The rule is if you are anywhere near high grass you can bet you can find ticks there. My parents have a quite large garden with private forest (2,5 acres or 1 hectare of fenced terrain) and there is no week in summer where cat would not come back with big tick attached to it. There were two separate occasions where one of their dogs almost died from fewer after tick bite (and we are talking about dog that have every conceivable tick preventive measure applied)