by the end of the month, first part of May.

So I would like to be hunting soon. I heard and I heard pups the other day. No shit. You know where we hunt behind my house? Yeah. I always thought that they ded in that property right next to it. They actually d closer to my house than they do. That property really in between that. Yeah, you could hear little squeaks and crap. It's pretty crazy. Sneak peek. I don't wanna ruin it, but I think Tory cook's gonna be coming on pretty soon. That's sweet. So if you guys got any questions, send those out. Send 'em our way. Yeah, because we're excited about that. So yeah, check 'em out.

Athlon optics, find a dealer new you get on their website. Play with what you wanna figure out what you want. If you're curious about what we run, ask us. And also our website is gonna have that information on there at some point. Yep. Mine's [00:16:00] already. You and Andy gotta work on yours. Yep. So check 'em out.

Athlon optics, mor moral targets Morrell, moral Russians. What do you call me? I don't know what I, Morell targets. Sorry about that. Yeah. I just talked about shooting guns, but you definitely need to be shooting your bow. And that's what we shoot as our real targets. I'm like holding off too, because the new, which by the way, did you do that to my targets Outback?

I haven't been back there in a long time. You know that you remember five years ago when I found those good, when that archery shop in Sedalia was closing and I bought, we bought like 20. Yeah. Like we targets from them. We got wolves and Yeah. Yeah. My wolf has antlers. No, that wasn't me.

That's funny. Somebody found that's funny. My broken arrow that I lost, he's got both sides of the arrow stuck in each ear. Nice. I find, dude, that's some music. I don't know. I think it, I don't know what brand that I think it's a McKenzie or something. I don't know what it is. It might be, but it's been sitting out all year now.

Yeah. And it's pretty good. It's done a good job. [00:17:00] It's, mine is done uglier in death. Mine has done nothing but sit outside because we spent 20 bucks on them or something like that. They were $20 a piece. Yeah. Like we got a hell of a deal. I tried to talk shot of shit. Yeah. I was like, dude, buy every single one he is got.

We did, dude. No, he still had 10 dude. Some of 'em were in rough, bro. Really bought like the best of the rough shape one. Yeah. See I wasn't down there whenever you were there. So you, I only had so much room in my van. The shagging wagon. I was like, we can make a trip, buy 'em off. But anyways we're gonna, hopefully, I'm gonna actually gonna try, hopefully try out their new is it called the FIFA.

They're big target. The big one. Big roller. Yeah. I would like to try that one. Now it's got a stand that comes with it. It's pretty sweet. Just because what I like is when you really step back, if you're off, you know like a block target, like their big roller is 16 by 16, which is cool. Big. But when you're shooting 70 plus yards, let's say if you're a little bit off, you're gonna lose an arrow.

Yeah. That big old fella, you're just gonna hit the black. Yeah. You'll catch it. Yep. So I'm excited to [00:18:00] try that out and if I get that one, I'm not gonna go with a hay bail this year. There you go. Let Albert keep his hay bales this year. Yeah. Burt needs to feed them cows. Yep. Check 'em out mor targets.com.

You lucky can order directly from them too. Yep. We're gonna try to work on getting a code for you guys. We don't know. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Yep. Lucky buck. Lucky buck mineral. I need to, I still haven't got mine out. I hope to get it out tomorrow. I got mine out first. April. Yeah. Good for you.

I've definitely mowed already, so I'm behind the eight ball. Should have done it today. But I've definitely mowed, I've mowed three times already and I have not been able to get out and put my marital out. But I'm gonna do that tomorrow. That's like my number one agenda. Check 'em out. Lucky buck mineral.com.

We might try to have the owner of the company on again this year to talk about the freak factor and the science behind that feed. Okay. I don't know if we're doing it for sure or not, but to me it's very interesting, the science behind feeding deer right. And even minerals, but especially feeding them.

And he's got a pretty [00:19:00] big cool take on it and that's why Freak factor is what it is. It's pretty interesting. Yep. So anyway, OnX, check it out. OnX Hunt app. Download it from your, what do you call it? Internet app store today. You download the app, but you go online. Go on the line. Yeah, you go on the line.

So you get on the line. Or on the app line. Download the app, get on the website if you wanna save 20% and put our code in mww 20. But you gotta go to the website to get that code. I got an employee, there's some weird ass stuff that goes on with the apps that they can't use 'em or whatever. Yeah. It's not their fault. Like they have to do it that way. Yeah. So some law or something, I don't know. Silly, but whatever. But check 'em out. That's it. I don't know. We used it a lot the other day when we were checking that property out. Oh. I use OnX every day. I know you did. I You say that every freaking time, buddy.

I just, a buddy of mine, he just started to work with us. So dude, he's, we found out what route he's gonna be on. I'm like, you need to download this app. So he went and he got it. So we we. [00:20:00] I sent that property, we walked Uhhuh to Dustin. Yeah. What'd he say? And I'm like, Hey, what do you think of this property?

And so he sent back a, another screenshot and just all the different stand placements he would've had. And really, and not that it matters. I did not reply cuz I'm like we got it ripped away from us. Yeah. Just cook ass mul. Anyway, I'll st I'll stop talking. Is that it? That's it, man. Let's get into the show.

Let's talk about some ticks. Let's talk about ticks with Brian Anderson, the Tick Terminator. This is the Missouri. Missouri was Water podcast.

All right with us tonight, we have got the Tick [00:21:00] Terminator himself, Brian Anderson. Brian, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me guys. It's a pleasure to, I love talking about ticks and drives everybody crazy when I talk about 'em, but they learn some stuff from it too. A lot of fun.

This is your Super Bowl time of the year, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Springtime is absolutely the worst time of year for ticks, so any Turkey hunters listening better really listen up because Turkey hunters actually sit in tick habitat. And those who are not prepared can go home with some things that they don't want.

