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I got this from Facebook from the North American Hunter.  Found it very interesting.  Guess when we walk in the woods we should breath less LOL.  Here is the story:  Calvin Wakefield an intern, helped monitor how many ticks were in a whitetail bedding area on property near Branson, Missouri, by walking through it while wearing white pants.  Calvin collected 100 plus ticks in only a few minutes!

If Calvin’s tick collection exercise causes you to start scratching under your pant leg, then the next experiment will probably give you nightmares.  He put dry ice in a container and then placed it in the same deer bedding area he walked before. The container sat in place for just under 8 hours.  Ready for some weird science?  Ticks are attracted to dry ice because as it melts it releases carbon dioxide [CO2} , which is what mammals [sources of blood meals for ticks] exhale.

In other words, it’s what mammals [like you] exhale that primarily attracts ticks, not body heat or body odor.  So the gas produced by dry ice melting is like a loud dinner bell to ticks.  Using masking tape, Calvin  captured 667 ticks that came to less than 1 pound of dry ice.  Keeping this in mind, imagine how many ticks would come to get a blood meal from a newborn whitetail fawn that barely moves for days in the same bedding area where he placed the dry ice tick trap.

I hunt in northern Minnesota and I’ve hunted there since the 60’s.  In all the years of hunting up there in the fall into firearms season I have had only a few ticks on me over the years.  However living down here in the Metro area I have had a lot more, with an increasing amount of deer ticks that I have noticed.  So check yourself out after returning from a day outdoors.