Those Cute Deer on Your Lawn Are Dropping Disease-Ridden Ticks in Your Yard
Sad, but true… Deer may have at least 10 to 50 female ticks attaching and dropping off each day through the fall and spring when adult ticks are active. Each female tick lays around 2,000 eggs before dying.* That is a huge number of ticks! While other animals like raccoons, skunks, and foxes carry ticks too, deer are the clear tick MVPs, responsible for between 50 to 94% of all engorged female ticks in the environment.
And here’s the kicker:
Deer don’t spread Lyme disease bacteria directly (they don’t infect the ticks). But by being the romantic bed & breakfast for adult ticks, they massively boost tick populations near where we live. More ticks = more bites = more disease risk.
Where Deer Go, Ticks Follow
Back in the 1800s, deer populations plummeted due to habitat loss and overhunting. Lyme disease? Not a thing anyone noticed. Fast-forward to today: the forests are back, the deer are booming (from just 12 deer in Connecticut in 1896 to over 76,000 today!), and ticks are thriving coast to coast.
Lyme disease (and other tick-borne nasties like babesiosis and anaplasmosis) skyrocketed along with the deer. In Connecticut alone, 3,000 cases of Lyme are reported annually—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as it likely represents only 10% of the real cases.
What Happens When You Kick Deer Out?
On Monhegan Island, Maine, deer were virtually eliminated — and with them, the blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) nearly disappeared. Other places saw big drops in ticks and Lyme risk just by reducing deer numbers. A few highlights:
- Great Island, MA cut deer by 97% and saw tick populations on mice drop by over 50%—Lyme disease cases fell from 16% of the community to almost nothing.
- Mumford Cove, CT dropped deer numbers by 92% and Lyme disease cases fell from 30 to fewer than 5 in three years.
- Bluff Point, CT reduced deer from >200 to ~30 per square mile and saw a 90% drop in ticks.
Deer Control: Your Options (Some More Practical Than Others)
- Deer Fencing – Effective in small areas, but expensive and impractical for whole neighborhoods.
- Treating Deer with Pesticides – Devices like the “4-Poster” coat deer with tick-killing permethrin when they feed. They’ve cut tick numbers by 60-97% in various trials.
- Deer Reduction (aka hunting) – Proven effective, but… you guessed it, not everyone loves the idea. Communities that can stomach it and organize well have seen the biggest results.
The Bottom Line
Deer don’t give you Lyme disease — but without them, ticks would have a much harder time crashing your backyard barbecue. Managing deer populations (even modestly) can dramatically reduce tick numbers and lower your risk of tick-borne illness.
Next time you spot Bambi nibbling your tulips, remember:
He might be cuter than a raccoon, but he’s hosting a tick party you don’t want to attend.
So, while you don’t need to give deer the stink eye every time they cross your yard, it might be worth rethinking that salt lick and deer feeder. Fewer deer = fewer ticks = and fewer chances to spend your summer Googling “bullseye rash” at midnight.
*https://www.beaconfalls-ct.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif4141/f/uploads/deer_ticks_fact_sheet.pdf