Yeah. I will definitely I gotta give some credit first where it's due. I must admit we stole the idea of talking to you from our buddy Josh Rayley with the Wisconsin sportsman podcast. He had you on a few weeks ago and actually emailed us and said, Hey, this is awesome. You guys should talk to this guy.

So we are going to, because we talk about it every damn year, don't we? Like ticks are always, ticks always get brought up. Yeah. You're always gonna hear, someone's gonna tell you a story about ticks, you're gonna talk [00:22:00] about ticks. It is just, it's gonna happen. Yeah. I'm gonna ask a special question later that Josh didn't ask about how he disposes of his ticks and what fun ways we get rid of them.

Because I have a certain fun way at home that I get rid of ticks. I have a fun way at home that I do too. The boys just love it, but Becca doesn't like it so much, but yeah. Anyway, before we get into everything, Brian, why don't you introduce yourself, tell everybody a little bit about the Tick Terminator and how this whole thing started with you.

Okay. My wife is probably one of the biggest factors in me really getting into ticks here in recent years. But even as a kid, I was a kind of a in a weird sense of a way, a little fascinated with ticks because, as a kid I put ticks on the same level as a mosquito. It's just a little pesky, little insect, so to speak, that would get on you and suck your blood.

And I'm 64, so back when I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, we never had problems with Lyme disease and stuff like that, so we never worried about it, [00:23:00] when I was a kid, my mom would check us over, especially when we were visiting my grandparents that live in a very rural area up here.

I live in upper Michigan, a hundred miles north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. And we would come up there to visit and we'd do a tick check. Tick checks are very important, during tick season she'd pick 'em office on occasion and we never had a problem with them. I married my wife, then we move up here cuz we were living downstate Michigan at that time.

And trying to get her used to ticks and then as we had kids, get them used to ticks and then still never had any problems with 'em. I'm giving it a quick version here. Yeah. But about 10 plus years ago I really started to have a resurgence of interest in how do you get rid of them?

What do you do when you come in the house and you got 'em on your clothes? Those were my, my thoughts of how to what to do about 'em, so I started researching, looking into a lot of stuff and just wondering, okay what do I do? During the process I learned a lot about them.

Things they like, things they don't like. And also I had a friend of mine go [00:24:00] going through a real struggle with Lyme disease at the time, too. And he was encouraging me at to, to keep looking into stuff. And then I finally bumped into a product called Permethrin which is the answer for sure, for ticks.

God's Juice. Yeah, no kidding. It is amazing. Yeah. It took about a year to put together a website. The website is the tech terminator.com. It piggybacks the Lime Tech bug hub, but just remember the tech terminator and you gotta remember it a lot easier. But anyways I kept, evolving man and a couple years ago, I basically went into it full-time.

I speak around the country, do conferences, safety conferences, a lot with especially with power companies, linemen outdoor workers like, like power companies have. And have a lot of fun educating their safety directors. And I like speaking, I love to speak at even the, let's say, hunting conferences or hunting banquets, to speak on a subject that nobody's ever talked about.

Cuz I'm [00:25:00] thet term man. I'm really the only one in the country that does what I do. Not that I'm a genius, but I tell people, in order to be the tick terminator, you gotta be a little strange. You gotta be a little weird. If you have to have an unusual, you gotta have an unusual fascination with those stinking little gaar blood suck environments we call ticks.

And that describes me, and so I have a lot of fun with it as I'm going on. Yeah. So that's a little introductory just to me. Like I said, I listened to the show that Josh had with you and it, I was just hooked the whole time. And, as hunters and outdoorsmen it's a necessary evil you have to deal with.

Like they're always going. For sure. They're always gonna be around. And one of the, we went and looked at a property a couple weeks ago and we're driving back and I grabbed my neck and there was one on my back of my neck, crawling up. You can get it just walking through your car.

Yeah. You walk through a little bit of grass, you can definitely get 'em on ya. They're everywhere it seems like. Yeah. And then once you find that first tick, you feel like there's a tick all like every itch you feel, every little hair that [00:26:00] moves, you feel like there's a tick on you now. And so that brings me to a thing to, to tell you there too, to tell the audience is that when you feel a tick on you like that when you get home, what most people do is they think, oh my gosh, I got pick.

There's probably more, and you're probably right. But what they do is they throw their clothes in the. And you don't wanna do that. You throw all your clothes in the dryer on high for about 15 minutes. That dry heat will kill any little ticks on you. Then throw 'em in the washer, the dryer first.

Remember that dryer first. That makes a lot of sense. Zap those things. Great tips. Okay, so let's back up a little bit, go a little bit of the same way that you went with Josh, but I think it's important for our hunters and outdoorsmen to know, I don't know if there's a big difference between the ticks we have here in Missouri, southern Missouri and northern Missouri compared to Michigan.

But let's talk in general about ticks and what the hell they are and how they do what they do.[00:27:00] They're pretty similar. We have basically about three different ticks that are the most popular ones. You're gonna have the Deer Tick, which they call, which is technically a black legged tick. Those are the ones most famous for carrying Lyme disease.

You have a eastern black legged tick, which we have here. Then you have a western black legged tick on the west coast, of course. And you also have a it's called the lone star Tick has a little white dot on its back. And those are ones that can carry a disease called Alpha Gal Syndrome.

And if you get that, guess what? No more venison, no more steaks, no more red meat ever. It'll make you sick. Yeah. Pretty much for the rest of your life. Oh my God. Cause if you do eat red meat, doesn't it make you sick every time you eat red meat, something like that? Yes. You get going to a different it depends how bad it is in a person, how bad they react.

Some people actually go into alactic shock, they get their mouth starts swelling up, breathing is really hard. So they can have some really bad allergic reactions to it. And a [00:28:00] lot after it's settled down a little bit, then they don't know until maybe the next time they don't even know what caused it.

A lot of times in the first case might have thought it was food poisoning the first time, and then it gets worse and worse and, oh, that would suck. Yeah. Yeah. All, so you got the black legged tick I've heard of Yep. Black legged ticks. And then the other one is called the American dog Tick which we call the wood tick.

