Anyone got any suggestions for how to beat-back chiggers? We can't go outside without getting eaten alive. I'm going to lay-down some Scott's Turf Builder with Summer-Guard that is supposed to have an affect. If anyone has another thought, I'm open for suggestions, up to and including nuclear weapons.

As to the aftereffects; I've used Gold Bond, Cortizone*10, and Benadryl Gel. All give about 10 minutes of relief.

Sulfur dust the crap out of the wood lines. We keep some sulfur powder in a sock and pat exposed skin and seems of clothing down before hitting the woods. I really can say that it works at least as well as any other repellent that I've ever tried, including the ones with sooo much deet that your skin takes a fever.

As for the after effects, wait three days and you'll be fine, or treat 'em with everything under the sun and spend $30 on soothing remedies that don't work and in three days you'll be okay.

I coat the bites with nail polish. Seems the polish cuts off the air and lessens the aggravation.

A bath in bleach water will kill the little beggars too... A couple of cups in bath water will do it.

Sevin - apply per mfg directions. It works.

We used to have some chiggers as well as a few fleas and ticks but when the fire ants got real bad, the chiggers, fleas and ticks went away??

Have not found a flea or tick on the dog in years and have not had an encounter with a chigger in a log time.

We keep the yard fire ant free inside the fence but let them have some ground outside and it has worked.

No, I don't do drugs......

I have used sevin dust and mixed in my sprayer to spray the yard and it got rid of the obnoxious little bastard-os.

I was having a stress test yesterday and the nurse mentioned the bleach bath as well. That sulfur dust keeps coming up on Internet searches as well.

Thanks for the advice.

This is ridiculous. I don't mind the wren that's found a way into my garage and built a nest on my garage door opener, but the rest of the wildlife are going to have to learn that I've got rights too.

If you think you have been exposed to chiggers. A quick wipe with rubbing alcohol will kill then instantly before they dig in. The "crawly" sensation, sort of like having a spider web on you is a dead giveaway. Before going outside, you can also spray the lower legs of your pants and your shoes/boots with ant killer (permethrin) and it will really help. All it takes is a light spraying, not necessary to soak them.

I suppose using good drinking whisky as a wipe would work as well, but I save that for snake bite or mad wife remedy.

Chiggers and ticks. We've got 'um. I get some every trip to the farm. Spring turkey hunting is also prime for getting chewed on by them.

For dealing with it, I wear high topped boots. The highest I have are the thick camo rubber winter type water proof ones. They are hot in the spring, but that's better than getting bites that get infected and take literally months to heal and that I have needed to get a dermatologist to cut out before it was over.

Those boots you can easily tuck the pants legs into. I also like long sleeves and a wide brimmed hat to shed them better when they fall on you. And they are found in trees despite what you may have heard.

Next, spray on about 5 pounds of repellant especially boots and lower legs. I use deep woods off spray and also dab cutter's on the face, neck and hands. Especially hit the lower arms and wrists.

Now, the fun part. Do NOT leave the farm without the last thing you do being to strip down and SEARCH every part of your hair and body for them. And when you get home take a good shower. Do it as soon as you arrive. That's important. Also shake your farm clothes off outside, or you'll have them in your bed.

I try to remove them like my dermatologist showed me. His way left a lot less messy aftermath than when I foolishly allowed someone to burn one off with a hot needle.

When they do get me I use a steroid cream and stick a bandaid over it. The chigger bites are all a mess but the tick bites are better or worse depending on how long there.

Btw, in the future I'm getting a good pair of snake boots. They will serve both functions (I almost stepped recently on a fat 4 four cottonmouth). But that's another story.

I've done the fingernail polish thing. It works if they've dug in. Spraying with Off before hand seems to have worked for me. If I'm going into the woods to spend some serious time, I start out in my drawers and each item of clothing I put on is sprayed down beforehand, front and back, like I'm painting a wall. Any skin that will be exposed is sprayed.
As posted, a shower as soon as possible after leaving the woods is good.

When I get chiggers, I scratch them till they ooze fluid, then continue to scratch them till they bleed... I put Ballistol on them.

