Ticks

[3nails]

 Has anyone ever seen a tick in western WA? In 48 years I've never seen one in Whatcom county. I spend almost all my spare time in the woods year round too.

[Special T]

Has anyone ever seen a tick in western WA? In 48 years I've never seen one in Whatcom county. I spend almost all my spare time in the woods year round too.

Whatcom and Skagit counties seem pretty safe I've not seen any in the woods around here but we are wetter than most places. I've heard of several people south of olympia but nothing up here. You guys should be ok. Between the colder weather and flooding/feet of snow if they didn't freeze they drowned!

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[highside74]

Has anyone ever seen a tick in western WA? In 48 years I've never seen one in Whatcom county. I spend almost all my spare time in the woods year round too.

We have them in Eatonville. Just had one on my dog. Couple years ago I got one stuck to my chest whike walking a puece of property we were looking at.

[LastLookTaxidermy]

Bad year for ticks in western WA. Work as a forestry tech in Lewis and Cowlitz county and the dog and I are picking multiples off every day. Friday my husband must have brushed against a tick nest and got into the truck. Ticks everywhere.

[seth30]

Has anyone ever seen a tick in western WA? In 48 years I've never seen one in Whatcom county. I spend almost all my spare time in the woods year round too.

Got one on me in Skagit county a few years ago. 

[luckyman]

Found one this time last year in mt Vernon while working on my truck.
Reading this thread has me itching and scratching.

[Special T]

Uh oh....

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[gaddy]

One was crawling on the little cooler I use as a tackle box the other day. Had the wife put a small toothed comb in the shower. I hate ticks. The Sawyers stuff works best for me.

[gaddy]

OK, now i am sitting here after fishing on the bank for a few hours and my nuts start itching. Now the crack of my ass is itching. Crap  I should have never opened this thread. Off to the shower.

[DaveMonti]

I grew up in the NE part of the country.  My days after school, weekends, and all summer were spent outside in the "country".  Ticks were an every day thing to us.  I have picked thousands off of me, had hundreds dug into me, and even had one gorge on my blood and blow up to about the size of a grape.  To me, they were similar to mosquitos, just a nuisance.  We were always told stories about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but I never knew of anyone who had it.  In my adult years, I heard of a FEW people getting Lyme back east, but these were second hand accounts. 

If you Google search "Lyme Disease Heat Map" you will see a map of Lyme Disease in the US from the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html. 

Same for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases/rmsf.html

As you can see from the maps, it is exceedingly rare in Washington State for anyone to get either of these diseases, especially when you compare WA to the states of high incidence.  It looks to me from a quick glance of the maps that there were less than 2 dozen cases combined state wide in WA in 2015. 

It's just a different frame of reference when I hear people saying "I had a tick on me in 2007 after camping one 4th of July".  As I said, it was like a mosquito to us, and very little harm was done.  While it's gross to think of a bug biting you and sucking your blood, it is exactly what a mosquito does.

I just want to assure everyone that if you have a tick on you, or even a hundred, it is HIGHLY unlikely you will come down with a disease here in Washington State (according to the CDC).  You really don't have to run off to the ER if one is on you, just pick it off and watch where it bit you for a few days.  If you get a fever or the dreaded "target spot", get to a doctor, but for the sake of my insurance bills, having one on you isn't a reason to run off to an expensive ER visit! 

I've never had a tick borne illness that I'm aware of, and like I said, they were so common that nobody batted an eye about them. 

[Whitenuckles]

Found a few in me this year. I had one crawling on my neck about 3 days after being in the woods. I shower at least once a day, sometimes twice. I wonder where he came from?

[Naches Sportsman]

Been in the woods going on 30 days straight and noticed they've really come on thick the past 10 days. One day I forgot to spray myself with permethrin and picked off 19 over the course of the day.

[Barbarossa13]

We were working off highway 20 outside of New Halem last week.  Pulled 5 ticks off each other in 4 days.  Other then that only pulled one off the hound probably 15 years ago, strange year. 

[Curly]

I think I'm going to have my wife check me for ticks now......i hope she isn't mad when I wake her up.

[Special T]

We were working off highway 20 outside of New Halem last week.  Pulled 5 ticks off each other in 4 days.  Other then that only pulled one off the hound probably 15 years ago, strange year.

Wow I've never had any around lake Cavanaugh and figured the wet would keep them at bay.  New halem is prettybwet country.

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