Focus on habitat management, not spraying.

Yes. Keep your grass short, clear leaf litter, and create a dry barrier between woods and lawn. That does more than spraying chemicals everywhere.

Most ticks don’t live in the middle of your lawn. They hang out at the edges — where tall grass meets woods, under leaf piles, along stone walls. So the first step is making your yard less hospitable. Mow regularly. Rake up leaves in spring. Trim back overgrown shrubs. Create a three-foot-wide strip of gravel or wood chips between your lawn and any wooded area. Ticks won’t cross that dry, sunny gap.

If you want to go further, tick tubes work well. They’re cardboard tubes filled with permethrin-treated cotton. Mice take the cotton for nesting, and the permethrin kills ticks on the mice. It’s targeted, not broadcast spraying. Put them out in early spring and again in late summer.

For you personally, treat your shoes and pants with permethrin spray (the kind you let dry on fabric). That’s way more effective than bug spray for ticks.

A treated clothing approach plus yard management will cut your tick encounters dramatically without nuking your property with chemicals.