Some of the different game and dep outfits were making the deer version
of a cow oiler with permethrin. I guess it was all experiment perhaps
to keep the grad students from boredom.
What they did was put corn for the deer in a bin that had paint rollers
with permethrin insecticide on them. When the deer lean in to eat the
corn the rollers deposited permethrin on their backs.
Now you probablty can't legally do it considering pesticide laws. But
it seems to me it would beat putting the stuff on the ground.
A few years back I saw cotton waste treated with permethrin for the
mice to build nests with. Mice are the other host for the deer tick.
No telling what it does to the bumblebees who search out abandoned
mouse nests in the spring to raise their own young in.