Mushrooms, woodticks, and fun times in the woods

Well, it’s about that time, morel season. I’ve seen several reports of them in MN, although prime time is still probably a week or two away with the late spring and cooler temps moving in. A buddy of mine got me out mushroom hunting a few times over the the last few years, and last year after a good day of pickin’ mushroom fever really set in for me. I can remember in December looking at maps for new shroom spots and dreaming of finding the motherlode. On the way home from a tournament in Alma on Sunday I decided to stop on the way home and check a couple early season spots. I didn’t find any morels but after walking in the woods for about 10 minutes I had two deer ticks crawling up my jeans. This really freaked me out so I did a check and didn’t find any more. I’m going to head out in the morning and see if I can find any early poppers, but this time with some chemical defense. Sprayed my outfit down with permetherin and will have my jeans tucked in my rubber boots and duct tape wrapped around the top of my boots and my waist. I did this last year after I found a deer tick sucking on the back of my leg. I have a few buddies that have contracted Lyme disease and it really scares me as many times it leaves residual effects for life. One thing I noticed last year, every time I went into the woods near the cities I found a large number of ticks on me or stuck to the duct tape. Hunting in southern MN for two days straight I never found 1 tick. I also didn’t see any deer trails or deer poop. I’m thinking maybe with the larger (seems to me) deer population in the metro there are more ticks because of that? It makes me wish they’d blast a lot more of the deer up here and get rid of them.

The epicenter for ticks is Duluth Superior. Brought from Europe on farm animals. Lymes is easily remedied as long as you properly diagnose the symptoms relatively early. They do suck. Good luck on the morels

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The epicenter for ticks is Duluth Superior. Brought from Europe on farm animals. Lymes is easily remedied as long as you properly diagnose the symptoms relatively early. They do suck. Good luck on the morels

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You are very misguided. The lucky ones are okay after antibiotics. Hundreds of thousands of people do have long term serious effects. I have been fighting the effects since I got Lyme in June of 2011. Post Lyme arthritis, without Plaquenil and Hydrocodone I can barely walk.

I traveled four hours each way to see a Lyme specialist in Pillager for six months, after the doctors here said,”it will get better with time”. Don’t for one minute dismiss the severity of Lyme and don’t think that if I get it antibiotics will cure me. Does not always happen.

Wow, thanks for the panic attack! I just found a tick on me a few days ago.

Lymes is just one disease that ticks spread. There are plenty more that we don’t really know much about. Deer ticks are awful in NE IA this year. Even with spray we were picking them off. If you forget and go in the woods without spray for any amount of time… you’ll likely find dozens, and mostly deer ticks. I’ve only found 1 wood tick so far but quite a few deer ticks. My son picked up 2 just playing in the yard. I know more people that have been to the hospital for tick illness in the last 2 years than any other single condition so…. TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!! Friend of mine was in Mayo for 5 days because he had several ticks attach to his back last year. Took him months to get back to a ‘normal’ functioning level. They finally figured out that he had 2 different diseases and neither were Lymes.

Wow, you are 100% wrong. I have had lymes for the past 7 years, did’nt test positive untill 5 years after having lymes. brain fog,arthrits,fatigue, neck pain,anxiety just a few of the symptoms that go with cronic lymes. Plum island off the coast of LYME Connecticut is a big secreat & where the government was doing some expermenting on ticks as the story goes.

This is the pix I posted 2 years ago this month after a day of searching for sheds. EVERYONE responded with, “Get to the Doctor NOW!” They put me on some meds right away and did not hesitate. I have shown no signs of Lyme’s disease but the doctor said it could show up anytime in my life. My Lab was not so lucky and went through hell until she was “cured” which again, the doctor said it could show up again at a moments notice…

Side note: here’s some stuff to help prevent them.
I use this on the dog and I also spray it on my clothes. It keeps most of ’em off us…but not all.
Flea Halt Flea & Tick Spray for Dogs. I find it at Fleet Farm.

I am also picking up some of the Tick repellent from this company. http://sawyer.com/products/
I’ve heard nothing but good with this stuff:
Permethrin Premium Insect Repellent

DON’T SKIMP when applying it !!
I use about 6 oz on my clothes.
It was developed for the military so guessing it’s high strength stuff.

They also have a 100% DEET product that you can spray on your skin. I’m getting some of that too.