And most important I take Benedryl, it stops the itching...

When I was young my dad stuffed me with so many "cream of tartar" tablets that to this day, ticks and chiggers don't seem to care for how I taste.

Best

GWB

To totally hi-jack this thread, back in the day before off and such, how did woodsmen and mountain men keep ticks and chiggers off?

quote:

Originally posted by wasbeeman:
I've done the fingernail polish thing. It works if they've dug in. Spraying with Off before hand seems to have worked for me. If I'm going into the woods to spend some serious time, I start out in my drawers and each item of clothing I put on is sprayed down beforehand, front and back, like I'm painting a wall. Any skin that will be exposed is sprayed.
As posted, a shower as soon as possible after leaving the woods is good.

Beeman, you need to realize that your signature is "Aim for the exit hole"

Just imagine the visual that a person has reading your description and picturing a pot bellied guy with lilly white legs in his tighty whities and spraying himself with OFF and then you read Aim for the exit hole? I got a good chuckle. Carry on.

Prevention is the only way for me.

Spray DEET or permethrin on clothes, then put them on, pay strict attention to all seam areas- the cuff, the waist, neck line etc.

Also, now that it is heating up and drying out, chiggers are prevalent, so I strip to my skivvies and jump on the well chlorinated pool before heading indoors.

All that said, I have a few on me now from being complacent in the garden on Tuesday. Sevin dust is on tap for tomorrow morning....

I would like to clear up some misunderstandings regarding chiggers. They do not burrow under your skin. They attack and drill into your skin and using a poison, for lack of the correct nomenclature, insert/build a straw to draw blood. This straw is what itches. It takes two to three weeks to decompose, the whole time you're scratching the hell out of your skin. Now one of the other fellas was pretty much on target, benadryl, steroidal creams and even scrubbing with ammonia all help in surviving a serious chigger attack. They still make you miserable and the best treament is pre-treatment with bug spray both on your clothes and under your clothes, including under your socks. Spraying helps under your belt as well. Wash immediately upon leaving the oak leaf woods, farm fields, etc.

My brother just made the same comment about fire ants doing a job on ticks and chiggers.

Since I'm getting torn-up from the knees down, I've just held a pair of soccer socks out of a garage sale, and I'm going to coat and wear them next time out. For now I'm staying in doors. I'm headed for London next week and the last thing I want to do is spend time clawing at myself while I'm there.

I haven't figured out whether I need to buy all my deterrent from the pharmacy, Home Depot, or the feed store, but I'm going to lay-in stock.

Interesting the comments about chiggers in trees. I was trimming trees at the edge of the yard. I wasn't getting attacked above the knees so I assume the chiggers were in the tall grass shaded by the trees while I was whacking on them.

Every tree I have at the back of the property seems to have a thorn the size of my little finger growing all over it. I swear East Texas has meaner trees than the areas I've hunted in Africa.

I read where Osage Orange is supposed to ward-off mosquitoes. I don't think any tree helps against chiggers, unless you cut off a limb and beat'em to death with it.

I'm going to repeat this because it really works. If you will simply soak a paper towel or a cloth in rubbing alcohol and wipe your legs off from the knees down as soon as you come inside, you will kill any red bugs that you contact with the rubbing alcohol and it takes just a few seconds.

Keep in mind that chiggers are only half the problem. In the exact same places you get chiggers, you also get ticks. Both are bad, but ticks if left imbedded for very long are a huge sore that can go on and on. Those are what's left me asking for help from the dermatologist.

Point being, I'd do what works for both and not just the chiggers.

Lots of repellant, high boots with the pants legs tucked in, check yourself out when ready to come home, a shower when you get home and shake the clothes out real good. And avoid the deep woods in hot weather unless there's a compelling reason.

The dermatologist gave me a free sample of the steroidal cream and I find it works better on promoting healing of the bites than anything else I've tried.

Some people are obviously more sensitive to certain bites than others. In my case, and, I suspect, that of many Texans who grew up hunting and running the woods and fields in rural areas, ticks are really not a big deal. I have no idea how many ticks I've removed from my body over the years, but it has to be well into the thousands. Seed ticks, because of size and numbers, can be a problem, but if you've got them, that "crawly" feeling I mentioned is magnified and if one is paying the least attention he will know he needs to take immediate action. AFAIK rubbing alcohol does not really affect ticks.

