By Bill Kleiman
The black flies of the Simuliidea emerged this week and congregate in the woods, especially areas with low wind. They will be a nuisance for a few weeks. And ticks are occasional. Mosquitos will be here soon. I thought I would share a few tips to deal with pests.
The bug net worked very well today. I forgot I had it on and could do all I wanted in the woods. The little pouch it comes in I hang from a carabiner off my pack or belt loop. The insect shield means it was dipped in permethrin pesticide at the factory, but I am not sure that was needed.
Permethin for your clothes, and Picaridin repellent for your skin
Permethin on the left by Sawyer, $19, is a pesticide you spray on clothing to ward off ticks and chiggers. Permethin is a synthetic version of a natural pesticide found in chrysanthemums. I see a one gallon of permethin for clothing by Insect Guard for $58.
On the right is Picaridin, which is what you put on your skin for mosquitos and such. It is not an insecticide but an effective insect repellent. Picaridin is nice in that it does not stink like DEET, nor does it melt or discolor plastic items like sunglasses and clothing. It is a lotion or spray for your skin. It works well. DEET is also a repellent, not an insecticide.
Treating all the clothing you wear in the field with permethrin is your best defense against tick diseases, bar none! Socks, hats, shirts, pants, boots. Permethin is expensive but worth it.
To treat clothes with permethrin I lay out my clothes to treat and wear a glove while spraying. You don’t want the water based solvent on your skin. I don’t know what is in that solvent but don’t get it on your skin.
You do a heavy spray on the clothes and let them dry for several hours and then they can be worn safely. This will repel ticks and chiggers and lasts for maybe a half dozen washings. I spray mine maybe twice a season. I lay items like socks, hat, on top of bigger items like pants or shirts so I don’t waste the expensive spray.
You can also send clothing items to a company, Insect Sheild, and they will dip them in a vat of permethrin and this apparently works well. I have heard from folks who did this and thought it worked great.
The permethin that is sprayed on livestock is cheaper, but it is an oil-based mix that you don’t want on your clothing.
On the right is a tick & chigger gator. It has permethrin on it too. I rarely wear these as we don’t have many ticks or chiggers at Nachusa, and they are too tight on my calves. There are other versions out that that are more of a snap around gator with permethin in it. You can tuck your pants in your socks, which I do at times, but the seeds stick to my socks.
Don’t let the pests keep you inside.
grassland restoration network 
Insectshield does not have those cool head nets any more 😦
BTW, their $99 deal (Treat as many items as you can stuff in a big tyvek envelope, I can fit 4 long sleeved nylon shirts and 4 pair nylon pants!) is the BOMB. With careful washing/gang dry, it lasts all season!
Permethrin works well…can’t imagine doing field work in Missouri without it. On a bad day, the crew and I will get 100+ ticks each on our pants. It’s night and day different from my many years working in the Nachusa/Chicagoland area. The tick/chigger gaiters are essential too…they dramatically reduce the numbers of chiggers we get and we find less ticks under our permetrin pants when we wear them.
P.s. – having a lint roller in your truck/Mule is a perfect tool for removing tick bombs (clusters of “seed ticks”). Duck tape on the brim of your hat is a MO fav as well.
Excellent topic. Permethrin spray retreatment intervals vary by brand. The label for Repel says it lasts a minimum of 2 weeks & several washings. Retreat after a minimum of 2 weeks and at least one wash. The Sawyer trigger spray label says to retreat after 42 days or after the 6th laundering. Do not retreat gear more than once every 42 days. I assume the minimum retreatment intervals are to prevent a possibly toxic buildup of product. The laundering interval is because mechanical action removes some of the product. Since I wash my clothes much more than 6 times in 42 days, I chose Repel. Older studies found spray products lose some effectiveness after 4 washings so to be cautious, I use 25% DEET after the 4th wash until 2 weeks have elapsed, then reapply Repel.
The reason to treat the entire garment is the tick has to walk across enough fabric to get a lethal dose of insecticide. The dose varies by fabric type & wash methods, so the results of a given study may not reflect real world experience.
The Sawyer trigger spray label says to not treat underwear, hats, caps or inner clothing.
Regarding Insect Shield, expect reduced effectiveness after repeated washing & drying. Before washing, Insect Shield treated pants had an average of 4% deer ticks remaining on the fabric after 5 minutes. After 16 cycles of washing/drying, 42% of ticks remained on the fabric. The other factor is if the ticks were healthy enough to attach & feed if they remained on the pants or not. They assessed tick vigor 24 hours after exposure to treated pants. 6% retained normal movement before pants were washed & 38% after 16 washes. Note that a small % of ticks survive even freshly treated clothing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6326861/
So clothing treatments should be regarded as secondary protection, even when freshly treated. Primary protection in the form of captivated pant & shirt cuffs, washing clothes immediately after returning home & daily full body tick checks (using 2 mirrors) for something the size of a poppy seed should still be performed. To captivate my pants cuffs, I wear a short, heavy sock under the pants & then a taller, thinner sock over the pants. To keep plant debris off the socks & out of my boots, I wear leg gaiters or chaps. The top of the gaiters sit just below the knee & are not constricting. Before driving home, I remove the chaps/gaiters & put them in a garbage bag to keep ticks & poison ivy out of my car. Then I put my workboots into a plastic tote that has a band of grease on the inside, to prevent ticks from crawling out of the tote.
I agree headnets are awesome. They are also good at preventing last years dead warm season grass stems from poking you in the eye (even getting underneath eyeglasses). To prevent the wind from creating folds that obscure vision, I formed a loop out of elastic that goes around my neck to provide some downward tension.
Thanks Don for the details. Good tips.