So those are the three most popular. The deer tick, the lone star tick, and the American dog Tick. Those are probably the most three common ones that we have. And they can, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say, ticks can actually carry more than one disease at a time. They have different diseases out that are out there anaplasmosis Osis or Osis Tularemia, Rocky Spot Fever, alpha Gal Syndrome, just mentioned an allergic reaction.

Poin disease there's numerous different ones but yeah, they can they can be pretty nasty. Thanks. I'm all about [00:29:00] prevention. Yeah, those things are, I call myself a, I call myself a tick and Lyme disease prevention specialist. Because when I was getting into this about 10 years ago, I noticed that there was all kinds of wonderful websites out there about people who were suffering from Lyme disease, and that's really needed.

But my thought is what about stopping 'em in the beginning? So you don't get bit, so I say, if you keep 'em off, you can't get bit, if you can't get bitch, you can't get lyr any other tick point disease. So it's all about prevention. Prevention. Yeah. And I love talking to hunting shows like this, because I'm a hunter.

Two, of course, I live in upper Michigan. And deer, deer hunting up here is almost like a holiday as you can imagine. And I, for rifle season is a big thing that I'm in. And our rifle season starts November 15th and where we live, that's when snow is starting to come too. But we never know November 15th, if it's gonna be 50 degrees or five degrees.

So I make sure that I'm ready anyway, when I'm out there. Yeah. Yeah. [00:30:00] And hunters. As you will know hunters start this spring. You're out there, you can't wait to get out. Our snow just melted literally about a week ago. We had a whole bunch of spring.

But he, people going out, shed hunting, looking for horns mushroom hunting looking for your checking on your deer post that you haven't seen since last fall, or now getting out for Turkey hunting or going to the deer camp for the first time. And this summer as it goes on looking for the food plots, preparing those.

So as you, as we all three of us know, hunting is not just in the fall. It's, a lifestyle almost, for people. Yeah. So what temperatures do ticks become most active? Good question. Where I live, it's They come and go with the snow. When the snow comes, they go away. Now even they say about 32 degrees approximately.

Just think about freezing temperature is when they[00:31:00] go down in the leaf litter. Okay. And for us, they go down under the leaf litter and then snow comes over. It's a wonderful insulator. Now in Missouri, you guys are not gonna have that much snow. You may have it on occasion, it's probably not too unusual.

But you don't have a blanket of it probably for the whole winter. No, it comes and then it's gone a couple days later. Yep. Yeah. So Missouri and a lot of other parts of the southern part of the country, they're gonna get the cooler temperatures. But technically your ticks can be active pretty much year round really, because you're gonna have temperatures probably in the thirties and forties and above most of the winter, I would assume, yeah. Yeah. For the most part. Yeah. We can have those cold spells just anybody and, but they're rare. Yeah. What was it, two years ago we had Tims below 10 for two straight weeks and it was like the apocalypse. I was very busy.

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody could handle. That's tough for you guys in Missouri for sure. Ticks I talk to a lot of people, cuz I work with people all over the country [00:32:00] and even during the winter, even though temperatures are up higher in southern parts like that, they do taper off in the winter.

You probably notice that even when you're in the woods you're gonna have less ticks, whether you're prepared or not in the winter, but come now to just about November, that's when they start ramping up as you're probably starting to notice. Yeah. But wintertime, typically in our part of the country, they're gonna be less, I'm never gonna say, they never come out.

Because even where we live, if we have a 50 degree day and they got two feet of snow, those ticks can sometimes come up through the snow and say, Hey man, it's springtime, man. I'm looking for somebody to suck the blood out of. And they will come up literally. And a lot of times animals will get 'em on themselves a lot more than humans will because they're gonna walk through that brush more in the winter.

But yeah it's almost year round. But they they have, they do tape rock in the winter. Okay. That sucks. So what's a tick's lifestyle or lifespan like how does a tick live? What is it like? Here's what happens. A female tick [00:33:00] gives birth to about a thousand to 5,000 ticks.

Baby, baby eggs. What? Alu in the June. Okay. And I say, Lord why so many? Why can't immediate to Hunter? But anyway, that's what it's, and she gives birth to those approximately around June or so. And after about two weeks, those eggs hatch. Alright. And it's on the fourth floor. Okay. Cuz that's where she is.

And they hatch after a couple weeks, then they start looking for their first host. Our ticks here that I'm talking about. This is the way they are. The other ticks are a little bit different but they're looking for their first host. Now, typically a tickle only eat one time a year. Okay? One time a year.

So that first, that baby tick, some people call 'em seed ticks, maybe the next spring they call 'em seed ticks are very tiny little ticks. They're not, it's the worst thing ever. They're, yeah, anyways that first that first summer when they're just hatched they're harmless, okay?

Because they are not born with any tickborne disease. They get that from their first host. So what happens is [00:34:00] those ticks get on typically a white foot of. You guys have a lot of white foot of mice in, in the woods there. We got a lot of mice. I don't know what they're called. Yeah, I don't know if they're called white-footed, but we got mice for sure.

You, you got plenty of mice running around the woods. So typically that's the closest thing for a tick to get onto. They're not gonna get on a deer, they're too small. They're gonna get a gun, a white on a little mouse, start sucking the blood over it. And during that process, the germs from the mouse that go into the ticks is what actually gives it a disease if they're gonna get one.

So they get it from their host. Okay. So it's kinda the mouse's fault. Yeah, it's the mouse's fault. Yeah. That's a whole nother story right there too. I actually got the. Several pages in my book coming out here soon that is gonna talk about how some people have tried to do that. But I can tell you one thing at a time here, get their sidetracked.

So anyway, yeah it's the mice, it's their first host that is this kind of the problem. So anyway they feed in the mouse for a couple days, they drop off and they do whatever it takes to, which ain't a whole lot, they just veg out and, chill. And they, that fall, that winter, [00:35:00] they start molting into their neck series, which is gonna be a nph tick.

