Jun 05

The Trouble with Tracks and Ticks

Hygiene, insects, tracking, woods 15 Comments »

The trouble with tracking or going out into the woods and fields is that sometimes you have to get “down and dirty”. Trackers call this “dirt-time” where your nose is to the floor examining micro signs of compression, disturbance and spoor. This can cause a problem especially in the summer. In fact you don’t have to have your nose to the ground to pick up a tick or two.

Ticks are related to spiders and feed off the blood of virtually any bird, mammal or even occasionally, reptiles. There are a number of species depending on where you live. Most can be seen with the naked eye and are generally dark coloured. The nymph stage is the most likely to bite and is size of a pin-head. Its size will grow as the blood sac enlarges and its colour will change to a lighter grey. It’s at this stage that people are likely to realise that they’ve been bitten especially if an adult tick bites as they’re more visible. The bite itself doesn’t hurt.

Ticks will survive better in hotter weather, but they will actively seek blood during warm weather and attach themselves anywhere (and I mean anywhere) on the body, especially those nice warm places we have! They tend to hang out in damp places for example mammal feeding areas but they can also be found in the long grass of meadow land and parks.

So what’s the deal? The trouble is that ticks carry diseases. They pick up the diseases from other animals they’ve feasted on and could transmit these diseases to humans. They can also inherit the disease from the parent tick. The most harmful is Lyme disease or Lyme borreliosis which can be a very debilitating illness lasting sometimes for years if not treated in the early stages.

Early symptoms can develop within days or weeks of the bite which may include tiredness, chills, fever, headache, muscle and/or joint pain, swollen lymph glands and blurred vision. A characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans may appear. It is generally a circular rash that may clear in the centre, resulting in a “Bull’s eye” appearance. It can expand and move around the body. Medical help must be sought as soon as possible.

Have a look for the link that shows you a video of how a tick feeds.

It’s difficult to avoid ticks with our past-time, so we have to take the risk; it’s as simple as that. We can obviously check ourselves thoroughly at the end of the day and use a buddy-buddy system of inspection if you’re with a group of people. When you get home after your excursion, check yourself over thoroughly before jumping in theshower. If a tick is found, it should be removed preferably with a tick removal tool. Failing that, use pointed tweezers and grasp the tick as close to your skin as possible without squeezing the tick’s body and pull the tick out by twisting and pulling gently. There may be considerable resistance. Ah… those huge fangs! Lovely!

The mouth-parts of a tick include a hypostome (rostrum) which is implanted in the skin during biting. This hypostome is fully covered with backward directed projections like barbs; this allows the tick to “anchor” into the skin. If you try and pull out the tick, the spikes will rise and the mouth-parts of the tick can break and stay in the skin, causing pain and infection. With a specialist hook, you can turn the body of the tick; the spikes fold into the axis of rotation, and the tick is easily removed, without traction effort, and decreasing the risks of breaking the rostrum.

It may not be possible to twist out the tick if you don’t have a bespoke tool, therefore try and gently pull out the tick.

If no tools are available at all, rather than delay, use a cotton thread – Tie a single loop of cotton around the tick’s mouthparts, as close to the skin as possible, then pull gently upwards and outwards. The idea is to remove the whole of the tick from the skin. If a part is left in (if you’re not careful, it’s normally the head) you can still get infected.

The sooner the tick is removed the better, but there’s no set time that a tick has to stay attached to the skin to potentially infect the host.

Don’t be tempted to burn off the tick or use any other methods, for example paraffin, petrol, vaseline or meths. This may make the tick regurgitate the content of its stomach.

You must then use antiseptic to clean the area; wash your hands (and tools used) and try and save the tick in case later symptoms develop. There’s no need to panic though. Many ticks do not carry the disease but just be wary and check yourself thoroughly.

Please also bear in mind that the information is for use in the UK and other countries may have different tick types and diseases.

Pablo.

Jun 09

Another Meet at Mark’s

Hygiene, archery, craft, dragonflies, excursions, insects, meets, tracking, woods 4 Comments »

My mate Paul and I headed south to meet up with the Reading Group on Friday afternoon. A little rain was forecast but the whole weekend turned out fine and dry.


After a hot and sticky walk-in we arrived to find the parachute already up and a brew on the go. Mark presented me with a fine looking kuksa as a gift for doing the Reading group forum. I was completely overwhelmed and promptly planned what liquid substance should go in it. Well – it’s got to be sealed properly hasn’t it?


We woke up to a beautiful day on Saturday and after breakfast, a couple of us went roving with the bows to do a bit of stump shooting. I’d brought along the Samick SKB, the length of which proved ideal in the particular closed-in area of woodland we chose to shoot in. We all did pretty well getting close to the challenging choices of target and in a couple of instances even killed a stump or two!