To answer an earlier question, before Deet, etc. we used to buy sulfur powder from the drugstore and sprinkle it around the cuffs of our pants and also all around the waist.

Ticks have this almost diabolically clever trick. They bite and inject neurotoxins so you don't feel anything, then they go to work drawing blood.

My experience has been that once they are really attached, the sore lasts a minimum of a month. The dermatologist says that's par for the course. And if you do a clumsy removal it can last longer.

I imagine there could be something to the theory of spending your life out in the woods and by getting thousands of bites over many decades you might have some immune deal going on. But I don't know. On the surface that makes sense.

But between ticks and chiggers, I rate ticks worse.

Btw, on an early season dove shoot I was using a hay bale as cover to sit next to in a millet field (millet makes good hay I'm told). I was positively eaten up with bug bites. That thing was full of them whatever they were. I assumed at the time they were chiggers. You could also see a cloud of gnats hovering in the air around it. After that I sat out in the open field and had no more bites. I now think they were black biting gnats rather than chiggers. The difference is strictly academic though. I've had chigger bites and the end result and sores and how long they lasted were the same.

Permethrin on your clothes, including socks, especially soak the lower pants legs and waist band of your pants. Let that dry -- don't get permethrin on your skin.

Then use DEET on your skin. Between the two, you won't have to use the alcohol and fingernail polish, but they work, just not as well as prevention.

strapman is correct about chiggers. They are actually members if the spider family and they are literally eating you just like a spider eats a fly. Washing as soon as possible is imperative since they will walk around for up to two to three hours before they find the right place to snack on you.

Permetherin is good since it actually kills the offenders. Deet is good as well, for the skin. If you do happen to have a tick attach itself, the best thing I have found is actually Off Skintastic. Just a liberal spray and they try to leave the spot violently. Let it sit a bit and the tick usually comes off head and all, which will eliminate the itching.

For mosquitoes, a high dose of vitamin A works wonders. Most of the patches for mosquitoes are really just vitamin A. I take two tablets in the morning when hunting the swamps in Florida along with just a Off Clip-On and I do not have to use the Thermacell that the other guys have to lug around. I also am lucky enough to own what the neighbors affectionately call "Mosquito Lake", so I know it works well there as well.

We get both the chiggers and the tick invasions here.

My 2 cents is that prevention is 100 times better than figuring out cures! For me that consists of spraying repellent in a couple of layers-

First, pull up your pant legs and spray tops of shoes and entire sock, and include an inch or two of skin at the top of the sock. Then spray your pant legs from the knee down and include your shoes again.

Gato's advice about rubbing alcohol is spot on, after you come in give your legs a wipe, especially if you went off into the grass without any preparation at all.

If for whatever reason you neglect to do that stuff and end up with a bunch of bites, about the only remedy I've found to help is taking hot baths. Either long soaks in a hot tub or if all you have is a bath tub make them borderline uncomfortably hot and just soak your lower legs.

I spray my clothes inside and out with deet. No problems.

Knee high nylons well sprayed with Off or other Deet based repellen. Permythrin on boots and another shot of Deet on pant legs. My dove hunting buddies wear panyhose but there are some things I just can't do.

Bought the Permethrin at Wal-Mart today.

Found a partial spray bottle of Repel 25% DEET in my hunting gear. Used it this morning on the shoes, long soccer socks and the bottoms of my coveralls, gloves and cuffs. I sprayed the area outside I was going to be working with Cutters Backyard Bug Control. Internally I had a Bud Light Lime, just for good luck.

Maybe I got away with it. We'll see tomorrow.

I'll be treated with Permethrin next time I step out.

As a kid, we had a sulphur sock hanging by the back door. Beat it all around your legs and feet and the chiggers stayed away. "Off" works as well, but I don't much care for the smell or spraying chemicals all over my body.

But, Off is better than chigger bites.

