· While you’re out ·

In the field.

Most of what people think they know about ticks — they jump, they fly, they drop from trees — is wrong. Understanding how a tick actually finds you changes how you avoid one while you’re still in the woods.

How they find you

Questing — the tick's only move.

Ticks don’t hunt actively. They climb up a blade of grass, a low branch, or a leaf-litter stem — usually 30 to 90 cm off the ground — and wait with their front legs outstretched. This posture is called questing. When a host brushes past, the tick latches on by the feet. It then crawls upward, looking for thin skin in a hidden spot.

Common myths

What ticks don't do.

They don’t jump or fly. No tick species has wings. They cannot jump even a millimetre.
They don’t drop from trees. Adult ticks rarely climb higher than knee-height. The leaves on your head came from a tree; the tick on your scalp climbed there from your sock.
They don’t bite immediately. Once attached to your skin, a tick often wanders for an hour or more before settling on a spot to feed. The faster you check, the more likely you find one still moving.

If you spot one

Crawling vs attached.

What you do depends on whether the tick has bitten down yet.

Still crawling

Brush, flick, kill.

Pick it off with a glove or piece of tape, drop it into a sealed container or a spot of packing tape folded back on itself, and keep moving. A crawling tick hasn’t fed and almost certainly hasn’t transmitted anything. Don’t squish it bare-handed — even unfed ticks can carry pathogens on their mouthparts.

Attached

Remove on the spot.

Don’t finish the hike with a tick still attached. The 24-hour transmission window for Lyme starts the moment it bites. If you have fine-tipped tweezers in your kit, remove it now; if not, get back to anywhere with tweezers and remove it. The full removal protocol is on the removal page.

Carry a kit

What to bring.

A minimum field tick kit: fine-tipped tweezers (or a TickEase / Tick Twister), an index card, a strip of clear packing tape, and a ziplock bag. Fits in a hip pocket. The card and tape matter as much as the tweezers — a removed tick still on a card is a useful diagnostic tool for the next 30 days.

The hidden vector

Dogs bring ticks inside.

A dog that ran through tall grass walks into the house with passengers. Most of those passengers fall off the dog over the next several hours and look for the nearest warm body — which is often you, two days later, in your own bed.

Check the dog before they come inside. A flat hand through fur catches engorged ticks (they feel like small grapes) and a fine comb catches unfed ones.
Pay attention to ears (inside and out), between toes, armpits, the groin, and the base of the tail. Ticks like the same hidden spots on dogs as on people.
If your dog isn’t on a tick-prevention product, ask your vet about Bravecto, NexGard, Simparica, or a Seresto collar. Coverage that lasts months removes the dog-as-vector problem almost entirely.
Cats matter less — they’re fastidious groomers and most outdoor cats remove ticks themselves — but they’re still worth checking after rural roaming.

See the pet-owners page for the full product breakdown.

The moment you're home

A two-hour window.

The full post-outing protocol is laid out on the prevention page. Compressed to one paragraph: clothes in the dryer on high heat for ten minutes, shower within two hours of getting back, and a careful full-body check in good light. Twice — once after the shower, again the next morning when nymphs have had time to move.

Why the dryer first

Heat kills, water doesn't.

Ticks are remarkably resilient to drowning — many survive a full wash cycle. Ten minutes of dry, hot air kills them reliably. Throw clothes in the dryer before washing, not after.

Prevention — clothing, repellents, permethrin.
Removal protocol — the four steps to do right and the five things never to try.
After removal — the 30-day symptom watch.

Last reviewed May 29, 2026

General information only — not medical advice. In an emergency, call 911. Read the full disclaimer.