While expanding the hunting season remains an important if methodical part of culling the Island’s overabundance of deer, who serve as a vector for a growing Island infestation of ticks, the wider usage of a relatively new state-run program has become a pivotal part of a Vineyard group’s efforts to be more aggressive in culling the Island’s deer population by 70 percent.
Tick Free MV, a local nonprofit whose mission is to mitigate the harm from tick-borne conditions, has been making efforts to expand the deer-harvesting capacity of the Island. To that end, the nonprofit says Deer Damage Permits (DDP) need to become a central part of the Island-wide effort to reduce tick-borne illnesses by killing off deer, who otherwise have no natural predator on Island.
These permits, issued by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife), allow agricultural property owners, such as working farms, conservation land, and some large private estates, to call in hunters to treat deer as pests on their property, outside the regulated deer hunting season. In short, it allows the Island to recognize a growing public health crisis and to work more quickly to reduce the spread of tick-borne illnesses, particularly a sudden rise in what is known as alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to meat and dairy caused by a bite from the lone star tick.
This program started in 2024, and the Island has received 12 DDP permits approved this year. However, state officials say they are not releasing the exact property location for the state permits to the public. Gov. Maura Healey was on the Island Wednesday, after the deadline for our print edition, but is likely to speak about this aggressive effort. To be effective, supporters say DDP permits will need to be issued on conservation lands, such as those belonging to Sheriff’s Meadow and the Trustees of Reservations, and will likely face pushback from some corners of the Island.
In an interview with The Times on Wednesday afternoon before the roundtable discussion at the Ag Hall,. Healey stated that she was in support of the effort to use DDPs to more aggressively cull the herd. “I’m interested to see what people have to say at the roundtable, but my philosophy is that we’ve gotta be doing anything and everything to deal with this,” said Healey. “I know the problems are not limited to deer, we’ve got mice and other things, but it’s a serious public health issue; that’s why I’m here.”
As for the large conservation groups on-Island, Healy said, “They have control of the land where a larger percentage of the deer are, so we gotta all be working together here.”
Deer are a primary host of adult ticks, which feed on the mammals’ blood and use them as vehicles, so reducing the herd has been a critical tick-mitigation issue. This winter, extensive mapping of the Island deer population was conducted in what is considered the most extensive survey of the herd ever done. Drone pilots counted exactly 4,681 deer. It is important to note that this survey was conducted at the lowest herd count of the year — both after 934 deer were harvested this fall and winter and before the birth of fawns in May and June.
“The number we targeted is 1,500 or less,” Virginia Barabatti, executive director of Tick Free MV, told The Times. That sharp cut to the herd is based on MassWildlife’s goal of having a density of 12 to 18 deer per square mile.
Toward this end, Barabatti said informational sessions on the damage permits were held in February, which she said helped boost applications.
“It’s distinct from regulated hunting, and it’s a special permit that allows the removal of deer,” Barbatti said.
Martin Feehan, MassWildlife deer and moose biologist, underscored that the permit was not open season for deer hunting, as has been assumed by many people. Only licensed hunters can be sub-permittees, with the property owner’s permission. And Feehan said while hunters can take up to two deer under the regulations, the rest of the deer need to be donated to the local processing facility.
While Feehan said DDPs can’t be the sole method of reducing the deer population, he highlighted them as an important part.
The increase in permit recipients is also a statewide phenomenon. Feehan said 100 permits have been issued across the state this year, quadruple the amount given in 2025. In turn, there are expectations of a similar increase in the number of deer killed last year under the program, which was 52.
“In the case of the Island, everything has been donated,” Feehan said.
So far this year, only two deer have been taken under the permits currently on the Island. But Feehan said “deer damage permit usage tends to increase during the summer,” around July through September. Last year, the Island had no permits awarded due to a lack of a processing center, according to Feehan.
But Feehan declined to identify the Vineyard properties that have permitted this year, saying that would expose “personally identifying information.” He referred The Times to the state’s public records request form.
Hunters like Brian Athearn, founder of the Martha’s Vineyard Hunt Club, are the equivalent of frontline troops in an offensive to address the crisis and cull the Island’s expansive herd of deer; however, they cannot reduce the population to the size necessary in the hunting season alone. Athearn told The Times that this is the first year the hunt club has been involved, and that in the past four months, the club has only harvested two deer, with Athearn himself harvesting one of them.
Athearn emphasized that the Island needs to come together for this program to be a success. “We want to respect the animals, we want to respect the community, and we want to respect the hunters,” he said. “The difficulty is that where the DDP permits are in fields that are already fenced in. We need to have permission to harvest where we hunt, and right now we can’t do that,” said Athearn. “If we can get the Land Bank and Sheriff’s Meadow to get DDP permits, then that’s a different story.
“The MV Hunt Club would like to be a central part in the organizing of the hunting of Martha’s Vineyard, and if we can get these nonprofits under one umbrella, then we can use hunting as a tool so that we can effectively send hunters into the places where the territories are dense with deer,” said Athearn.
