For whatever it's worth, I was only speaking to the size of the ticks out west being easier to spot and remove, not what pathogens or diseases they can spread.
There's decent evidence out there that permethrin exposure may be linked to infertility. I have suspicion that this may have happened...
This thread was specifically about Montana. I get hundreds of our ticks on me every year, and as long as I keep alert and do regular checks I never have bites.
I've put a lot of thought in to doing the same, but can't get over the idea of trusting the general public to not destroy it.
Have you had good luck with it not getting beat to hell? To most people know how to use it properly?
I've been really digging in to their harvest data this year, and the known discrepancies are numerous.
One sheep unit I looked at this week had 3 ram tags in 2023. 3 rams shown in the measurement tables, complete with date of harvest, age, measurements.
Harvest statistics show no rams harvested.