Okay. The size of a poppy seed. Okay. That may be where they get the word seed tick. That's, think about how small a poppy seed is. That poppy seed size tick. If it got some tick-born disease the summer before, it's gonna happen for the rest of its life. Now the size of a poppy seed, if that gets on you and bites you, it's just as lethal as a full grown adult.

Okay? And the size of a poppy seed that could be on your shoe lace and you can't even hardly see it. It's so tiny. So that tick that spring, you know about now is when they're start starting to come out, they're gonna look for a host, suck on the blood for a couple days, get off, do whatever it takes to, which ain't a whole lot.

And that was their feed for the summer, for the year, I should say. Then they mo the next series that fall, that winter come out the next spring as a full grown adult. Look for a host. Could be us, could be something bigger. A lot of times they may end up on the deer than the adults [00:36:00] and they get on the deer and the male and the female will feed on the deer and then they'll make, they'll ride dead deer lot of times over the winter.

The next spring they get off, the male gets off, he dies, the female gets off, but she birth anywheres between 1,005 thousand ticks, and that's enough to kill anybody and she dies. So it's typically a three year life cycle, but they have to eat at least one time a. So that's how that goes. How long are they feeding for, once they find the host, they attach, how long are they attached to whatever it is?

They're stuck in the life. Typically. They prefer about three to four days, maybe five days, something like that. Okay, so not that long. Yeah, because I, you've, we've all seen it on deer where you kill a deer and they've got just giant freaking ticks, on their neck or whatever the size of a grape and you're like, oh yeah, that tick must have been there for months, but it really could have just been feeding for a week and Yeah, it could have been feeding and it's probably done feeding by the time you see 'em like [00:37:00] that.

Yeah. Wow. But it may be riding that deer for the winter then. Yeah. So I wanna talk about seed ticks real quick, which now I know are just baby ticks for the most part. Yeah and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there that had this happen. My family and I were camping actually a couple years ago, and we went through for a walk and when we got back, we were covered in seed ticks, thousands of them.

You could look at my wife's leg and it was just moving. It's thousands and we spent the next, I bet, five to six hours sitting outside picking those suckers off. We got duct tape. We did everything we could think of and it was horrible. Absolutely horrible. What do you, what is the, maybe the best method to handle seed ticks when you get so many of those little buggers?

They were so tiny, they had to just come out of the mother, like they were tiny. Tiny, yeah. Is there a good way to get rid of those things that when you got thousands. I was gonna say a lint roller, which is basically tape that you roll, but duct tape would've been a good thing too.

But the nice [00:38:00] thing about getting bit by those ticks is you're not gonna have a problem because they haven't had their first host yet. They're trying to make you the host, so they're disease free. That's the only upside to that. The same thing happened to my niece, just like last summer.

But they didn't get as many as you did. She started noticing these little, it's like a speck. Like you had basically a speck of brown crawling and you could hardly even see it. It's so tiny. But yeah, that, that's I noticed that on, she was saying that, what is this? And I said, Hey, that's a probably a baby tick.

That was just, And then she was sitting in the grass in my brother's yard, in the woods. And she just moved to another spot and then she was fine. Then she went inside, she washed 'em all off and, but she didn't have near what? You guys had quite a what? A you guys really hit a nest of them there.

We must have. It was hilarious cuz we all must have walked through it cuz I was covered. My wife was the worst, she was first. So That makes sense. Yeah. And my daughter had it and then it happened to me in Lawson last year. Yeah. I was out working on my food plot and I had some, I [00:39:00] know exactly what happened.

I had a big, there was a pile of like dead grass that had been there the year prior and I was trying to clear all the stuff up to put my seed down and I kicked that thing and. Went ho or left. And then I was like, my ex legs starting to itch. I pull up my short, the leg that I kicked, peeled up my pant leg, just covered it.

I'm a few hundred of 'em. It was ridiculous. Lost and got 'em all over him. It was a big ordeal, but not fun. It's not fun. It's not fun at all. But it's good to know that sea are basically just baby ticks who probably haven't found their first host. So they're not really that dangerous, assuming they haven't, they itch for a while.

Yeah. But assuming they haven't found their first host. And I also didn't even know seed ticks were just a normal tick. I thought they were a different species. Yeah. I just thought seed ticks were just seed ticks. Okay, that makes sense. That's good to know. Good to know. So let's talk about so we know like the lifespan of a tick, which it really sucks to know that they live more than one year.

I thought they were just kinda. Alive for a couple [00:40:00] months and then died. And now these bastards lived for several years, so that sucks. But let's talk about, prevention and then we can talk about if you do get bit, what can you do? But prevention, I already know what the answer is, and it's God's nectar at this point.

But what can you do to prevent yourself from getting bit by these blood sucking assholes? Part of it is, I'm talking to hunters here like myself, and I enjoy the woods too, the best way to get to never have 'em is to never go in the woods, but, or live in a plastic bubble.

But that's, we can't do that because we enjoy the woods. But with hunters it's, a lot of times I will tell people to stay on a path, when you're walking through the woods. But hunters, we avoid the path. We're going through the woods, like an animal. So we're gonna get it.

Really the best prevention method for ticks is I found nothing better than Perin. Which I think we, you alluded to earlier, and God's nectar, the way Perin works is [00:41:00] unique a lot. I wanna explain the difference here between Perin and deet. We're all familiar with DEET as an example.

A DEET is in a lot of stuff. Off and all kinds of different sprays that we've used for generations since 1945 when they created it for the military. The way DEET works is when you spray that on our clothes and stuff like that, the scent, the smell, the aroma confuses like a mosquito. A mosquito flies and they sense that smell with their little punny antennas and it tricks their brain and tells 'em there's no blood there, so then they fly off.

That's how deep works. Okay. Based on the aroma, the smell in the scent, the way Perin works is on a totally different Way Perin works is called a contact propellant. That means insects will only notice it when they come in contact with it. The one nice thing about Perin is once it's dry, it's odorless.

