I am what is known as a magnet for chiggers and ticks. What is teh best wat to share these little guys with others besides myself?
I've culled deer as part of a deer management program for over 13 years. This is mostly done thru June 1 when the ticks are out in full force.
The single best product I've ever used to turn ticks away is All Terrain:
http://www.allterrainco.com/catalog_i2232127.html?catId=96003My wife was working on a college study documenting home brewed bug repellents used by American Indians. She came across documentation of a Cherokee recipe passed along to a living great grandaughter. After compiling research on the igredients of this recipe she discovered that they were near identical to the ingredients found in the All Terrain above. She purchased several bottles to test and gave me one.
To be a good husband, I thanked her and tossed this stuff in my pack but made good humor of this tree hugger dope with my companions. I only took this stuff along in the field as a joke. Well I'll tell you we were covered in ticks by the score on a daily basis and we had every form of military and commercial DEET known to man. While standing at our campsite, I watched "lone star" ticks by the dozen crawl straight out the grass and up my legs which were completely coated in USGI 100%DEET!!! Out of pure frustration I pulled out the All Terrain and found that the ticks could not stand it. It was incredible, they immediately turn away from this stuff and if nowhere to turn they jumped off!
We then began doing various tests where we would coat our legs at the bottom w/ USGI DEET and put one ring of the All Terrain at mid calf. The ticks would crawl all over the DEET up to the ring then would begin doing circles around our legs below the AT. They would not touch the stuff. We would take our fingers and smear a maze on top of a cooler with DEET and with the AT. As we picked off the ticks we'd drop them in the maze on the cooler. The ticks would walk over the DEET as if it was not there but would walk the maze of AT as if it were a wall.
I've now used this stuff during tick season for 8 years and will never go back to DEET for ticks. It does not have a bad smell at all and the version of AT I use has an added sunscreen which is not oily.
The only draw back to this is it does not work on mosqitoes as well as the DEET. As far as the chiggers go, nothing kills them faster then when they bite you. They react to an enzyme from us that proves fatal to them and we react to their bite with a wicked rash. It is my understanding that many products will kill them but they can bite you before they die. The best method to prevent them is to recognize and avoid the areas in the fields and woods where they thrive and to properly cover up. One of the better products I've found to turn chiggers away is Chiggaway:
http://www.chiggaway.com/Good Luck!
GVA