Every year, right about the time the leaves start coming down, we hear the same thing. “Well, at least the ticks are done for the year.”
We understand why it feels that way. Mosquito pressure really does fall off from here, the shorts go back in the drawer, and the whole outdoor season starts to feel like it is closing up. Ticks do the opposite. October is the single busiest month of the tick year in Maine, and it lands exactly when everybody is back outside raking leaves, hauling brush and letting the dogs in and out all afternoon.
The fall peak almost nobody expects
Most people build their whole idea of tick season around June, and that is fair. June is when the nymphs are out, and the nymph is the stage that causes the most Lyme disease in our region. They are about the size of a poppy seed and almost nobody ever sees one.
But that is one stage out of three. A deer tick takes about two years to get from egg to egg, and because the cycle straddles three calendar years you will see it drawn either way. It feeds exactly three times in that span, once as a larva, once as a nymph and once as an adult, and it needs a different host each time. The adults are the stage that peaks twice, once in April or May and again in late October or early November, and the UMaine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab puts that autumn high point in late October.
They also do not need warm weather to go looking. An adult will quest on any day the temperature climbs above freezing, and they turn up on warm winter days above 40 degrees. So this is not some narrow window. It is the entire back half of your fall, plus a handful of days in January.
Tick activity in Maine
Adults peak twice. Nymphs peak once.
When each stage is actually out, and where our four visits land.
R1R2R3R4
Shape of the season from the UMaine Extension Tick Lab 2025 surveillance report, which records adults peaking in April or May and again in late October or early November, and nymphs peaking in June and early July. It shows when each stage is out, not a measured index. Our four visits are built around that: the first meets the spring adults, the last meets the fall ones, and each treatment holds the line for roughly a month.
Most of them live around the edges, not out in the open lawn.
This is the part that changes where you walk, and it is the part we most want people to take away.
Their harbor sites are the vegetated parts of your property, not the open lawn. Bushes and shrubs, the mulch beds, the stone wall, the ground cover against the foundation, the leaf litter where the grass meets the trees, the brush pile in the back corner. Open, sunny, mown turf is hot and dry and they dry out fast in it, so that is not where a population sets up and breeds. That band around the outside of your yard is where the work actually changes anything.
That is not the same as saying your lawn is safe. Deer and rodents carry ticks across a property and drop them wherever they wander, so you can pick one up in the middle of the yard. The difference is that the open lawn is where ticks end up, and the vegetated areas are where they live. Lower risk, not no risk.
They also do not drop out of trees, which is the myth we hear most often. They climb up onto tall grass and low brush, usually somewhere in the first four or five feet off the ground, put their front legs out and wait for something to walk past. It is called questing, and it is the reason edge work matters more than blanketing the open lawn.
Now put that next to your October to-do list. Raking the leaves into the treeline. Clearing out the brush pile. Moving the woodpile up to the house. Every one of those jobs is done standing in the exact band where the adults are questing.
The numbers are not going the right way
Maine has some of the highest rates of tick-borne disease in the country, and 2025 set a record.
Maine CDC · 2025
A record year, and it is still climbing
Reported cases of the three most common tick-borne illnesses in Maine.
And the fall stage is the risky one
Share of deer ticks submitted to the UMaine Extension Tick Lab in 2025 that were carrying Lyme, by life stage. The adults are the ones that peak in late October.
Case counts: Maine CDC preliminary data for 2025, the highest on record, with more than 6,200 tick-borne illness reports in total. Infection rates: UMaine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab 2025 surveillance report, from 5,486 ticks submitted across all 16 counties and 411 towns.
Maine CDC · reported Lyme disease cases
Eleven years, one direction
Cases reported among Maine residents, 2015 through 2025.
201515
201616
201717
201818
201919
202020
202121
202222
202323
202424
202525
Maine changed how Lyme disease is counted on 1 January 2022 (the dashed line). From that year on the count includes probable cases only, so the bars either side of it are not measured quite the same way. Across the four years since, where the method has been consistent, reports are up more than 60%. 2026 is not on this chart on purpose: the year is not finished, and Maine CDC says a part-year count should not be set against full ones.
