Wayne Peace received a letter from Robert R. Pinger, Ph.D.,Director of Public Health Entomology Lab at Ball State University Department of Physiology and Health Science.

Thanking Ripley County for participating in the 2005 deer checking effort.

Our main purpose was to gain a clearer picture of the current distribution of blacklegged ticks
(=deer ticks or Lyme disease). Ixodes Scapularis in eastern Indiana. Our picture is still rather
incomplete, but we did manage to add a couple of new county records. The following is a brief summary of the results.

  1.    We saw deer from 29 counties
  2.    Ixodes scapularis ticks were recovered from deer killed in seven of these counties
  3.    In Pulaski County, 82.5% of the deer examined were infected with blacklegged ticks
  4.    In eastern Indiana, infested deer were shot in Franklin, Ripley, Steuben and Wayne
         Counties
  5.    While Blacklegged ticks had been previously reported in Franklin and Ripley Counties
  6.    Infestation rates on deer are much lower in eastern Indiana  that in the northwestern
         Indiana ( Pulaki County).
  7.    Ticks were also found on deer in Marshall and Elkhart Counties in this year's survey,
         but these were not new county records. Also, the number of deer examined from
         Elkhart County was not recorded.