Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Tick removal - Does this work??

I saw this today and was wondering if anyone has tried it. I usually have to remove two or three a year from myself and this sounds easy. On the other hand, if it sounds to good to be true..................

Tick removal
Spring will be here soon and the ticks will soon be showing their heads.
Here is a good way to get them off you, your children, or your pets. Give
it a try.

Please forward to anyone with children... or hunters or dogs, or anyone
who even steps outside in summer!!
A School Nurse has written the info below -- good enough to share -- And
it really works!

I had a pediatrician tell me what she believes is the best way to remove a
tick. This is great, because it works in those places where it's some times
difficult to get to with tweezers: between toes, in the middle of a head
full of dark hair, etc.

Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the
soap-soaked cotton ball and swab it for a few seconds (15-20), the tick will
come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away.
This technique has worked every time I've used it (and that was frequently,
and it's much less traumatic for the patient and easier for me.
Unless someone is allergic to soap, I can't see that this would be
damaging in any way. I even had my doctor's wife call me for advice because
she had one stuck to her back and she couldn't reach it with tweezers. She
used this method and immediately called me back to say, "It worked!"

Any agent that blocks oxygen from getting to the tick will work.To avoid smothering, the tick will withdraw. I have used toothpaste and vaseline with good success.

I'll have to give this a shot. I've used petrolium jelly in the past with excellent results.

Never understood why people bother with all these "ideas" for tick removal. Why screw around trying to "smother" him out?

Just grab, yank and crush under boot heel. 1.5 to 2 seconds and it's done.

If they spread disease, the quicker they're no longer under your skin the better. No?

My feelings exactly. Dab a little neosporin on the bite area and forget about it.

Aren't they trying to avoid leaving a part of the tick under their skin?

I pick up ticks all the time. I use a little plastic spoon like thingy with a slit in it. It just scoops the tick off, embedded or not.

you want to avoid having the tick regurgitate into the hole (as they tend to do when squeezed or burned). it's the upchuck that's most likely to introduce disease causing bugs into you.

it's preferable if you can make it withdraw on it's own -- which an absence of oxygen will do.

FWIW, thick, greasy hair conditioners(the really cheap stuff) work well for this too -- in fact, this is often a recommended treatment for kids that get head lice (it' suffocates them and it's actually more effective than the old medicated shampoos. less toxic too)

The problem with the quick pull, is, on the odd occasion, the "Beak" breaks, leaving part in the hole, and that turns infected within a day or so.

Using the gels, the tick comes away whole.

Good luck with either way.

+1

MM

+1 on not sqeezing... I know it gets em out mostly and has been done forever, but we are now more educated than that.

They can't stand a lit cigarette held next to their butt , either .

I have had occasions where just walking from the driveway to the front door of my lake cottage in NC would result in picking up tiny black ticks. Next door neighbor was hospitalized with tick fever. We use spray Right Guard on the embedded ticks. It seems to freeze them & then they just fall off. A touch of antibiotic & problem solved.

This method will work, but anytime a tick want to back out on its own, it will usually regurgitate prior to doing so. This can make for infection or disease spread more of a risk. On a tick that is recently embedded, the risk is low since it hasn't had time to ingest any fluids.

Here's one that works very well:

take a wooden match and make about a 1/4" split on the non-lighting end. If the match end does not spring back into shape, then you will need to repeat the process on other matches until you get one that does. This will act as a natural tweezer only with one huge advantage, you can twist the tick out without having to continually squeeze the tweezer. Why is this important, you ask? Ticks will naturally walk in a clock-wise circle during the embedding process. This makes them somewhat "threaded" inside the skin. The match hold the body firmly without smashing, and allows you to retract the tick in a counter-clock-wise fashion. I have not broken off the head of a tick yet using this method.

I can't stand a lit cigarette anywhere near me, let alone my butt!

Do ticks south of the equator naturally walk Counter clock wise?

I couldn't resist

I think that's a really good question...





























which probably lowers your opinion of me.

You can also get the tick really drunk. If you are spinning then so is the tick. The trick is to get 'em spinning counter clockwise.