I cut a lot of wood this time of year so I can’t afford not to be in the woods. I spray the crap outta my clothes and so far, have had very few make onto me.
I also get out of those clothes when I’m done and take a very hot shower asap.
The clothes hang separate from my other stuff and I see dead ticks on the floor below them.

The little ba$tards are nasty so I take every precaution against letting one stick to me!

Awesome idea’s haleysgold…This is NOTHING to mess around with…RR

Plum-Island some say it was opened under “Project Paperclip”. This was a top-secret government program to recruit Nazi scientists who were working on animal diseases during WWII. It has been suspected that more than 2000 scientists were brought here and offered employment contracts and US citizenship. One of the areas of expertise they had was experiments with disease-infected ticks.

It is suspected that Dr. Erich Traub, a physician once in charge of the Third Reich’s virological and bacteriological warfare program in World War II, was involved with biological warfare research at Plum Island.

From the Belarus Secret it states; …”Even more disturbing are the records of the Nazi germ warfare scientists who came to America. They experimented with poison ticks dropped from planes to spread rare diseases. I have received some information suggesting that the U.S. tested some of these poison ticks on the Plum Island artillery range off the coast of Connecticut during the early 1950s…”

Plum Island is coincidentally within miles of the place where Lyme disease “originated”, the epicenter of Lyme, Connecticut.

I just found this out and it’ll save you a ton of cash.
Get the Permethrin in a concentrate and mix your own.
FF has it for around $20.
Dilute it so you get around .50% which is what the Sawyer product is…all you need is a spray bottle.
With the quart of concentrate, you’ll have gallons of the stuff.
Country Vet 13.3% Permethrin Concentrate

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This is the pix I posted 2 years ago this month after a day of searching for sheds. EVERYONE responded with, “Get to the Doctor NOW!” They put me on some meds right away and did not hesitate. I have shown no signs of Lyme’s disease but the doctor said it could show up anytime in my life. My Lab was not so lucky and went through hell until she was “cured” which again, the doctor said it could show up again at a moments notice…

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That’s a familiar sight.

Something to think about, and ASK about, is whether the medications being used to treat you will make you sun sensitive. I was treated with Doxycycline and was told it was the same medication as what is used to treat Malaria. I was also told that it made the user sun sensitive regardless of how well he or she tanned. I assumed that sunscreen would help protect me. I used an spf 50 product and found out in an hour that sunscreen ment nothing while on this medication and the long term residual effects of the meds would be hanging around for upwards of 4 months after I completed the program. 2 pills daily for 21 days.

My hell came from severe sunburn, not the infection. Still, the bite sight was an issue for almost a full month. The stuff is no fun at all at the infection level and I can still get the crap associated with Lymes later on.

I’ve had numerous tick bites that looked like that. Went in once and they said it didn’t even look like a lyme rash so I never went back. I have also been bit lots of times where I caught them before they bury and still get a terrible bite mark that takes weeks, if not months, to heal. Keep in mind not all ticks carry disease. Even deer. However a deer tick bite although the tiniest gave me the worst bite pain twice. Many years later I’ve had old tick bites itch again. Perhaps I have Lyme and will never get symptoms? I did insist on a test 3 years ago during a routine physical and it came back negative.
They are nasty creatures.

My dad has(had?) Lyme’s with classic bullseye rash and other symptoms. He tested negative every time. The Doc told him that the test was not very reliable. My nephew got Lyme’s from a deer tick nymph which are barely even visible. They have no clue where/when he got it, how long it was attached, etc.

I thought there were 3 tests that should be taken for lyme?

The “Bullseye rash” appears less than 20% of the time. I also have it and it’s very disruptive.

Well I went out today looking for morels for about 2 hours in the metro and didn’t find any. I wore my rubber boots with jeans tucked in and duct taped around the top of the boot. Never had one tick on me that I saw. Not sure if the ticks weren’t as active because it was cold this morning, or if I had a few climb on me and fall off after dying due to the permetherin treated clothing. One note on chemicals, permetherin doesn’t repel ticks, it only kills them. Deet products repel ticks. For a couple of my mushroom spots that seem to have a large abundance of ticks I will definitely be taking every measure possible, wearing permetherin treated clothing to kill them, spraying clothes and skin down with deet to repel them, and taping any gaps in my clothing. What I do for mushrooms!!

I’m pretty jacked up today with the sun being out! I left a few hundred shrooms on Saturday because they were very small. Hopefully they’ve added a few inches since then. Going to go harvest them after work!