Analysis of Night-Spotlighting Counts for White-tailed Deer: Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 1991-2006

Concern over burgeoning deer populations has spread widely due to direct and indirect linkages to human health and safety (Conover et al. 1995). For example, it is common knowledge that deer change the composition and structure of forest communities (Cote et al. 2004), play an important role in the transmission of Lyme disease (Jones et al. 1998), cause thousands of automobile collisions (Romin and Bissonette 1996), and eat millions of dollars of cultivated vegetation and agricultural crops annually (Curtis and Richmond 1994). Counts