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Other stories in "Hiking"

• Hiking the North Shore
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• Trekking the Superior Hiking Trail
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• Hiking in Duluth
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• Walking in Duluth
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• In the shadow of the Giant
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• Isle Royale reverie
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• Tracing the Ice Age Trail
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• Don't be a dope in the woods
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• Walk 'n' roll
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How to prevent Lyme disease

The bite of a deer tick can cause major headaches, and more.

By late April, the first ticks have appeared in the woods.

Regular ticks are bad enough, scuttling into hidden niches on the human body and gorging themselves on blood. But their ick factor pales next to the danger posed by deer ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease.

A deer tick needs to be attached to the skin for 36 hours to transmit the disease; even then it’s easily treatable if caught promptly. But if untreated, symptoms include fatigue, fever and achiness; eventually, it can lead to nerve damage and joint pain.

Wisconsin still is the epicenter of Lyme disease in the Upper Midwest, with 1,952 confirmed cases in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Minnesota, 1,063 cases were confirmed.

A Scientific American map shows where humans are at most risk of Lyme disease.

Here are the best ways to prevent infection.

Tuck in shirts and pants. To make ticks easier to see, wear light-colored clothing.

Spray skin and clothing with bug spray containing 30 percent DEET, or spray clothing with Permethrin clothing repellent. An aerosol can that will spray three sets of clothing costs about $10. They're available at outdoors stores.

Run hands over skin to detect the smaller ticks, then again in the shower. If you find one, pry it off gently with tweezers.

Ticks also can hide in the folds of clothing or boots and crawl onto the body later. Putting clothing in a dryer for 10 minutes will kill them.

And here's an ingenious idea: Wrap a strip of duct tape, sticky side out, around your cuffs to keep ticks from crawling up your legs and arms. If you want to be especially safe, wrap it around your collar, too, to keep them out your hair.

Depending on location, says Dr. Russell Johnson, a microbiologist who studies agents of Lyme disease at the University of Minnesota, 40 to 60 percent of adult female deer ticks carry Lyme disease.

The first ticks out mostly are adults; the nymphs that appear from mid-May to early July carry the disease at about half that rate, but all are looking for blood meals and are harder to see.

Deer-tick nymphs appear as black dots; adults are the size of a sesame seed.

About 80 percent of people will develop an even red rash that may look like a bull’s-eye rash, Johnson said.

But even if you don’t, and you develop an unexplained fever or ache about two weeks after spending time in woods, consider the possibility of Lyme disease.

Robert Sitko of Stillwater, Minn., a beekeeper who tends apiaries in the heavily infested St. Croix River Valley and likes to go camping, knew he was at risk. One year, he saw the tell-tale bull’s-eye rash of Lyme disease on his body and went to a doctor, who prescribed three weeks of antibiotics.

That was that — until a year later, when he ran a 105-degree fever and landed in the hospital. That time, it was anaplasmosis, also known as ehrlichiosis, another bacterium transmitted by deer ticks.

Now, Sitko does everything he can to avoid being bitten be a deer tick. He tucks his pants legs into his socks. He checks skin and clothes religiously. He uses insect repellents.

He might have taken the vaccine if it hadn’t been discontinued for human use, but he gets a shot of it for his German shorthair every year.

And after he found a deer tick while cutting trees in his back yard, he drove to a sporting-goods store and bought a canister of Permethrin clothing repellent.

“What you do is spray it on your clothes, let it dry two hours, and it’s supposed to last six weeks or six washings,’’ he said. “Supposedly, it kills ticks on contact. I thought, that’s the perfect thing for people going on a week’s camping trip.’’

Johnson says the product does work.

“It works very well,’’ he says. “In fact, it kills ticks within seconds of contact.’’

Western Wisconsin and the St. Croix Valley of Minnesota are considered hot spots for Lyme-carrying deer ticks, but they’ve expanded their range northward and westward to the lakes region of Minnesota, Johnson said.

In Iowa, only 77 cases were confirmed in 2009, and in Illinois, 136 cases. In Michigan, 81 cases were confirmed in 2009.

Last updated on February 2, 2012