Ridding your deer of fleas before skinning.

D

djonathang

New member
Hello All,

A friend had mentioned that a good technique for ridding your deer of fleas that will choose you as the new host as your animal cools is to spray the animal with bug spray. He says he transports a small can of this in his backpack for that purpose.

I'd like to know your thoughts. If you do this, is there a favorite. I can't imagine bringing an enormous can of Raid on my journey.

Cheers,

DG
 
The only good flea or tick is a dead flea or tick.
If you are worried about poisons in the meat, don't use poison to kill them.
Use Diatomaceous Earth (DE).
It is 'dirt' that kills parasites.

Diatoms are tiny and have been on this planet for millions of years.
So long in fact, there are large deposits of fossilized diatoms. We harvest the DE, grind it to a ultra fine powder, and use it in the food industry.
It is exactly like glass shards on a microscopic scale. It gets in an insects joints and stays there, grinding away at their exoskeleton.
I have watched ticks pop their own legs off and ants sting themselves in the head, when DE gets on them.
Fleas go nuts and 'disappear'. Best I can figure is fleas try and jump and leave the DE behind. It doesn't work. They just die wherever they land and can't jump anymore.

Check your local feed lot, to see if they have any. Typically, it is a 50Lb bag.
For the average pet-owner/homeowner/hunter, one bag lasts years.
Just dust the animals you want to treat, or add it to their food if they have worms.
It's just 'dirt' for us large animals.
 
This comes from 60 years ago, but it worked then.

We carried some Eucalytus oil with us for bug repellant. We'd put a few drops on a bandanna and wipe the deer down with it. Fleas would head for the next county. It acts as a good scent mask, also.

Pops
 
Can I volunteer a certain high profile politician currently in the news a lot to carry the deer?
 
Deer ticks commonly "abandon ship" when the blood quits flowing and the carcass starts cooling. I've never known the little critters to be any particular problem...
 
Well,

In an effort to keep things holistic, the "earth solution" was leading, but now it's been overtaken by Eucalyptus oil.

DG
 
Armedandsafe,

Picked up some Eucalyptus oil at Walmart this morning on the way to work. Much more appealing to me than the suggested bug/poison spray. I'll just bring a little rag for the wipe down.

Thanks.

DG
 
There was a post on another forum of rabid deer hunters where one had positioned a wick over a known deer trail that contained a product like front line flea n tick. as the deer would drop to go under a dead fall, they rub self administer a dose of flea an tick repellent. He noticed that after a while some deer seemed to be hanging around his land more, perhaps associating the lack of disturbance by biting parasites. He was adamant that it was clearly anecdotal and was very willing to be proved wrong but he showed a few pics of harvested deer that showed them to be nearly free of all ticks, where as others from another hunting patch were covered.
 
Why use eucalyptus to push them to other animals when you can kill them?

guntotin_fool, you can do the same sort of thing with DE.

Find a shady spot with little grass. ie, good for them to get hidden real quick.
Dump DE on the ground in a large flat circle.
Yes, it will mix with the soil already there.
Wildlife will find it rather quickly and roll in it. After all, that is why they roll in the dirt in the first place.
A few trips to freshen it up after rains, and it will be a permanent roll spot.
LOL
Donkeys, horses, even dogs will roll in it.

Just give them the time to find it.
Once you notice your dog is white, you will know the deer have used it too.
Dogs, for some reason, only roll in 'stinky' stuff.
 
Deer ticks commonly "abandon ship" when the blood quits flowing and the carcass starts cooling. I've never known the little critters to be any particular problem...
Click to expand...

I'm with Art on this one. Never had a problem with the little critters.
 
Diatomaceous Earth can also be purchased at pool supply stores for cheap as it is used in swimming pool filters.

I used to buy 50 lbs. for about $9.00 but that was back when I was running a pool cleaning service. DE has LOTS of good uses. You can sprinkle it on red ant mounds-and they are GONE the next day! It's much cheaper than the store bought red ant killers, and works BETTER! One ant gets it on him, he goes into the mound where he brushes against other ants, and so on, and so on, until they are all DEAD. Yea baby! The only good red ant, is a dead red ant.

The place I hog hunt, we drag the bodies behind the jeep with a short length of rope to get them to the cleaning stand. Usually by the time we get back, all fleas, ticks, bugs, burrs, stickers, are all gone from the fur. And usually most of the fur.
 
I just can't imagine spraying down a beautiful deer with toxic bug spray.

Have you ever had a problem with fleas getting on you from a deer, or is this something you are imagining?
I have killed over 80 deer, and I have tanned the hides on 20 or 30 of them.
I have never gotten fleas on me from a deer.

All but 3 of these deer I killed in Georgia, and these deer were infested with lice!
I mean I would see 50 to 100 lice on the poor deer. I don't know if they had fleas or not, but I never got fleas or lice from a deer.
 
Lice and fleas are the same thing. There are three types of fleas that affect humans. Head, body, and pubic. You may get fleas from other animals for a short period of time but they will usually not hang around long.
 
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