Whether it is one of Door County’s five state parks or your own backyard, you may want to make sure you are not bringing home some unwanted wildlife.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, emergency rooms across the state are seeing 61 tick bites per 10,000 visits. While that is down from last year’s pace, it remains the second-highest rate recorded over the past five years.

In both 2025 and 2026, the highest rates of the year occurred during the last week of May, with 80 tick bites per 10,000 visits in 2025 and 73 in 2026.

Lyric Bartholomay, director of the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Wisconsin Public Radio earlier this year that an unseasonably warm March led to an earlier start to tick season.

Door County Public Health Department officials Katie Van Lanen and Holly Neri say prevention is key because ticks can carry diseases that may have both short- and long-term effects on a person's health.

Van Lanen and Neri recommend wearing long sleeves and pants when possible, checking yourself and others for ticks throughout the day, and showering within two hours of spending time outdoors to help reduce the risk of tick-borne illness.