Deer Ticks

I did a short walk today along the edge of the field behind our barn looking for turkeys and doing some early deer scouting. With no luck on the turkeys and deer I returned to my truck and started driving back to the barn and felt something moving on the back of my hand, it was a deer tick (Ixodes scapularis). Here it is walking on my wrist.



Deer ticks can be found in the eastern and the northern midwestern United States. The deer tick is a carrier of several diseases of animals, including Lyme disease which and be transmitted to humans by the tick. Deer ticks have a two-year life cycle, during which time it passes through three stages: larva, nymph, and adult. The tick must take a blood meal at each stage before maturing to the next. Deer tick females latch onto a host and drink its blood for four to five days. After the deer tick has its blood meal, the tick drops off and overwinters in the leaf litter of the forest floor. The following spring, the female lays several hundred to a few thousand eggs in clusters.

Deer ticks are very small and this one on my finger is an adult female. I must have been the wrong blood type for this tick since it jumped off my hand while I was taking the photos.