Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Lyme & West nile

Don't know what's going on this year.

I know one women who got West Nile - hit her hard.

A second got bit by a tick and it has her just about down for the count, both are on heavy anti-biotics and recoving.

makes you wonder

Spot

Horse Iodine is hard to buy, now.

No thanks to the Meth Lab culture, ...to hear it told....but any good feed store has it.

ANY bite.....imediately rub the strongest concentrate iodine you got, on the bite......like NOW.....and you will remain well.

Cheapest vegetable oil sold at the Dirty Dollar store, or Wally World, .......dumped into any rain pool will kill Mosky Larvae.

Old tire, layin' flat, ....raises up to 1 million Mosquitos.

Iodine,, ...good stuff.

GTC

Good tips there. never thought about the oil, I just dump em.

Lost my dog to lyme last month to the day.

I used to think West Nile was so scarce it never would get me. Last year a guy I know lost a horse to it 1/4 mile from my house. Makes you wonder.

Almost exactly a year ago I started feeling like I was coming down with something. I felt achy, had a slight fever, etc. This went on for a few days and then one morning I woke up with small splotches on my chest and upper arms. That shook me up some so I went to the doctor immediately.

The first thing the doctor said was, "Have you been out where something could have bitten you?" Of course I had. We had more ticks around our farm last year than I can remember seeing before. The doctor put me on antibiotics for Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever both. The tests came back negative. But the tests for both diseases are notorious for false negatives, so they are of limited value.

The antibiotics cleared everything up, but the symptoms got pretty scary. The worst was the affects on my leg muscles. If I walked fast or climbed steps my knees would give out and my calf muscles would cramp up. Scary stuff.

I treat my outdoor clothes and boots with permanone now. I haven't even seen a tick on me since I started using it.

I had lyme back in the 80s. That was before they really knew what was going on. Ended up after a year on six months of doxycycline. Doing okay now, but some of the others of that time have permenant disabilities. Scary stuff if it really takes off on you.....

Permethrin is a tic killing monster compound. I've seen tics crawling on my pant leg and die after moving across them 4-5 inches.

It's in "Advantage" dog tic treatment you put on fido's skin - NOT GOOD for humans - ok for dogs.

I lay my hunting clothes on the ground and spray the OUTSIDE of my clothes pretty heavy, flip and do both sides. Let it dry a bit and then put my clothes on, then finish up with deep woods off on my skin.

If you don't wash the clothes it will last for about 2 weeks.

Spot

Something all dog owners should be aware of. They get it too.

BTW -

A horribly tragic story -

Last year the daughter of one of the vendors that works with me died of Lyme disease.

She had contracted it almost a year and a half before they figured out what it was. The poor girl and her family went through hell trying to figure out what it was while her condition worsened.

First it was fever like, then it moved to the muscles and joints, then the internal organs which started shutting down one by one, then finally it moved to the nervous system.

WHY - the insurance companies don't pay for the Lyme disease tests - so the first four doctors she went to didn't run it. Finally a consulting doc. from KU med asked if they checked for lyme disease - once they found it (and the tests are sketchy) they started the long term use of heavy anti-biotics but it had progressed so far and done so much damage it was too late.

She struggled for another 4 months and died, the guy drained his bank accounts, and 401k trying to save her. I can't express the feeling of sadness I have for him and his family.

The take away is don't screw around with this stuff, if you've got a slow low grade fever, and paint, then start losing your appietite tell them to run the test and get on anti-botoics ASAP.

If it gets past the muscle and joint stage your in real trouble you might not get out of.

Spot

We pretty much do the same.
Even still, this area (Ct.), is loaded with deer ticks and it is not unusual to have 40 on me as well as over 70 crawling on the hounds on a normal fall pheasant outing.
Lately, I've been in the field less and less in the warm weather and instead waiting for hard frost and late season cold weather bird hunting.This is done on account of the sheer volume of ticks being less then.

When I used to work for the Boy Scouts and took a new batch of kids on a fifty mile hike every week, some of the staff used to put a dog tick collar around their boots. It seems like this was about a hundred years ago now. We didn't put them on our skin but on the ankle part of the boot itself. I don't know if this is hazardous to humans or not, but I know ticks are. It seems to work pretty good as most of them crawl up your leg. Once in a while you might find one that dropped from somewhere, but we had a lot less on us than some of the other kids did. We stopped every so often and did a buddy check--this is the best bet, finding them before they get dug in.

Yep, I had West Nile about 3 years ago. My wife bought a truck load of 1880's furniture that looked like it belonged in Dracula's castle. The 18 wheeler showed up at the ranch just as the sun went down and the mosquitos clobbered me. We had had several horse deaths from West nile in our area and a few human infections. One was an elderly man that died from it. One of the mosquito bites on the inside of my knee was swollen and as big as a baseball. The Doc told me all he could do was treat the secondary bacterial infections and he doubted I would die from it.

Avoid it if you can, it was no fun.

Josh

OTOH, true of both diseases is that not everyone who gets bitten by an infected tick or mosquito ever develops the disease, most people don't in the case of West Nile, the proportion of folks not prone to developing Lyme's is unknown.

Three of my immediately family members in lower NY State have been treated for Lyme's after noticing the bullseye rash. Over the years I have spent literally hundreds of hours out in the woods in that same area and been bitten by lots of ticks throughout and never had symptoms (I was just up there again, hope these ain't famous last words).

Same thing with West Nile down here in Texas with the hundreds of hours and lots of bites, often around rookeries and roosts.

I do get all three of my dogs vaccinated against Lyme's, they can get crippled by it too.

Birdwatcher