Thankful Outdoors: Preparing for Insect Season

How to Prevent Ticks

It’s been a week of finalizing gear for the start of the Wisconsin turkey season. Due to my work schedule and Bryce being in Hunter Safety Course, it’s going to be hectic next week trying to get time in the woods.

Final prep activities have included getting camera gear ready, final touches on decoys, checking blinds, getting bow dialed in, and of course, scouting. Much of the bird activity has been on private land; I swear that the birds have found the GPS that I lost years ago, and they studied the boundary lines between private and public land!

Even though the scouting has not given me the confidence of being dialed in to a specific spot, I look forward to the start of the season next week. Every season there is a battle with wood ticks and mosquitoes. This year I’m trying a product called Sawyer Premium Insect Repellent.

I have heard that this Insect Repellent does a great job of keeping ticks off you, and it helps reduce mosquito activity. I get a least one tick bite a year, and honestly am pretty surprised that I have not gotten Lyme disease by now.

Sawyer makes several different products to help combat insects. If you choose to use their products, make sure you are using the correct one for the application. This means that some of their products are not intended to be applied directly to your skin.

Three key features of this product that convinced me to give it a try are:

• Permethrin spray bonds to fabric fibers for up to 6 weeks or through 6 washings (whichever comes first)
• Odorless after drying
• Reduce the likelihood of a tick bite by 73.6 times by treating shoes and socks with Permethrin

A product that I have carried on my person to deal with mosquitoes has been a Thermacell. This little device has made my outings into the woods much more enjoyable, primarily when I hunt swamp areas. The Thermacell product sold me that it was effective; when there was a time I was walking into bow hunt, I had the Thermacell in my pack. The mosquitoes were swarming as I walked in. I stopped to dig the Thermacell out of my pack, and within no time, there were no more mosquitoes around me. That night as I sat on the stand, I only had a couple of them try to drop near me, but they didn’t stick around.

I have even added a couple of Thermacell to my boat for fishing; I often fish until the sunsets and sometimes even late into the night; the Thermacell has helped make those late fishing trips more enjoyable.

These are just some of the ways that I plan to keep those pesky insects at bay so that I can enjoy the outdoors more. As camping season gets closer and the summer evenings will get you out sitting around a campfire, give these items a try to enjoy your time outside!

Don’t forget to treat your pets also to protect them from wood ticks and fleas; they will appreciate you taking care of them also.

Comment or share the methods you use to fight off insects; I would enjoy hearing other ideas!

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