While the Island alone might not have enough hunters to cull the population by 70 percent, hunters from across New England travel to the Island, especially because the season here is longer, and with these permits added, Athearn is confident that the hunters will come. “People have been reaching out; these people are coming down anyway — let’s have them come down and have them in an organized fashion,” he said.
Dan Athearn of Morning Glory Farms was encouraged to apply for a DDP after hearing Feehan at the Agricultural Hall this past February, presenting the solution to the overwhelming damage done by the deer population.
“We’d have a single crop of sweet corn where we could quantify the damage over $20,000 in a single year on one planting,” said Dan Athearn. “We have one or two fields where we still aren’t fenced and experienced terrible damage, where we considered even stopping farming in that field.”
While as a farmer Dan Athearn already held the legal right to kill deer on his land, now with the DDP he as a permit holder is allowed sub-permittees, of which he currently has 12, many of whom are enlisted from the MV Hunt Club.
“It’s important to never call it hunting. It’s not hunting, it’s deer removal,” added Morning Glory’s Dan Athearn.
Dan Athearn’s son is a sub-permittee holder, but the irony is not lost on him that his son is still hesitant to harvest the deer in the woods due entirely to the ticks. “He got all excited about it, and went to move a deer stand, [and] just came out covered in ticks,” said Athearn. “If he shoots a deer, he doesn’t want to track it into the woods, so there’s still that hesitation.”
Dan Athearn encouraged all farmers on the Island to get the permit, saying “there’s no downside.”
“If you have a big estate and there’s significant horticulture going on there, and there’s significant damage, that can count,” he added.
To make the deer elimination more effective, the Island needs to increase its processing capacity. The only deer processor on the Island is currently operated by the Martha’s Vineyard Hunt Club. Barabatti said her organization has partnered with the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society in the planning phase for a cold-storage and processing facility and that they even received a $50,000 grant from the West Chop Community Fund for this effort. Barabatti also said her group has been in contact with conservation groups on the Island to gauge interest in pursuing DDPs.
One group was the Trustees of Reservations. Mary Dettloff, Trustees communications director, said the conservation group allows seasonal hunting on four Vineyard properties: Menemsha Hills, the Brickyard, Long Point, and Cape Poge Wildlife Refuge. While they still need to review the permits with their ecology staff, Dettloff said the organization has been in contact with Tick Free MV about the DDP permits and is supportive of their effort.
“When you have an overpopulation of deer, they can cause both landscape and disease issues. Hunting is one of the most effective methods of population control for deer,” Dettloff said.
The state has also provided support toward the issue. In a bill passed Wednesday, June 17, hunting provisions were expanded in an effort to make a dent in the deer population and combat the tick crisis. “The bill updates Massachusetts’ hunting laws by permitting Sunday hunting, expanding legal crossbow use, modernizing archery regulations, and reducing certain hunting setback requirements near occupied dwellings,” a press release from the House stated.
While legislative changes do have an important impact, Jeff Levy, the CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Medical who’s been active in tick mitigation, believes that “the deer damage permit has much more potential to impact our ability to cull the herd than these legal changes. Legal changes are great, but all they’re doing is impacting the hunting season, which even at its new extended level for the Vineyard is only three months or three and a half months.”
This is not a problem that can be solved in a season. Deer reproduce at an exponential rate. “The hunting regulations are 10 percent of the solution, but the deer damage permits are maybe 90 percent,” said Levy.
Levy believes that if they applied, all Island groups would qualify. “If you’re really trying to cull the herd, the deer damage permit seems to me to be the single most important piece of the puzzle, and so I think it’s really, really important for as many people as possible who qualify to apply for these.”
There is a fine line between fear-mongering and acknowledging the issue at hand, and Levy believes that we have to take half a step back while talking about ticks and tick-borne illnesses. “Ticks are not a Martha-s Vineyard–only problem. Ticks are all over the world; there’s more alpha-gal in Arkansas and Kentucky and Missouri than here,” said Levy. “Zero people have ever died on this Island from alpha-gal. We’ve had ticks on this Island for decades, we’ve always dealt with ticks as part of living here, and yes, alpha-gal is not pleasant, but it’s not a death sentence.”
In addition to the tick-mitigation benefit, under the deer damage permit you have to give the deer to Share the Harvest, a program that provides an outlet for hunters to donate venison to residents facing food insecurity.
“My overall belief is this is going to be a long, hard road, but the great news is that so many different parts of our Island are focused on this, and we have the best chance that we’ve ever had of really getting the tick situation under control,” said Levy. “It’s for sure the biggest single vector in controlling ticks, because most ticks breed on the deer. It’s not the panacea, it’s not a silver bullet, it’s not going to solve the problem in and of itself. It’s the one thing we can do above all others that will have the biggest impact.”
As for the hunters, Levy said, “You’re no longer hunting. It’s not subject to hunting regulations; it’s really sort of akin to pest removal.”