Successfully keeping ticks away
Tick protection - why?
Since ticks can transmit dangerous diseases such as Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) through a bite, effective protection against ticks is very important. The bloodsuckers become active from a temperature of around 8 degrees Celsius, but become sluggish from 25 degrees Celsius. They appear mainly in the months of March to October, but with mild temperatures also in winter. Places where ticks lurk and you should protect yourself accordingly are forests and forest edges, at water bodies and damp places, bushes and meadows with taller grass. Ticks do not fall from trees, as is often assumed, but are at most 1.5 m above the ground.
There is a risk of Lyme disease wherever there are ticks. Depending on the area, around 5-50% of ticks carry the pathogen. The TBE virus, on the other hand, is only particularly high in certain risk areas, but in these areas you should place even greater value on effective tick protection.
movement Odor warmth
When a tick sees one of these stimuli, it stands up and tries to attach itself to a host, find a quiet, safe spot, and then bite.
There are many ways to prevent this from happening. Some manufacturers use essential oils for this purpose sense of smell disturb the tick. Other manufacturers use the chemically produced Icaridin, which is also based on the olfactory stimulus ticks and, in contrast to essential oils, is much cheaper to produce. In both of these cases, the stimuli movement and warmth but not disturbed here, so that the effect of these agents is often not particularly good and, if at all, can only be detected for a few hours. The disadvantage of all these agents, especially when hunting but also when being together with others, is the strong smell of all these sprays, which is often perceived as unpleasant.
This made us decide to go a completely different, albeit more complex, path. The Ostermayer Jagd tick and mosquito repellent available from us https://swisshunt.ch/collections/jagdartikel/products/zecken-und-muckenschutz contains an active complex of two substances that are highly toxic to insects. A Expelling agent, which causes the ticks to quickly flee and the active ingredient Permethrin , which kills ticks if they don't get away quickly enough. The active complex is encapsulated and processed in such a way that the spray becomes almost odorless after a few minutes and is therefore not noticed by the game when hunting. The spray is sprayed onto the clothing (about 15-20 pump strokes for long pants), socks and outerwear should also be impregnated. The protection now lasts for 14 days or until the next wash.