Source: Maine CDC, Lyme and Other Tickborne Illnesses annual reports. 2025 is preliminary.
UMaine Extension Tick Lab · 2025
How likely a tick here is carrying Lyme
Of the deer ticks people found and sent in for testing, the share that came back positive for Lyme, by county. This counts ticks rather than people, so a county is not lighter just because fewer people live in it.
Highest share infected
These are ticks the public found and mailed in, so the map shows how risky a tick is once you find one, not how many ticks are in a given yard. Aroostook and Piscataquis are left unshaded because only 15 and 35 ticks were tested there, too few to say anything fair. Separately, Maine CDC counts reported illness in people: by that measure Penobscot had 255 Lyme cases in 2024, the same as Lincoln and more than Waldo. Sources: UMaine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab 2025 Annual Report; Maine CDC Lyme and Other Tickborne Illnesses 2024 Annual Report.
We are not putting those here to frighten anybody. We are putting them here because nearly every homeowner we talk to believes tick season ended back in July, and the numbers say otherwise. Knowledge really is the first line of defense on this one.
What to actually do over the next few weeks
Most of this is free and none of it requires us.
Do a body check the same day, not the next morning. Behind the knees, the waistline, the hairline, the armpits, behind the ears. Teach your kids those spots and make it a habit rather than a panic. And if the dogs are in and out all afternoon, they are carrying them right to the door.
If you find one, how you take it off matters more than people think. Clean the area with rubbing alcohol. Get a pair of pointy tweezers or a tick spoon right down on the skin and grab the tick as close to its head as you can. Pull straight up, slow and firm. Do not jerk it and do not twist it. Clean the bite again afterwards and wash your hands.
Do not use a match, petroleum jelly or nail polish. Those make the tick work harder and push more saliva into the wound, which raises your exposure instead of lowering it.
Then save it. Drop it in a zip-lock bag. If symptoms show up in the weeks after, you can send it to the University of Maine Tick Lab and have it identified, and you will be glad you kept it. There is more on the species, the life cycle and the removal steps on our Ticks in Maine guide.
If you want one of the spoons, we will bring you one. Schedule a free on-site property analysis and it comes with the visit. No pressure and no commitment, and whether you sign on with us or not, the spoon is yours to keep.
If you would rather we used something gentler
We get asked this a lot and it is a fair question. There are two ways we run tick management, and both of them work the same edges.
The first is an all-natural option built on essential oils: cedar wood oil, citronella, lemongrass, rosemary and peppermint. The EPA recognizes it as a minimum-risk product, it leaves a light herbal scent, and it lasts about 30 days. It is the right fit for a family that prefers plant-derived products, or for a property with lighter pressure.
The second is modeled after a natural compound found in chrysanthemum flowers, in the same family of ingredients your veterinarian uses in many flea and tick products for dogs. It sticks to the foliage and holds up longer, which is what heavier pressure calls for.
Either way it is four targeted visits across the season, timed to tick biology rather than a monthly calendar, reaching four to five feet up into the vegetation where they actually wait.
And here is the honest edge of it. We treat your property. We are not treating the woods beyond your property line, and no program anywhere makes a yard tick-free. What a program does is take the pressure down in the part of your yard your family actually uses, and then keep taking it down. If the pressure comes back while you are on a program, we come out, look at it, and treat it again at no charge.
20% off, through September 30
We are building next year's schedules right now, which is the easiest time of the year to change one. That is why the discount exists and why it ends when it does. And if you are currently with another company, send us a recent invoice and we will put a $50 credit on your account on top of the 20%.
Nothing is charged and nothing is scheduled from that page. You tell us about your property, we price it, and we come back to you.
Green Thumb has been working on Maine properties since 1986, and if there is one thing we would ask you to take from this, it is the calendar. If you stop thinking about ticks when the pool closes, you are stopping right before their busiest month of the year.
If you are not sure what your edges look like, or whether you need us at all, send us a photo or give us a call at 207-989-1433. We will tell you honestly, even if the answer is that you are fine.
Jeremy & the Green Thumb Team