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Report from Stu Chaifetz:
Effect of Deer Management Lyme Disease
\There are those who know the power of fear, and prey upon it to furthertheir own agenda. This is the sad reality of what has happened with theissue of Lyme disease. The truth is that deer are not the cause of thisdisease, and killing them will not make anyone safer. Lyme disease is areason to be watchful for ticks on your body, not a reason to kill deer.

At the Aug. 5, 1993 Assembly Environment Committee, James Blumenstock, Director of New Jersey Consumer Health Services, spoke about
Lyme disease. The following is a basic summary of his main points:

There is no significant relationship between deer management, specifically population control efforts, and the level of deer ticks and the incidence of Lyme disease for the following reasons:

1. Nymphs, (a stage of the tick) which are responsible for most of the cases, get their blood meals on the white footed mouse, not the deer.

2. Adult ticks will adapt if you reduce or remove deer from the area, they will seek alternative hosts.

3. Environmental/ecological control efforts should be the focus in reducing tick populations. Control the disease vector, rather than the
host.
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Another important fact about Lyme disease comes from an article in Consumers Reports:

"Killing deer has been suggested as a way to attack Lyme disease. But
experts say such action is premature and dangerous. Deprived of their usual hosts, infected adult ticks become a more immediate nuisance,
as happened when deer on an island off Massachusetts were virtually exterminated. Wandering ticks threatened the populace as they searched for new hosts."                                                           

If the slaughter of nearly every deer made matters worse, then using
hunting to reduce the occurrence of Lyme disease is unwise and
dangerous.                                              (Consumers Reports June, 1988)


Letter from Barbara L. Metzler (excerpt)

For anyone, including Mrs. Anderson, who believes that hunting deer will stop the spread of Lyme disease, I have a Star Ledger article about a three-year study conducted by doctors at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and published recently in The Lancet , the prestigious British medical journal.  I quote: "The single most significant carrier of Lyme disease lurks not in deep, dark forests, but in parks, on farms and even in the tall grass of suburban backyards. That carrier- the one most likely to bring Lyme-infected ticks in contact with human beings-- is not the white-tailed deer, but the white-footed mouse according to doctors at UMDNJ. There is a misconception among most people that deer are the culprit. But no; it's really the mice." (I would like to add that there are products on the market such as Damminix that control the ticks without injuring the mice.)

Why there are too many deer
More opinions of deer populations 236
Canada goose populations