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Getting blood work done again next week.

Best of luck to you.

Good luck with the blood work.

So far shed hunting 2 days this year the dog picked up 4 ticks. My boy got one on his shirt sleeve and the wife found one crawling in the bathroom.

Hate the filthy things.

Rifle season Dec 2nd- Jan 28...so 2 months, and some of the buck have dropped antlers by then...most states are 1-2 weeks for gun.

Wonder why buck have a hard time surviving to maturity ? Average buck killed in Pa. is 1 1/2yrs old, his first set of real horns.

Reminder, not all of PA has the same season regs.
Us up here in the big woods do not enjoy the liberal seasons that they do in the more urban WMU'S.

2 weeks here. 1st week of rifle season in most units is buck only buck/doe concurrent 2nd week.

6 week regular archery season
2 week late flintlock/archery.

Very true, I neglected to specify that fact.

I don't envy you boys with all that damned Lyme disease.

Sorry to hear this Battue. What's the blood work for?

Ironically, I've got blood work and an echo tomorrow morning, and a biopsy next week. They think I've got prostate cancer.

Years ago, had the target rash from a tick bite and the Doc said at that time the tests were not all that accurate for Lyme. So went on Doxycycline. Since then there have been multiple flair ups of joint pain which responded to additional Doxy treatments.

The last couple have kinda got on my nerves more than usual. So will be getting some tests done to try and perhaps pinpoint more accurately what is going on. Lyme or something else.

In the last 10 years or so have had at least 10 ticks get attached every year. Maybe more. They estimate that at least 50% of ticks currently can transmit. There has to be a blood exchange for transmission to occur, but certainly, some of the attachments have done so. For me not to have at minimum a mild form of Lyme would be unlikely.

You can sit down during a hunt and in short order literally brush off 40 plus, and you don't get them all. Same with the Dogs, but since I've started using Seresto collars on them none have attached to them.

Hunting clothes come off as soon as you get inside and are left in the garage. Everything gets sprayed after every couple days hunting. You still often find them crawling on you or wake up with one digging in. PITA.



Good luck with your test.

You may find this helpful prior to your blood work, a guy posted this up on another forum when I mentioned my current bout with the disease...he seemed to know his [bleep] for sure....good luck with your testing

Lyme is often becomes chronic due to not being treated quickly enough but there's more to it than that...often times when you take the Doxycycline (antibiotics to kill Lyme) they only kill the Lyme spirochete thats present in the blood stream but doesn't touch the spirochetes that have moved into other areas of the body nor does it do anything whatsoever to Lyme biofilm which acts like a shield for the spirochetes to hid inside of during treatment. Chronic Lyme patients are often patients who were positive on the Lyme test, underwent treatment, tested negative after treatment but since our western blot test is so inaccurate you have a 70% chance that you still have Lyme according to some new studies. Then 10 years down the road you start feeling like crap and falling apart because you've had Lyme the whole time...What's more than that is scientists are linking Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Lupus, and a host of other diseases directly to chronic Lyme disease in new studies. Lyme is a serious deal and we have very little understanding of the disease itself or how to treat it....

Please request an Igenex test once you finish your Doxy it's the most accurate way to test for Lyme disease and your doctor probably won't know about it so do some research yourself before you go in for a follow up...the western blot test they will use is highly inaccurate...good luck

Thanks,

Pretty much what the Doc and I have discussed. He also mentioned the Igenex test. He is one of the sharpest internal medicine guys here. I have more than a little faith in him.

Another acquaintance had it and it went to his spinal cord. Got into the nerve trunk and his leg went limp, face palsy, etc. He was a mess.
On IV antibiotics for over a year and this past summer, everything finally started to come back to normal.

Nothing to fool with or not take basic precautions against.

I have a good friend that's 35 yrs old, healthy & normal...ended up with Chronic Lyme and now is in a wheel chair totally disabled...sits and drools on himself like a 90 yr old guy in an old folks home. He's married with 2 small children, a very sad situation...he asked me to "take him out of his misery", I left the house with tears in my eyes. His wife gave me all his weapons to safely hold, till this battle has run it's course.

Lyme is nothing to fool around with, people need to realize just how dangerous and damaging it really is to the body and quality of life.

Best wishes Mr.battue

Thanks,

Addition: have an attached tick off within 24 hours and the chance of being infected is very small. At least that is current medical thought. Not sure if I'm in complete agreement however. Something to consider and with normal precautions ticks should not curtail ones time outdoors.

Whats behind the explosion in tick numbers? Seems I don't recall this many ticks in my younger years.

I do remember a few guys talking about them, but not as prevalent as today.

I have been treating my woods cloths with permethrin for the past 5 years and it makes a big difference in tick attachments. Spray it on and let it dry on the cloths once a season. It repels and also kills any ticks that would like to crawl on me. Gives me the satisfaction of knowing that I may be helping to reduce the tick population in a small way as well. I have not found any ticks on me since I started to use it.

Yep very good stuff, it's the best protection available today that I know of.

I'd love to find the part of PA that has a 2 month rifle season. It's always been a 2 week rifle season for everything but the SRA's. And that's probably under 10% of the state.

Sounds like PA needs to burn off a bunch of land.

Starting in Philadelphia!!

Would take the entire State. They are not only in the wooded areas but also people's yards. Deer walked thru mine last summer and the top of her back, from neck to hips was dark with swollen ticks. First time I had ever seen it that bad.


If the ticks are not infected they would be nothing but an inconvenience. They pick up the disease from mice, chipmunks and perhaps a couple other small mammals. Deer are immune but carry them around and drop them off in their travels. One Deer can drop of thousands of ticks in the course of a season of wandering.

An aside to Smoke: You think Deer perhaps also wonder? You know acorn, apple, corn, yard, move, bed, water? Hmmmm

So, burn off the land, the Deer run off to unburned land and take the infected ticks with them and the cycle goes on. Deer return to burned land, take the ticks with them and you are back to where you started.

Although I would like to see more than a little controlled burning in Pa. About the best all around habitat improvement one can do.