Category Archives: Wildlife Management & Lyme disease

The Lyme Disease Study Committee met last Monday.  At that time I learned that-

• Our second annual deer hunt is successfully proceeding without issues
• Dover did a study that found more ticks in shady areas that sunny areas
• Westboro is planning on starting a deer hunt to lower the number of vehicle collisions with deer, as they feel it is increasing their auto insurance rates.  They have been experiencing 23-33 collisions a year.
• Medfield experiences about 45 vehicle collisions with deer a year.

Connecticut seems to be doing more so far to control deer over population than Massachusetts.  See this remarkably complete and well written booklet put out  by the Conn. Dept. of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Natural Resources, Wildlife Division, and shared with me by Frank Perry, called Managing Urban Deer in Connecticut.  http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/urbandeer07.pdf

Quick take always =

1. Hunting seems to be the only cost effective way to reduce the number of deer.
2. When deer numbers are reduced, tick numbers do follow suit.
3. No safety problems from controlled hunts.
4. Reducing deer numbers increases biodiversity.
5. Deer live in such a small area that reducing deer numbers in one area will have an ongoing effect, as it takes time for the area to be repopulated by deer moving in from other areas.

Also, I heard from a Medfield Sportsman Club member that their members appreciated the greater hunting opportunities in town, and thought the program had been well run.

The Lyme disease study committee chair, Chris Kaldy, circulated the link to a website of a municipal coalition in Fairfield  County, CT that is addressing controlling deer over-population on a regional basis.  The website is well organized and full of useful information.

Next meeting of the Medfield Lyme disease study committee is next Monday at 7 PM at the Town House.

http://www.deeralliance.com/

Thursday April 26, 2012 at 7:30 pm

The Center at Medfield

1 Ice House Road, Medfield, MA

Learn how to protect your family and pets from

Lyme Disease and Other Tick Borne Illnesses

Sponsored by:

The Medfield Lyme Disease Study Committee

http://www.town.medfield.net/index.cfm?pid=18675

At the January 17, 2012 Board of Selectmen meeting, the Lyme disease study committee submitted a report on its extremely successful first year of work, and its plans for the future.  To date

• 27 deer culled
• zero safety issues
• comprehensive system of vetting the hunters created and implemented
• professional group of hunters recruited
• many illegal tree stands removed
• hunters became the eyes and ears of the town in the woods, and the stewards of the Medfield forests, both alerting the town to dumping and helping to clear trails
• education program planned for April
• information distributed in the schools via the Thursday Packets and working with the school nurses
• tick posters placed

The selectmen authorized the committee to continue its good work for the upcoming year.  Plans include adding more lands to the areas hunted, and giving the hunters the winter to scout the best hunting spots.

See the committee’s report – https://medfield02052.blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/20120117-committee-report-to-bos.pdf

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the deer culling has been hugely successful thus far, and a lot of the hunting season remains.  18 deer have been culled so far, one less than the 19 Dover got in its whole first year of deer culling a year ago.  More bucks than does have been taken.  The deer are reported to be  covered with hundreds of ticks.

Recent reports have many ticks still active, despite the colder weather.

Dr. Sam Telford is an entomologist at Tufts Veterinary School, who has spoken twice at past Lyme disease educational forums in town.  He emailed the chair of the Medfield Lyme disease study committee as follows:

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I am pleased to hear that Medfield is taking some steps to reduce the burden of Lyme disease.  I was just out at Rocky Woods a couple of days ago…and noted that there is a sign up about hunting.  By the way, in case people complain that there are lots of ticks this year, this is a regional observation.  Adult deer ticks are up probably 3-5 times over what we have seen over the last 2 years.  This extends down to RI and the Cape and I see it here in Grafton.  Rocky Woods was very good collecting for me, I may have gotten 300 ticks in an hour.  So people should take care to use personal protection right now.  (My guess is that the wet and cool summer increased tick survival; and the number of grey squirrels was tremendous this summer, and because they feed a lot of nymphal ticks there may have been better feeding success to make all the adult ticks.)