Okay? So that's a big thing for us hunters. We don't want any smell on us. It dries, odorless and let's say ticks and chiggers, you guys [00:42:00] probably have chiggers down there. Yep. Or other people in your audience will know chiggers, red bugs, whatever they wanna call 'em. When they start crawling on the pants and boots, shoe lace, stuff like that of something that's treated with perin, it drives their nervous system nuts.

Okay? And after several seconds it will, sometimes up to 45 seconds or a minute, something like that of crawling on the pants. Cuz they always crawl up. They're start on the shins and they're crawling up there By the time they get the belt line if they get that far, they're gonna fall off and die.

In, almost, in almost all cases. So it does kill him. That's why Nate, he does kill him. Okay. I didn't know if it killed him or if it just Yeah. Deter him. Oh yeah. Both because it, it makes them so uncomfortable that the, a lot, if they're on there for, let's say 30 or six or seconds, they're gonna fall off.

Eventually. They can't stand it any longer, and then they're gonna die, so it will kill them, which is a nice thing about 'em, but it doesn't bother us at all. But here's another story is I had a black fly land on my [00:43:00] thigh a couple years ago, and of course that's, it's a little bug.

It flies. And what happened was after it landed, it starts dancing around on my thigh. They call it the hot beats. Inter it could sense the peripheral molecules that were in my genes. And it eventually flew off. Because it could stay. It was really, to me it was like entertainment watching, tiptoe around the hot beat syndrome and fly off.

This was, this is a really cool entertainment for me. The tech terminator? Yeah. But it flew off and I say, cha-ching, I won because it didn't bite me. So that's how, that's the difference. What is a contact repellent? The other one is the scent and the smell in the aroma. Yeah. So honestly, I found Promethrin two years ago.

I knew about it way before then, but I'd always just used offs, spray, and I would, I remember, we'd go to work on our food plots and I would just cover myself in that stuff. And you'd stink, you'd smell citrus or whatever, aroma. It's not a great smell, not the off spray was.

And it would get in my eyes, if I'd start [00:44:00] sweating, if I sprayed my hat, then it'd get in my eyes and it'd start burning. And I always hated it. And I always heard about promethrin, but I was reluctant to use it. Because I had heard, which now that I use it, oh my gosh, it was the dumbest thing I was reluctant to use.

It's gotta be totally dry. All these stories about, once it, when it's wet, it's not good for you, you gotta have it dry, blah, blah, blah. Once I got it and did it, it was the most simple thing I've ever done. And essentially when I treat my stuff at the beginning of the summer, it's fine.

Most of the summer at that point, yeah. Cuz it, it can go up to a few washes before it actually goes away. Absolutely. Yeah. Up to six washes. Is that correct, Brian? Somewhere in there. Yeah. It depends. Before I forget, let me say this that deep is good for your skin. It's probably the best thing that you can use to keep things off, from skin.

You can use under your clothes, but Perrin is only, Perrin is not for skin. I wanna tell you that right off from the onset here. Yeah. It's good for clothing and [00:45:00] gear, everything. But skin. If somebody gets sprayed and gets it on there, it's not gonna kill 'em, just wash it off. They may have a slight reaction to it, but it's nothing severe at all.

But anyways, yeah. As far as Perrin goes the typical peritus you can buy in the store from a lot of different places is when you spray it on it, it actually binds. It sticks to the fabric. I tell people it's so cool. I call a vitamin P for your clothes. I made it up mean crazy but it sticks to the clothes.

And then the kindies you buy in the store lasts for on the close six weeks or six washes. All right. Which is really cool. You don't have to put on every day. Now I actually work with a Perent product. It's the only one on the market that's designed for clothes that actually puts you in control of how long it will last because it's a concentrate.

Okay. So you can mix it a little. Let's say the kids are going to, to camp, summer camp for a week. Okay. At a place, they're gonna be in the woods. [00:46:00] So you can just mix a little bit and have a good for the smallest mixer is good for three weeks and three washes. Your wife could treat all the clothes, for the kids.

They go up to camp and they're good for a week. For three weeks. But anyway, you know what I'm saying? You can also mix a little more, and then it's good for six weeks. You can mix more and it's good for 12 weeks. You can mix eight ounces, be good for 24 weeks and 24 washes. So I like that because another, so the higher the concentrate you use is not necessarily you're not wasting it.

It will, it'll go further. Correct? Yeah. So it cuts your perian cost by 50% because anytime you use a concentrate for any product as a concentrate, you're always saving money cuz you just mix it yourself at home in a bottle. It's great. It's anyways, I got a box of it here too, but that's what I use myself.

I usually mix it for three weeks, or should say three months at a time. About 12 weeks at a time. Yeah. That's what I would do. And then I just mark on the calendar, [00:47:00] I mark on the calendar in about 10 weeks, to, to mix, to treat 'em again. But that, I like that because it saves me money.

Plus it saves me time too, yeah. Does it d I don't remember it having a smell to it. Does it have a smell to it? I don't think so. When it's dry, it's odorless. Yeah. Okay. So it's not, you can spray it on you, you can spray it on your pants. Yeah. Spray on your pants right away and it'll be damp on your pants.

Sometimes people do that as they're wearing it, which is you can, but the best thing is to spray it on the, on a clothes line or laying flat on the ground. That way the garments the pants are all flat. If you're spraying it while you're wearing it, you got wrinkles when you're looking down, but you wanna be able to get it on as much of the garment as you can.

I do shoes, socks, pants, shirts like you did Good, good. Around the waistband around your wristband there too if those are tight a little place where they're gonna try to get in. Yeah. But definitely I've got a, definitely, I've got a good process now and I don't know if it's correct or not, because I don't actually do it outside, just cuz it's windy here all the time.

