My middle son did a lot of research on ticks in college and as a postgrad. They are as hardy as they can be. -10 to 120 degrees for most ticks can be easily survived. Extreme wet or dry makes no difference. Most chemicals do not bother them. With females producing 3,000-6,000 eggs rapid population growth is always right around the corner. And they happily accept ant warm blooded mammal as a food source. A very tough little arachnoid. Insects you can bait, but not arachnoids. Fresh host or meals only.

In his lab they raised different types of ticks. Sometimes times would have a million ticks in the fridge or light freezer. Use to make my skin crawl to go into that lab. He was trying to see what environment stresses made ticks weaker and what chemicals were more effective under different conditions. That way your chemical controls could be more effective. He will tell you if ticks have souls he is dambed because he figures he has killed millions if not tens of millions of them.

Since baby quail are an excellent way to reduce tick numbers, they eat them like candy, I think the Federal Government needs to spend countless millions oo billions of dollars on reintroducing quail back into their native range as a natural, chemical free way to reduce ticks and all the tick born diseases they spread. The first thousand birds can be released on my farms, followed by repeated releases to bring bird numbers up and tick numbers down. No more than a decade or two will be needed to see if the program works. As a test of its effectiveness Ill harvest birds in the Fall and check myself and dog for ticks. If any are found we can increase the number of quail released next year. Might need other volunteers to help with this important study. Im sure others here will volunteer in the name of the children and science.