The most effective way to catch ticks is to drag or flag a piece of light-colored cloth through vegetation where ticks are actively waiting for hosts. These two simple techniques are the same ones researchers and public health agencies use to survey tick populations, and you can set them up with materials from a fabric store and a hardware store. A more passive option, dry ice trapping, lures ticks using carbon dioxide but requires a bit more setup.
How Dragging Works
Dragging is the go-to method for flat, uniform terrain like lawns, meadows, and trails with low vegetation. You pull a one-square-meter piece of cloth along the ground behind you, and ticks latch onto the fabric just as they would latch onto a passing animal.
To build a drag cloth, cut a one-meter-by-one-meter piece of heavy white flannel. Fold one edge over and sew it into a sleeve, then slide a one-meter wooden dowel rod through the sleeve. Attach a length of rope or cord to each end of the dowel. Loop the rope around your waist so the cloth trails behind you, far enough back that you won’t kick it but close enough that the fabric stays flat against the ground. Then simply walk forward, letting the cloth slide like a sled over the grass and leaf litter.
Every 10 to 15 meters, stop and flip the cloth over to check for ticks. They’ll be visible against the white background. Use fine-tipped tweezers or forceps to pick them off and drop them into a collection vial.
How Flagging Works
Flagging uses the same fabric but attaches it to a dowel rod like a flag. You hold the rod at about waist level and sweep the cloth in a wide arc (roughly 90 to 180 degrees) through vegetation and along the ground in front of you. This method is better suited to rough or uneven terrain, thick brush, and areas where dragging a cloth behind you isn’t practical.
Both techniques cover about one meter in width per pass and sample roughly the same total area when used along the same distance. In comparative field trials, researchers found no meaningful difference in how many ticks each method collected. Flannel, corduroy, and denim all work. The CDC recommends thick white flannel because it’s durable, inexpensive, easy to wash, and makes ticks easy to spot.
CO2 Trapping With Dry Ice
Ticks locate hosts partly by sensing carbon dioxide in exhaled breath. Dry ice traps exploit this by releasing CO2 as the ice sublimates, drawing ticks in from the surrounding area. In controlled studies, adult ticks have been attracted from distances of 5 meters within 24 hours, and up to 21 meters given more time.
The basic setup: place about 1.4 kilograms of dry ice inside a small Styrofoam cooler (roughly 26 by 21 by 17 centimeters) with a lid. Drill or cut a 3-centimeter hole on each side so the gas diffuses outward across the forest floor. Set the cooler on a one-square-meter canvas, and line the canvas around the cooler with strips of double-sided tape. Ticks that crawl toward the CO2 source get stuck on the tape. Leave the trap in place for two to three hours; the dry ice should last at least that long.
CO2 traps work about as well as dragging for collecting adult ticks, but dragging is roughly 2 to 2.5 times more efficient for catching nymphs, the younger, smaller life stage most responsible for transmitting disease to humans. So if you’re trying to assess nymph populations on your property, dragging is the better choice. CO2 traps are most useful when you want a passive method you can leave in place while doing other work.
When and Where to Collect
Ticks don’t sit out in the open all day. They climb low vegetation and wait with their front legs extended, a behavior called questing, then grab onto whatever brushes past. Between questing bouts, they retreat into leaf litter to rehydrate. This cycle is driven by temperature and humidity: ticks need relative humidity above about 70% when temperatures exceed 15°C (59°F). On hot, dry summer afternoons, questing drops off sharply because ticks risk drying out.
Your best collection windows are mornings and evenings during warm months, or overcast days when humidity stays higher. Spring and early summer are peak questing season for nymphs in most of the eastern United States. Adults of many species are most active in fall and early spring.
Focus on edges and transitions: where lawn meets woods, along deer trails, in leaf litter under shrubs, and in tall grass bordering paths. Ticks are found throughout wooded and brushy landscapes, and no single vegetation measurement reliably predicts exactly where they’ll be most concentrated. Sampling multiple spots across your property gives a much better picture than checking one location.
Protecting Yourself While Collecting
You’re deliberately walking through tick habitat and handling live ticks, so personal protection matters. Treat your boots, pants, and socks with 0.5% permethrin before heading out. Permethrin-treated clothing remains protective through several washes. Apply an EPA-registered repellent containing DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus to exposed skin (apply sunscreen first if you’re using both). Tuck pants into socks, and wear light-colored clothing so you can spot ticks on yourself as well as on your drag cloth.
Identifying What You Caught
Once you’ve collected ticks, a few features help you sort the most common North American species:
- Lone star tick: Long mouthparts relative to the head. Adult females have a distinctive white dot near the back of the shield on their back. The shield has a patterned (ornate) appearance.
- Deer tick (blacklegged tick): Long mouthparts, but no patterns on the dark, plain shield. No eyes visible on the shield, and no scalloped edges (festoons) along the rear margin.
- American dog tick: Short mouthparts relative to the head, with a patterned shield and visible eyes. Scalloped festoons along the back edge.
- Brown dog tick: Short mouthparts, a plain shield with eyes, and an angular, wide head base. Festoons present but can be hard to see.
A 10x hand lens makes these features much easier to distinguish, especially on nymphs.
Storing Ticks for Testing
If you plan to have your ticks tested for pathogens, how you store them matters. For DNA-based testing (the standard method most labs use), place live ticks in a small vial of ethanol. Ethanol-preserved ticks yield reliable DNA even after 10 years of storage. Do not let ticks dry out, as dried preservation degrades the genetic material labs need to detect pathogens.
If you can’t get them into ethanol right away, a sealed plastic bag or vial kept in a cooler works for short transport. Many state health departments and university extension programs accept tick submissions for identification and sometimes pathogen testing. Check with your state’s public health lab for specific submission instructions, since some require ticks to arrive alive or in a particular preservative.