But I've got two [00:48:00] poles in the unfinished side of my basement that are about. 12 foot apart from each other, and I hang a rope across 'em, and then I just close pin all my clothes to 'em and I go around and spray 'em and just treat 'em all. I tell the kids, no basement play for a couple hours, and I just let 'em sit there until they're dry.

And if I've got more clothes, I'll do more. But usually I can get all my summer stuff on that one treatment. And it works pretty good. I used to do it outside, but I'd have stuff, blow off the line or whatever. And I've just, so I found, and I don't know that doing it inside's the best idea, it's the unfinished basement, nobody's really gonna be there.

Yeah. It's not the best idea, but it can work. You may just try to avoid breathing as much as you can of it. Yeah. Yep. As little as you can for obvious reason. You don't want, it's like spray painting, you don't wanna breathe at, correct. Any kind of aerosol you don't really wanna breathe in. But yeah, it's that, that's. I do that sometimes too, but most the time I spray it outdoors. Long story short, promethrin is the the end all be all when it comes [00:49:00] to trying to keep ticks off you for the most part. We can, it is, we can try other stuff and I, like I said, I used other stuff for years.

I used to just do nothing and deal with it, if I saw a tick, I took it off of me. That's what I did for years. But it scares the crap out of me to get one of those diseases. Yeah. A I've already had Lyme's, I have Lyme's disease. Okay, I got it two years ago. I got it. Had a tick.

You've got a lot worse. I had a tick on the back of my small part of my back and got it, pulled it off. I noticed the next day you get to start getting that ring around it. So I immediately went to the doctor, then told him, Hey, I got bit right here. It's starting to give him the ring. I was like, it's Lyme disease.

And she looks at it and she's by God, you're right. I'm like, you know what you're talking about? I'm like, yeah. So I was able to get treated pretty quick, so it hasn't really a mess with me at all. But my brother has Lyme disease as well, and it, he didn't get to it as, as soon as I did, and he got pretty sick and it was a pretty bad [00:50:00] deal there for a bit.

And it can mess you up really well and bad. That's what's scary is we know all these different people. You, your brother, my brother-in-law Russell got, or Illus, did I say that right, Brian or early Osis? He got that and he was in the hospital for a week. Yeah. Then he got a staph infection and his blood as a result of it.

I mean it was just, and that was a tick. As far as I know have never had anything. But knock on wood, that'll continue happening. But yeah, my, my daughter, she's had the Rocky Mountain. The doctors think that's what she had. It was the Rocky Mountain Fever or whatever, and that was, that's been a few years.

Amy actually reminded me of it. So that's what's, if you think about it and all of our listeners, it, if you, it's I hate to say it, cancer now, right? Somebody that's probably been affected by something a tick has done to 'em. Yeah. And I don't know anybody that's got the red meat thing and, that sucks for any of y'all out there that, that has that would really blow.

But that's why I think, keeping 'em from getting on you is like the biggest thing that we can do. Yeah. If you just stay inside and never go out and enjoy the world, you're probably never gonna have a tick on you. [00:51:00] But if you want to go out and enjoy the world and the woods, permethrin is really the way to go.

And that's kinda one of the biggest things I wanted to get across in this show is I'm not nothing comes from me saying Use Permethrin, but use Permethrin. It's proven. I've for two years now, basically never had a tick on me in the summer, knock on wood. And it's, it, I'm sold.

And I think anybody that would try it would probably see the same results for the most part. Yeah. I wanna get back to what Micah said there, cuz Micah, what you said there, when you had that bullseye rash on your back you did the absolute perfect protocol of you went to a doctor right away and they gave you probably doxycycline, I would assume.

Sounds right. It is been, like I said, I think it was two years ago, but, sounds right. Yeah. How long did you take the antibiotic for? I wa a couple weeks. I wa I wanna say it was two weeks. But like I said, I could be off. I wanna say it was a week or two weeks. Yeah, that sounds about that.

That's [00:52:00] about standard protocol and that is the absolute best thing you can possibly do. Cuz almost always that takes care of it. Rarely do they, does it proceed after that? On, on a few, unusual cases, but for the most part, that is the perfect thing to do. So I want the listeners to definitely know that early detection, early treatment, and I also wanna say here I even have a this is my pet tick.

It's a little stuffed tick that I use. The way you even take a tick off, let's say that tick is stuck on you. Okay? And the way you take it off can even help too. The sooner you get a tick off, the better. The longer a tick is stuck on you, the more apt it is to give you something bad. All right?

I don't know how long that tick was on you. Do you think it was on you Micah, for how long would you guess that day? You probably got it. I would assume so. I don't know. I remember I went home. I can't reremember, I must have been at work. And I, you know what I do? I'm in yards and in the yard, different places outdoors.

So I probably picked it up at work somewhere and I went home and I think I got outta the [00:53:00] shower and I noticed that whenever I was, drying off or something. Yeah. Cause some people like to say 24 hours. I don't like to give any time limit on it. The sooner you get a tick off, the better.

But the way you take a tick off even can make a difference. If somebody grab, like we've all done, grab it by the body like this and pull it off. That's more apt for the, you think about somebody squeezing you in the stomach. Okay. You're more AP to, puke. All right. Same thing with a tick.

If you squeeze it by the body and pull it off, it's more AP to puke the bad stuff in you. You wanna grab it at the very base and pull it straight up like that. And usually with a fine tip tweezers, because that way you're not gonna make it puke in you, which you're at the point of taking off.

You don't wanna do that. So I tell people be you be gentle when you take a tick off. Don't tick off a tick. Taking it off. You wanna be nice to it after that. I don't care if you save it or shoot it with a 36, but be nice to it, taking it off. And then if a little bit of the head gets stuck in you, don't worry about it, wash it [00:54:00] off.

It'll, your body will just get rid of it in a couple days anyways. But then watch that bite, monitor that bite. If it gets, has a bullseye rash like that. If it swells up, if it has any kind of bad reaction, that's not normal. See a doctor just in case a lot of times a doctor then will a lot of times give an antibiotic just to be safe.

