Stepping up an offensive on ticks

Brian Athearn, dressed in camouflage, scaled a tree with his crossbow near the West Tisbury headquarters of the Martha’s Vineyard Hunt Club, where Island deer hunters gather for the camaraderie and the opportunity to field-dress, skin, and butcher deer.

But in the middle of shotgun season, there’s an unmistakable sense of anxiety, not about stray shots or the long, quiet hours the hunters may have to wait, or the frigid temperatures they endure for a good shot. A fear that consumes them now is of a small arachnid that’s taken over the Island, and in some ways made the hunters themselves the prey.

Ticks and tick-borne illness have become a public health crisis, according to data from Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and public health officials. And the data indicates that the amount of documented cases for all tick-borne infections occur at a much higher rate on Martha’s Vineyard than the rest of the state. The Island’s problem has even reached officials who came to the Island on Wednesday to discuss the crisis.

“Hunting has always been woven into Massachusetts’ history – supporting families, boosting local economies, and helping keep our deer populations healthy,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said in the press release. “These expanded regulations carry that tradition forward, creating more opportunities for hunters while protecting public health and ensuring we’re maintaining balance in our wildlife populations.”

Ticks have long posed a threat to the Island, but the big news these days is the recent surge of alpha-gal syndrome, a relatively new but severe allergy to meat and dairy that can be developed from a lone star tick bite. Experts say the lone star ticks and the spectre of alpha-gal have exacerbated the crisis beyond the more familiar but equally dreaded tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease. 

Deer hunters like Athearn and his son, Hunter, are the equivalent of front-line troops in an offensive to address the crisis and cull the Island’s expansive herd of deer, which are known to carry the ticks and are seen as the vector through which the crisis is able to occur. Last week, a nonprofit initiative officially launched to combat this documented spike in infections. Tick experts, medical professionals, public health officials, and concerned Islanders are all a part of Tick Free MV, where the main goal is to target the abundant deer population, a frequent host for ticks, and reduce the prevalence of tick-borne conditions on the Island. After the information session Wednesday, state officials also announced an expansion of the hunting season to help the effort.

And hunters play an important role in this effort, though they risk their health to do so, as they spend long hours in the woods in tick-infected areas, and haul dead deer carpeted in them to be processed. Indeed, both Athearns say they have alpha-gal, and Hunter had at least one allergy attack that landed him in the emergency room.

The irony is not lost on them that they can no longer eat venison due to the allergy. But they say they won’t give up their passion for the sport. They remain avid hunters because they can cull the herd and still preserve the sport as a valuable and sustainable source of meat on an Island that suffers from a great deal of food insecurity.

Part of the Tick Free MV program is a partnership with Island Grown Initiative and the hunt club, where the nonprofit gives $100 for every buck and $150 for every doe to hunters who donate to the Venison Donation Program, or state Share the Harvest Program, which is an initiative that allows hunters to donate the meat to food-insecure residents.

“The tick problem, which was a teeny-weeny annoyance when we were on the Vineyard 40 years ago, has gone from an annoyance to a danger, and to really, at this point, I think, an existential threat to the whole Vineyard,” Eugene Ludwig, a seasonal resident who helped start and incorporate the nonprofit, said. “For those of us who love the Island and love the people of the Island, and worry about them and their children, this is a terrifying threat.”

Asked about why he hunts when he has alpha-gal syndrome, Athearn said, “Honestly, I am leaning into it. All my life, I hunted, ate meat, drank, and had a blast doing all of it. Now it’s different. And I am happy about getting to keep on hunting and feeding our community … even if I can’t eat the meat myself. I honestly don’t care about it that much.”

Data from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital showed that in 2020, out of nine tests, two Islanders had contracted alpha-gal, but in 2024, that number rose to 523 positives out of 1,254 tests. Hospital officials also recently shared year-to-date tests for alpha-gal, and as of last week, there were 1,632 tests, 724 of which were positive — 44 percent positivity rate so far this year. 

Tick Free MV also plans to bring state-of-the-art thermal drone specialists to scan every inch of the land and determine areas of high traffic for deer. Jeff Levy, the co-chair of Tick Free MV and CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Medical, said there’s not enough data on the number of deer on the Island, and in turn, less information about the prevalence of ticks.

Lone stars, at the very least, have taken over the Island. Dick Johnson, former lead of the Island’s tick program and now on the nonprofit’s board of directors, didn’t even know there were lone star ticks on the Island when he started in 2011. He also didn’t expect them to become a problem as fast as they did. “I did not expect it to happen this fast, that there would be so many ticks all across the Island,” he said.

But the nonprofit faces the issue of a decrease in Island hunters before it’s even really started. “It used to be as big as the Derby,” Bret Stearns, who is part of the board of directors of the nonprofit and works for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), for the Chilmark Police Department, and as an EMT for Tri-Town Ambulance, said. “You couldn’t go by Alley’s General Store and not see orange jackets and orange hats,” which hunters use for visibility. Stearns added that as an EMT, he’s seen the number of alpha-gal calls “gone crazy,” as well as the number of anaphylaxis cases and emergencies.

Patrick Roden-Reynolds, public health biologist, Island tick expert, and advisor for Tick Free MV, said this year’s shotgun season is slow. And this decrease is due to a multitude of reasons.

Among environmental factors, Roden-Reynolds said the continual drop in harvest numbers is hunter participation, which he attributes in part to a culture change.

Hunting used to be a staple in every American family, and used a means of survival, but that’s no longer the truth. “The tradition is not being passed down, and hunting has just become more difficult sometimes, with access to private properties or access to good hunting grounds.” The practice requires guidance, Stearns agreed, and there are fewer people who can do that these days.

