The voicemails often pile up in Kevin Racicot’s inbox even before dawn. As an animal control officer for the town of Middleborough, he is the guy who gets called in whenever someone crashes into a deer on a town roadway.
Sometimes, the drivers are frustrated because of the damage to their cars, he said. “Sometimes, people are amazed to see deer get up and run away after they get hit.”
These days, the job keeps Racicot exceptionally busy, as the deer population in the state has risen dramatically in recent years. The latest estimate puts the statewide tally at a minimum of 160,000, roughly double what it was in the 1990s, according to MassWildlife, the state agency tasked with monitoring and conserving wildlife.
“In general, the population growth is exponential,” said Martin Feehan, the state deer and moose biologist. “All of this is just adding to a bigger and bigger problem.”
The spike in deer population isn’t unique to Massachusetts. It’s happening across much of New England. But the problem is far more acute in Eastern Massachusetts than most of New England, in part because towns there have heavily restricted hunting access. As winter descends, and deer start moving around more in search of scarce food and mates, officials are warning that the effects of overpopulation, such as deer-involved car collisions, will become more glaring.
The deer population increase statewide has been fueled by a decline in deer’s top predators: wolves, mountain lions, and bears. And it comes with a host of negative consequence affecting motorists, the environment, and even public health, including the spread of Lyme disease. Amid this increase, local municipalities, the state, and Indigenous tribes have not been on the same page on how to respond.
What’s not up for debate, though, is that the deer population in some parts of Massachusetts has gotten out of control.
The ideal deer density is generally around 12 to 18 deer per square mile, according to MassWildlife. Some portions of Eastern Massachusetts now have more than 50 deer per square mile.
The state has tried to introduce measures in recent years to curb the explosive growth of the deer population, like lifting the cap on how many does and fawns can be hunted in much of Eastern Massachusetts, Feehan said. But limitations on hunting access in that area have limited the impact of those programs.
“Frankly, everything I’m doing right now is to run as fast as possible just to stay in the same place,” he said. “It’s a tough time to be a deer biologist.”
Even though neighboring states are also seeing an increase in their deer populations, deer biologists in those areas are not dealing with the same level of resistance to hunting and thus have more tools to manage the issue.
“I think it’s very different here from Massachusetts,” said Nathan Bieber, a deer biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “The [hunting] tradition is still alive and well here in Maine.”
Maine hunters kill more than twice as many deer each year, on average, compared to hunters in Massachusetts, despite Maine’s population being five times smaller, according to data from each state’s wildlife department.
Deer herds in northern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have also been thinned out by severe winter storms over the last several decades. Those winter storms used to kill a lot of deer in Massachusetts, too, Feehan said. But in the last several decades, the storms have not had the same bite due to climate change.
With so many deer out and about now in Massachusetts, one of the more obvious impacts has been the rise in deer roadkill.
In Middleborough, where Racicot works, there were 272 reported car collisions involving deer from 2018 to 2022, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Transportation. That was the second-highest tally of any community, behind only Westport, which had 337.
“If you told me that statistic before I started this job, I would’ve said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,‘ ” Racicot said. “Now working in this field, I see it firsthand.”
Statewide, the number of deer-involved car collisions jumped 20 percent during those years, from just under 3,300 in 2018 to more than 3,900 in 2022, data show.
In general, car collisions involving deer increase early in the winter. But with more deer than ever in the state, the early-winter bump has become a bigger and bigger spike, to the detriment of motorists.
Although car collisions are the most visible consequence of the deer population boom, they are by no means the only impact.
One of the other major concerns is that deer tend to eat up all the small seeds and saplings that help rejuvenate forests, said Feehan.
“In areas with high deer populations, we don’t see any of those forests regenerating,” he said.
Along coastlines, deer’s penchant for eating young plants contributes to erosion, as the animals consume many of the native species that anchor the shoreline.
Other animal species are also threatened by the booming number of deer. A brain worm parasite that many deer carry has wreaked havoc on local moose, causing erratic behavior, paralysis, and even death.
Areas with higher deer populations also tend to suffer from higher prevalence of Lyme disease among humans, because deer are magnets for ticks that can adhere to humans and spread the disease.
What is the solution?
By far the easiest and cheapest way to get the deer population back under control is to expand hunting access in areas with the most deer, some experts say.
MassWildlife has tried to encourage more hunting in those areas by giving out more permits to hunt and by launching the Share the Harvest Program two years ago, which helps hunters donate some of their kill to community members in need.
Although Feehan said those efforts have increased deer kills in some areas, they have not done enough to halt deer population growth. That’s because more and more communities have imposed restrictions that prevent hunters from actually using those permits.
Some municipalities have outright banned the firing of guns on their lands. Others now require written permission from the local government to hunt. And others have banned hunting altogether. Feehan said that the restrictions are especially prevalent in the suburbs of Boston, Worcester, and Springfield.
The deer population crisis in Eastern Massachusetts could also be eased if deer were able to migrate westward, said Keshia Lawrence, a Harvard Forest Indigenous education specialist and member of the Ramapough Munsee Lenape tribe. But there are barriers to that, too.
Big road development projects have essentially trapped many deer in the eastern portion of the state by blocking their natural migratory pathways, Lawrence said. Those roadway layouts are one of the other reasons that so many deer keep getting hit by cars.
Lawrence said she, too, wants a solution to the deer population boom, but the problem is more nuanced for many Indigenous tribes who consider deer sacred.
“Finding the balance is still the question,” she said.
Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.