Even without the bulls I rash. Cuz the bulls I rash that you had, Micah is only in about 40 to 50% of cases. All right. Had that just been red, it still could have been lime, but the bullseye rash makes for sure. It's probably lime. Really? So a lot of times doctors will give doxycycline.

I'm not a doctrine, I don't play one on TV here but anyways, I. They'll give a doxycycline just to make sure whatever it was, that it's gonna eliminate it cuz it's a mild antibiotic, but it's great for Lyme disease and the tickborne diseases and most of them. Yeah. Yeah, I was happy to, notice it quickly and it didn't affect me.

So I, I was, and probably because my brother he [00:55:00] got it whenever he got it. It was been a few years. So I knew what he went through and I know I remember we were over at my house and he said he was feeling rough and he, I think it was underneath his armpit and he had that bullseye around this and he, we didn't know what it was at first cuz the tick wasn't there.

He just had that bullseye mark and then he ended up going to the doctor and they told him, I would've thought oh, I got bit by a spider. Or something like that. That's what you would normally if the tick's not there. Sure. If the tick wasn't there. Huh. Okay. Do they have a I know we're going backwards right now, but it just made me think of this. Do they have any preferred area they like to bite on a human, or do they just like crawl until they're like, ah, this seems like a good spot and latch on? They do have some preferred areas warmer areas let's say behind the knee in the bend of the knee sometimes groin area, they'll congregate in that area.

Armpits like that hairline around the ear, around the back of the ears. Actually found one right there. [00:56:00] Pound my wife a couple years ago. Right by her ear. And so yeah, there are a few places like that. They're a lot more apt to be in those places than say right in the middle of your forearm.

You know what I mean? Or they do go in people have gotten 'em in their belly button before, so it's kinda like some warmer type of places like that. Yeah. To answer your question, I've had 'em on my unspeakables before. Oh yeah. It definitely happens. It's not great.

We, we've all, yeah, they can, I've never made my wife do this. We've all thought about being like, Hey babe, you're gonna have to check.

I I tell people to do tic checks, do thorough tic checks. I said check every place. And then I say yes, even there too. Women, men I've heard 'em in the darnest places. I've heard everything about by this point. There's actually some places of employment.

I think I was talking to somebody in Vermont or New Hampshire a couple years ago, and I think it was like a DNR type of place. And they literally have room some. So the people come [00:57:00] in there like a little phone booth type of, closet that's full of mirrors so they can strip down to nothing but a smile and go in there and bend over.

Check every place at the end of their shifts. Yeah. So some places get pretty serious about you, learn a lot about yourself, you know what I'm saying? Okay. So this is the question I've been waiting for all night, and then we'll get back into the treatment. What is your favorite way to kill ticks once you found them?

Can I go first for myself? Yeah. Yeah, you can go. Can I go first? Yeah, go ahead. I've been, I just, the boys love it and this is why I do it. One of my sons who's over there messing with something he shouldn't be right now is what we like to do if we're. I like to take, my wife hates this, but I like to take the ticks into our kitchen and we have a flat range stove, and I will turn a burner on and then I will drop the tick in the middle of that burner and watch it try to run off before it dies.

And it never does. It never makes it. And that's my favorite way to kill. [00:58:00] That's the way too. Yep. Oh, wow. We're Peter's gonna freaking get all over us. Mike. Micah, your turn. What's your favorite one? That's actually my favorite too. If not that I'll lighter usually something to do with fire, just so I know it's dead sort of thing.

Or if I'm, yeah, if I'm next to a toilet or something, I'll try to flush it down a toilet. But yeah, that's about it for me. I saw my grandsons a couple years ago and we were having fun with a magnifying glass, oh, that's a magnifying glass. That's a good idea. If you hit the sun just right, it'll make it really hot, a little beam there.

And you, you put a tick on the sidewalk and then you can actually watch it smoke as you're as you're frying it right there on the sidewalk. That's fun too. Yeah. A couple years ago I did a little video with my grandkids and we taped a tick on the head of a sledgehammer, and I let them beat, I had an old laptop computer that they smashed the tick on the [00:59:00] sledgehammer onto the the laptop computer.

And I let them smash it that way. So they had fun with that. Yeah. I'm telling you right now, I'm an outdoorsman and I love almost all animals and I would never want to see one suffer, but I equate a tick to a serial killer. And I would want to see the serial killer suffer. So I don't mind ticks, taking it a little bit, now when we kill 'em with the stove, they die in a matter of seconds.

But I got a kind of a serious switch. Is there a purpose to it tick, or is it just to Apparently not. Spread disease. Cause that seems to me that's what, it's moose most things in this world, they have a purpose. What is the purpose of a tick? Do you have any idea?

It's gotta be part of the food chain. Because out, out in the woods, spiders eat ticks. Grasshoppers eat ticks stip. Turkeys e ticks. So it's part of the food. It's like kinda what's the purpose of a mosquito? Same question. I gu Yeah.

I guess so that's, that brings me to a [01:00:00] funny story. I got stories about everything here, but the state of Maine actually did a study on turkeys a number of years ago, and they found out the turkeys when they go through the woods have what they call a voracious appetite. They're like pigs with wings.

They eat the centipedes in the, in a in the grasshopper. Plus they eat the ticks and they're they figured that the turkeys are eating so many of the natural enemies of tick that ticks have fewer enemies. Even though turkeys eat 'em too. They have fewer enemies who are able to survive even more because of the population of turkeys.

So who would've thought the purpose was, yeah, turkeys are contributing to the explosion of pigs because they're eating some of their enemies. Wow. I never would've thought that. Pretty crazy. Here's another So I'm sure you y'all do it up there too, but we're trying to get into like prescribed fires and that sort of thing for, land management.

Is that something that will actually help knock down some of the ta tick population out there? Or does that show any effect? Yeah, actually I wrote about some of [01:01:00] that in my book. That'll be coming out here in a couple months. Definitely. Yeah. If somebody does prescribe, I'm not recommending, somebody going torch.

