Living over 20 years in the rural Ozarks I can say with confidence we had a tick explosion this year. It's always tough battle here though. I spent some time t

Living over 20 years in the rural Ozarks I can say with confidence we had a tick explosion this year. It's always tough battle here though. I spent some time this working on how to get rid of them in my yard that didn't involve "nuking" our entire yard (several acres) with pesticides but it's an ongoing battle because we have so many "critters" that visit our yard from the surrounding forest. I did hit on one method that worked pretty good at reducing the numbers, but still a long way from eradicating them. I use a method that's called "Tick dragging" by Health Departments to estimate tick populations which is basically just dragging a piece of cloth over the areas where ticks are. I used a terry clothe towel treated with permethrin which makes it easy for them to latch onto the towel and when they do the permethrin kills them pretty quickly.