There was a time when I was in high school that I ate sulphur tablets on a regular basis as an experiment. I do not recall if it worked. So much for that experiment.

Take a look at this website.

http://www.chiggaway.com/ChiggerCountry.htm

It will explain why I have always lived in the far west except when in the Army or in Graduate School. Rattlesnakes, cougars, bears, bats, Gila monsters, coral snakes, feral pigs, and so on ad infinitum I can put up with. Chiggers I simply won't. Life is too short to have time for that.

+++ Strapman you have done your research. My encounters are use a good repelent around shoes,belt line,cuffs and neck line. Shower when you get home. If bit use amonia or bleach on a swab. The PH difference will neutralise the toxins if you have scrached to the blood it will burn. But 2or3 times and all is well. Try it.

Here is GA the ticks are bad and I'm REALLY sensitive to them--if I get a tick bite it itches for months, literally. And if one bite starts easing up and then I get another tick bite, the first one fires up again. I guess there is something in your system once the little bastards get ahold of you.

I bought a big bag of sulfur a year or so ago, as that's what my mother had me dust on myself when I was a kid growing up in Texas. But then I read the warning on the bag, which said to avoid getting sulfur on your skin, so I didn't use it. Now I read on this thread that a lot of you do use it--so, do you ever have a reaction? Do you think it's OK to use sulfur?

I guess a lot of stuff we routinely did 50 years ago is now deadly.

As far as temporary relief from tick or other itching bites, I've found if you turn a hairdryer on high and hold it about 2-3 inches from the bite (careful--don't get too close or apply it for more than about 10 seconds) it will itch like crazy while the heat is being applied, then when you take it away, the itching stops immediately. Might last 5 minutes or 5 hours, but if the bite's keeping you awake at night it's worth a try. Just don't scorch yourself!

I've been able to keep the chiggers at bay lately, but I'm having a little Hell with poison oak, ivy, or sumac; not sure which.

For the bugs I'm spraying Permethrin on my socks, boots, coveralls, and gloves. It also says avoid skin contact which I'm not always able to do. I'm a little curious if some of my rashes aren't related to the Permethrin, but for now I'm blaming it on poison "something". I seem to be getting it on my gloves and transferring it to other exposed skin.

I'm hoping to build up a little resistance to the various poisons.

Never wear shorts, always wear 10" high lace up boots, put a rubber band around your pants legs if you need to. Stay out of tall grass during the wetter days and weeks. Mow the grass if you have too.
Ride a in a pickup, on a tractor, jeep or horse whenever you can. Stick to cow trails if you are walking.

Anything that is near your house or trails that looks like "poison anything" should die.

My grandfather had a small ranch. He habitually carried an axe at all times. Any cholla, mesquite, cedar, devil's pin cushion, prickly pear or other pest was destroyed as he found it.

quote:

Originally posted by wasbeeman:
To totally hi-jack this thread, back in the day before off and such, how did woodsmen and mountain men keep ticks and chiggers off?

Probably not bathing for months at a time helped...

When I had to spend days walking up and down pipeline right of ways we would wear good boots that came at least above the ankle and put flea and tick collars for animals around our ankles outside of the boot and under the pant cuff. Nothing but nothing will crawl up your leg. I don't think you'd want them against bare skin, though. I kept mine in ziploc bags when I was in and they would last for months.

And when/if, all of your prevention measures fail, or you forget to use them, just have plenty of Benedryl pills handy...

And some Ballistol...

A dozen guineas will keep both out of your yard. Noisy bastards, but they do good work. More flavor than chickens too.

I remember from my Fox Fire books that all of the hillbilly woodsmen would tie the cuffs of their pants tight before going in the woods.

quote:

I remember from my Fox Fire books that all of the hillbilly woodsmen would tie the cuffs of their pants tight before going in the woods.

I tried that, but it messes up because when you sit down your pants legs ride up.

Anyway, I heard that turkeys love to eat ticks. They like insects. I've also heard it's why turkeys are attracted to chufa, which apparently attract insects. They say chufa is like cocaine for a turkey. I guess turkeys go in big for chiggers too, it stands to reason...