That's gotta be very controlled, but that definitely makes an impact. You're, cuz you're burning the vegetation if it's done at the right time of year, the vegetation, while, burning the ticks. Oh yeah. That. That can really make an impact at that does a good job of it. Okay.

Definitely. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that's good. Good question. Very good question. That's a good thing. So is there back to treatments, before we wrap this one up, is there any other types of things that you would do once you found out you've been bit by a tick other than immediately getting to the doctor and getting medicines?

What else do you recommend? Those are probably the most important things to do right there. Just monitoring that bite, watch that bite. And, but the problem is so often that people don't even realize that they got bit by a tick, like you were saying to your brother and got the bullseye rash.

He didn't, and there was no [01:02:00] tick there. We get bits sometimes and we don't even know what caused it. Just being as diligent as you can during tick season. To watch for them. But yeah. Early treatment, early detection. Early treatment is the biggest thing. If you get bit and the way you take it off, being nice to it when you take it off.

Helpful. That's a good point. Helpful too. That's a good point. I've never thought about, not wanting to make it puke into you when you're taking it off. Yeah. I used to just grab 'em and pull 'em. Yeah. Just get 'em off as fast as you can and all have, yeah. I could probably count on one hand how many times I've had a tick actually bite me.

Usually I find them, I don't know if I'm hypersensitive to like feeling, but man, usually if there's a tick on me, I will feel it before it, it gets me bit, I can probably count on one hand in my lifetime how many times I've actually, oh, there he is. Oh really? I don't know what it is. Maybe it. I don't know.

I'm like, Spiderman. What happens with ticks? What happens with ticks is actually God gave them a special little saliva that they [01:03:00] spit in our skin before they bite into it numbs our skin so we don't even feel it when they bite us. That's unique. Same thing like within the wintertime he gave 'em a special little enzyme, the ActX like antifreeze so they don't freeze to death.

Cause a lot of times up where I live here, people say, oh man, the ticks are all frozen this winter. Forget it, man. They're not, they hardly have any up in Alaska because they have the frozen tundra up there. And it's a colder climate. They're very virtually no ticks up. But down here in the lower 48, we'll call it.

Yeah. It is not enough to freeze them off and your area never freezes 'em off down there, that's for sure. That's good stuff. Before we hop off here, why don't you talk about where people can check you out. Talk a bit, a little bit about your book, if it's getting ready to come out, and how people can read that whenever it does, and see how, they can get to get ahold of the tick terminator on all the different medias and all that fun stuff.

Yeah I've been on a lot of different podcasts. I love doing podcasts. It's a great time with you guys here today. They can go on my website, the tick [01:04:00] terminator.com. And they can have here's. One of my this is a box of Permethrin. It comes with a, it comes with a little eight ounce bottle of concentrate there.

There's a whole 32 ounce bottle of that they can use to spray in here to mix it with. It all comes complete with directions in there too, of how to mix it, for longer periods of time, or shorter periods of time. But yeah, that that's the most economical perimeter that there is on the market.

Bar none. Yep. There, there's nothing more economical than that. There's a lot of good information on my website then too about just a variety of things. It's a lot of informative stuff. My book will be coming out I can't even give a date yet cuz it's actually at the, it's being edited right now.

But that's it. It's gonna be a unique book because it'll have my logo on the front, unlike any logo, tick in the shape of hand grenade. But yeah, that'll probably be this summer. I'm thinking May or June or something like that, probably. But if I say that it's probably June or July, then I don't.

But it'll be available on Amazon. I know for sure. But do you have a, do you have a title [01:05:00] yet? I'm gonna probably call it winning the War on Ticks. That's a good one. Lots of tidbit, tip tips for for doing that. I have a whole chapter that's dedicated just to perrin.

I talk about a lot of other repellants talk about, different things people have done to try to keep tips off from us. Trying to actually stop the mice, which is the biggest factor of giving ticks diseases. A lot of variety of ways people are trying to do. When you stop killing coyotes, not gonna happen.

Stop killing coyotes. Yeah. Oh yeah. You don't wanna do that. You wanna keep killing them too. Yeah, but it's it's the mice, that, that are probably the biggest problem there. But now you guys probably don't have skinks. Do we have like little lizard type of we want skinks. Yeah. I'm not sure if we do or not.

Yeah, we got little lizards. I know that. Yeah. I seen one the other day by my house. I don't know if they're called a skink, but, or if you're [01:06:00] even talking about a lizard. I don't, yeah, I think that's what they are, but it's like a half snake, half lizard with legs on it. They say that's real low to the ground so that tick sometimes in the deep south get on those and they may suck the blood out of them, and that's where they get some of their passages or germs that will turn into bad tickborne diseases.

Yeah. I'm not sure if we get, we have skins. I know we've got little lizards, but I don't really know what they're called. But that's awesome, Brian. We we really appreciate your time. This was interesting to me because, who thought something so small could capture your what is it called, your attention for so long?

But they really do. They're just want to keep 'em away from me. I appreciate your time and you keep fighting the good fight out there for all the rest of us. Cause we need it. I got a poem I wanna end up with here. Yeah. Pretty funny. I heard this one. Let's hear it Leah. It goes like this.

I hate them little suckers. I wanna terminate 'em all. So I do want Perin and love to watch him fall from head to toe. I spray this stuff, [01:07:00] my shoe socks, closing hats cuz it works on more than ticks like skiers, chiggers, and even Nats. So I ask you if you're listening to Keep Away From Lime, get started with Perrin and now is the perfect time.

Thank you. Literally, as soon as we're done, I'm gonna get three bottles for each one of us. Yeah, we're gonna, your website, we're gonna stock up. Yeah it's gonna go well. Thank you very much. We really appreciate the information. A lot of good stuff on this one, so it's been a joy sharing it with you guys.

Thank you. All right, thanks Brian.

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