Mark had brought along a large awl which enabled the construction of some wooden chairs. John decided to assemble what can only be described as a throne, which was in keeping with his heavy-weight style of camping. Hence he was dubbed “His Majesty, King John” for the rest of the meet. The chairs will be kept on site ready for the next meet.



Some of us went for a wander after lunch and ended up tracking along the moderately fast flowing stream. There was a lot of damselfly activity and I spent some time trying to photograph the amazingly coloured and aptly named Beautiful demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo).


We followed some tracks along the stream bank and decided it belonged to a small fox. The tracks ended up at a kill site where the only evidence left of the prey was a claw of a crustacian. Looking again at the photo I’m not too sure if there might be other tracks in there and I wish I’d studied the area in more detail at the time. Other tracks seen were roe, fallow, muntjac, mouse and a number of birds that had hopped along the bank. There was still no sign of the elusive water vole tracks.


The evening meal was a barbeque of literally tons of meat mostly provided by King John.
Earlier, Steve (who was on my Shadowhawk tracking course) and I identified a good sit spot covering an area where there might be some evening mammal activity. Andy had already spotted a fox cub, and muntjac had been heard the previous evening. After the barbeque, along with Andy we sat for an hour being bitten to death by mosquitos! The sum total of our sightings? One rabbit, five hundred and three mosquitos - oh and some sheep! Well, you can’t win them all.


One of the best things about meets is that you can share experiences and stories around the fire. With new faces comes new stories and experiences. Knowledge is shared, kit examined and compared, and tips are passed on. This meet was no exception. John was busy dying a leather water bottle while Mark had made a fantastic flute case. You can see these pics on the network.


Prior to packing up on Sunday, conversation meandered on to the dreaded tick subject mentioned in my last post. This prompted everyone to start examining themselves. Low and behold ticks were found on nearly everyone’s legs. A tick removal session then took place. Anyone watching would be forgiven in thinking that a strange bunch of primates had invaded the woods and were busy de-fleaing themselves. Mark’s pocket microscope (is there nothing that he dosesn’t have handy?) showed in real terms what a monstrous looking creature the tick is.


A certain lesson learned and a good tip is to tuck the trousers in to socks or put elastics around the bottom of the trousers. Those with sleeping areas on the bracken slopes (myself included) should also have cleared a path through the bracken leading to the hammock. Whatever the precautions though, it’s inevitable that you will get a couple if you go tracking or exploring through the undergrowth.

All too soon it was time to say our goodbyes and leave the site. We doused the fire and cached the pot hangers. Another excellent weekend and a big thanks to Mark for organising the meet and everyone else that came along.

Pablo.

Feb 08

Nasty Old Noro

Hygiene, food, tracking, woods 4 Comments »

It started about 3am on Thursday. A not very pleasant experience of 6 hours sickness and diarrhoea. The longer term effects after that quick spell of nastiness was headaches, tiredness and aching limbs.

It making its way around the UK. There’s no cure but no lasting effects and, of course, with any thing like this you have to keep hydrated. If you need more information on the Norovirus, click here.

Despite feeling a little weak, I decided that a little woods therapy might be in order and I promised Les, Brett and John at Wildcrafts that I would help out; so I packed light and drove down the road to the site.

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Not long after I arrived, Les showed the 8 youngsters how to skin a roe deer, and we soon had the carcass on the spit ready for the evening meal.

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There was some success with this, but the damp conditions and damp wood weren’t really conducive to a perfect meal, but there was certainly enough for a taster.

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I travelled quite light (for once) and had the small tarp and DD scout hammock. My cooking kit was the crusader mug and that, basically, was it. Amazing what you can get down to if you really want to.

After watching Les and Brett skilfully guide the kids through some basic bushcraft skills, we sat back and relaxed by the fire.

After a surprisingly comfortable night, despite an early biting northerly breeze, it was my turn to put the lads through their paces with an introduction to tracking. They started to work well as a team to find the “escaped prisoner” in the allotted time-scale, despite the frustratingly ankle deep muddy conditions.

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Despite this being a  short session it’s always gratifying to see people enjoy it. For the youngsters it’s like a grown up hide and seek and for the accompanying adults (who I noticed eagerly joined in) it was an eye-opener to discover that they could read tracks with a minimum of guidance. The mud helped and the badger and deer tracks stood out well, so we were able to look at the wildlife side as well.

I left the site at lunch-time more tired than when I left home, but it was still worth the effort to introduce a dozen or so more people to the world of tracking.

Thanks to Les, Brett and my mate John. Also to new faces, Simon and Andy and their brilliant camp-fire tales of biking-rally shenanigans! Hilarious. (Nearly forgot hi to Scout the dog!)

Till next time.