And so, part of Tick Free MV’s agenda is to start a hunter mentorship program, which Roden-Reynolds said could begin by next season. It would teach both new and young hunters about hunter safety, and allow them to shadow experienced hunters in the field.

It’s also true that there are fewer hunters in the woods because of ticks and tick-borne conditions. Several times just in the past week, Roden-Reynolds heard local and off-Island hunters talk about alpha-gal at the shotgun check station, where he does tick collections of harvested deer. One party said some of their friends didn’t want to come this year because of concerns about the lone star tick, though Roden-Reynolds tried to assure them that the risk of alpha-gal decreases in November and December. 

Athearn agreed that there are some deer hunters who don’t want to hunt as much because of a fear of ticks, but said he doesn’t know anyone personally.

While he spoke, Brent Nanatovic, 40, an ironworker and passionate deer hunter, spoke up. “I think about it a lot,” he said.

He added that a tick-borne illness can ruin your life, and said that he honestly doesn’t know what he would do if he got alpha-gal and could not eat meat.

That won’t stop him, though: “There are certain passions in my life that I enjoy that involve risks. I have lived in areas with venomous snakes like water moccasins, but that did not stop me from fishing. I guess I feel the same way about this risk-reward equation with ticks and deer hunting.”Jeffrey Day, hunter safety program lead instructor for the state at the Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club, has alpha-gal, and didn’t hunt last year. Like Athearn, his interest was revitalized through the state program, because he can put food on somebody else’s family table in the hard times of winter on the Island. But he sees how people are deterred when the risk is a tick-borne allergy to red meat.

Still, he also knows that people find purpose in their hunt, whether that’s to cull the deer herd and improve the environment, decrease the amount of ticks, or feed other locals. Day said attendance of his hunter safety course remains steady, and even though previously many people joined to fulfill a requirement to carry a firearm, about three-quarters of his class this year were there because they wanted to use bow and arrows to hunt. The class is held for free every April or November, and is assisted by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).

Day also said regulations can be restrictive for hunters, especially the inability to hunt on Sundays. Massachusetts is one of two states in the country that does not allow Sunday hunting.

On the Island, archery season goes from October through the end of January, but guns are more regulated, and so shotgun season is contained to the first two weeks of December.

However, after an information and coordination meeting regarding ticks and deer with representatives from the state Wednesday, a press release announced that the state expanded the winter primitive firearm and bowhunting season on the Island by an additional two weeks into February. This is the first year that the season extends through January for primitive arms, which means just the use of muzzleloaders and archery. The season will now run from Jan. 1 through Feb. 14, 2026. They also tacked on an additional hunting season next fall, from Sept. 21 through Oct. 1 in 2026 for primitive firearms and archery.

Tom O’Shea, the department of fish and game commissioner, also announced that there are plans to hold public listening sessions in early 2026 to consider other tools to manage the deer population, such as expanded hunting season or hunting on Sundays, the press release said.

There are also several bills in the state legislature to try to encourage an increase in hunters — whether that’s universal access to more efficient and easier-to-use crossbows (currently limited to people who suffer from a disability), rather than bow and arrow, to less stringent rules on access to land. There has been some progress, however. Roden-Reynolds also said though there’s no official proposal yet, “there’s talks” of an extension to shotgun season.

The creation of this nonprofit couldn’t come at a more dire time. Levy called alpha-gal the “tipping point” of the public health crisis and pointed to recent news of the death of a man in New Jersey, the first well-documented fatality in the U.S. of an alpha-gal-related allergic reaction from food exposure.

“We can’t be in the woods, we can’t roll in the grass, and it’s like, How do we get that back? How do we allow people to live here — the way they want to live here?” Levy questioned.

Virginia Barbatti, who comes on as executive director and the only full-time employee of Tick Free MV next week, said the tick problem is personal. Barbatti, who is the current developmental director at Island Grown Initiative, was a summer resident who moved full-time to the Island in 2020. “The number of people I know who are sick, and this general sense that it’s only a matter of time before I’ll get sick, or my friends will get sick, or other friends and family, my children, that’s really been weighing on me,” she said.

Barbatti said she thinks Tick Free MV is in a strong position to actually make a difference on the issue that can impact the fragile Island economy, already hit by an affordability crisis, food insecurity, and healthcare access, that heavily relies on tourism.

She sees the role of Tick Free MV as a backbone organization to convene different stakeholders on a complex issue that touches areas from medical to field research to prevention and education. Barbatti is joined by co-chairs Levy and Megan Chernin, and a board of directors that includes Ludwig, Stearns, Johnson, Carol Biondi, and Isabelle Lew. Senior advisors include Roden-Reynolds, Lea Hamner, Mary Breslauer, Maura Valley, and Sam Telford. Barbatti added that this is the first “convening organization on this issue” for the Island.

Athearn just hopes that deer management can be done in a responsible way, and referenced that he doesn’t want Martha’s Vineyard to become another Monhegan Island, where the deer herd was eliminated in the late ’90s in Maine.

“We’re not against the deer. There will always be a reasonable deer population on the Island. We want to just basically get rid of the ticks or disease, and hopefully over time there will be a variety of different interventions that will solve the problem,” Ludwig said. “But right now, we have way too many deer on the Island, and that is the heart of the problem, and the best way to control the problem; we have to almost immediately cull the herd down to a sustainable, appropriate size. If we don’t do that, we will not solve the problem for years, if ever.”