I did end up nuking the yard with pesticide that year.
Since then I've ground up the leaves this time of year and pile them up to compost them. In spring and summer I bag grass clippings and stuff those into the pile of composting leaves and it's amazing how hot those clippings get. Hot enough to roast any ticks in there for sure. So for the past few years we've had almost no ticks at all during the warm season. And I haven't had to use any pesticides.
And possums! When I learned 1) how utterly harmless possums are and 2) how voraciously they love to eat ticks, they became my favorite backyard visitors.
If you find a possum in your yard, leave ‘em be and count yourself lucky.
We have possums here too, and they occasionally come up to our front porch to eat our dogs food.
We also have a lot of deer here and they carry ticks that get huge on them, so they're spreading them around wherever they go. We're surrounded on 3 sides by Army Corp land that's forest and filled with critters that spread them around.
Yeah we've had quite a few chickens over the years, but we also have a lot of raccoons and fox and coyotes other chicken eating predators here. Just a couple years ago I was cleaning our coop and heard the chickens squawking like crazy and I ran outside to see what was causing the commotion and there was a Golden Eagle that had one of our chickens in it claws trying to fly off.
I'd never seen a Golden Eagle before and it is by far the biggest bird I've ever seen. They're huge! I yelled at it and waved my arms (trying to look big) and it finally let go and flew off.
Since then I've ground up the leaves this time of year and pile them up to compost them. In spring and summer I bag grass clippings and stuff those into the pile of composting leaves and it's amazing how hot those clippings get. Hot enough to roast any ticks in there for sure. So for the past few years we've had almost no ticks at all during the warm season. And I haven't had to use any pesticides.