The Complete Maine and New Hampshire Tick and Lyme Guide

If you live in Maine or New Hampshire, you already know the rhythm. The snow goes, the mud comes, the blackflies arrive, and then the ticks. What has changed in the last decade is how many ticks there are, how long they stay active, and how many of them are carrying something that can make you sick. In 2024 Maine recorded an all-time high of 3,218 confirmed and probable Lyme disease cases, up from 2,942 the year before and roughly 2,167 back in 2019. That is not a blip. It is a trend the state has been watching climb for years.

Why this corner of the country sits at the center of the tick problem

Northern New England is not unlucky by accident. The blacklegged tick, which most people call the deer tick, thrives in exactly the kind of habitat that covers our two states: woods, leaf litter, brushy edges where lawn meets forest, and the deer and white-footed mice that keep the tick’s life cycle running. Add mild winters that no longer reliably kill off the population, and you get a longer season with more ticks in it.

The numbers back this up. In 2023, the states with the highest Lyme incidence per capita were Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine, with Maine recording about 213 cases per 100,000 people. New Hampshire’s health department puts it plainly, saying the Granite State “continues to have one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the nation.” Nationally, more than 89,000 Lyme cases were reported to the CDC in 2023. A large share of that burden lands here in the Northeast.

Maine CDC has tied part of the recent rise to mild winters that let deer ticks stay active longer into the cold months. A tick does not punch a clock. When the ground is not frozen and the air stays above freezing, it can keep looking for a host.

The numbers behind the headlines

Lyme gets the attention, but it is not the only thing the deer tick carries. Anaplasmosis has climbed fast. Maine recorded 1,284 anaplasmosis cases in 2024, up from 777 the year before, which made it the second most common tickborne disease in the state. Same tick, different bug. The blacklegged tick can also transmit the parasites behind babesiosis, the bacterium behind Borrelia miyamotoi, and the rare but dangerous Powassan virus.

For a sense of scale that is harder to argue with than a statewide tally, look at what one lab finds when people mail in the ticks they pull off themselves. That is where the University of Maine comes in.

What the UMaine Tick Lab found inside Maine’s ticks

The University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab in Orono runs a public surveillance program. Residents send in ticks, the lab identifies them, and for a fee it tests them for pathogens. In 2024 the lab processed 4,776 submissions from 398 towns spread across all 16 Maine counties. Of those, 3,650 were deer ticks and 1,045 were American dog ticks.

Here is the part worth sitting with. Of the deer ticks the lab tested, 41.5% carried the bacterium that causes Lyme. About 12% carried the parasite behind babesiosis, 9.7% carried the anaplasmosis pathogen, and 1.1% carried Powassan virus. Roughly two of every five deer ticks in that sample were infected with Lyme alone.

The lab’s data also says something useful about where people actually run into ticks. In 2024, 68% of reported tick exposures happened on the person’s own property. Yardwork was the single most common activity, accounting for about a third of incidents. And only 16% of people reported using any kind of protection. The danger is not some remote stretch of the Appalachian Trail. It is the back corner of the yard on a Saturday morning. Griffin Dill, who coordinates the lab, has said tickborne diseases “remain a serious, statewide public health concern.” The lab tests ticks for about $20 each, which makes it a concrete resource rather than an abstraction. We cover the submission process in more detail in our guide to sending a tick for testing through the UMaine and UNH labs.

Which tick, and when the season peaks

The species that matters most for disease here is Ixodes scapularis, the blacklegged or deer tick. The CDC names it as the carrier of Lyme across the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and north-central United States, and the same tick spreads anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Borrelia miyamotoi, and Powassan virus. The American dog tick, the other common one in Maine, is a different animal with a different and shorter list of concerns.

Timing matters because of a small detail with big consequences. A blacklegged tick generally has to stay attached for more than 24 hours before it can pass on the Lyme bacterium. Pull it off within a day and you sharply lower your risk. The catch is the nymph. Nymphal ticks, active roughly April through July, are about the size of a poppy seed, and they are responsible for most spring and summer infections precisely because they are so easy to miss. An adult tick you might feel or spot. A nymph you can shower past without noticing.

Recognizing early Lyme

The rash everyone has heard about is real, but the mythology around it causes problems. Erythema migrans, the expanding skin rash, shows up days to weeks after a bite in roughly 70% of Lyme cases. The classic bull’s-eye with a clear center, though, appeared in only about 37% of patients in one North American study, and the American Family Physician journal has noted that the bull’s-eye pattern is not required to diagnose Lyme. A solid, spreading red patch counts too.

Maine has its own wrinkle. Maine CDC reports the rash in only about 50% of Maine cases, below the national figure of 70 to 80%. So waiting for a textbook bull’s-eye before you take a bite seriously is a mistake here. Early Lyme can also show up as fatigue, fever, headache, and aching joints, the kind of symptoms easy to write off as a summer cold.

Testing has its own timing problem. The CDC recommends a two-tier blood test, pairing a sensitive first screen with a confirmatory test. Both look for antibodies, and your body needs a few weeks to make them. Test too early and you can get a false negative even though the infection is real. That is one reason providers in high-incidence states lean on the clinical picture, the rash, the symptoms, the recent exposure, rather than waiting on a lab result that may not have caught up yet. We go deeper into the rash and its many looks in our piece on identifying Lyme’s early signs.

Beyond Lyme: the other tickborne illnesses

Anaplasmosis, the one rising fastest, brings fever, chills, headache, and muscle aches, often without any rash at all. Babesiosis is stranger. It is a parasite that infects red blood cells, more like malaria than a bacterial infection, and it can be serious for older adults and people with weakened immune systems or no spleen. Powassan virus is rare, with the UMaine lab finding it in just 1.1% of tested deer ticks, but it deserves respect because it can cause severe brain inflammation and there is no specific treatment.

Then there is alpha-gal syndrome, the one that sounds like science fiction. It is a delayed allergy to red meat triggered by a tick bite. For years it was tied mainly to the lone star tick of the South. But a 2025 CDC study in Emerging Infectious Diseases confirmed alpha-gal syndrome in 23 Maine residents, and Maine CDC received alpha-gal antibody reports for 57 residents across 12 counties between November 2014 and October 2023. The patients averaged 57 years old, 61% were male, and 74% lived in coastal counties. The striking finding: the study documented a case appearing nine days after a bite from a blacklegged tick, in a state where established lone star tick populations have not been identified. The map of who is at risk is still being drawn.

Removing a tick the right way

This is where good intentions go wrong. The folk remedies, smothering the tick in petroleum jelly, painting it with nail polish, touching it with a hot match, are all things the CDC specifically warns against. They can make the tick regurgitate into the bite, which is the opposite of what you want.

What works is boring and effective. Use clean, fine-tipped tweezers. Grasp the tick as close to the skin as you can. Pull straight up with steady, even pressure. Do not twist, do not jerk, do not squeeze the body. If a bit of mouthpart stays behind, leave it; your skin will work it out. Then clean the bite and your hands with soap and water, rubbing alcohol, or hand sanitizer. Note the date. If symptoms or a rash show up over the next few weeks, that date helps your provider. For the full step-by-step, including what to do if the head breaks off, see our dedicated removal guide.

Preventing bites in the first place

Prevention is unglamorous and it works. The big three are repellents, clothing, and managing the ground around where you spend time. EPA-registered repellents containing active ingredients like DEET or picaridin go on skin; permethrin is a different tool that you apply to clothing and gear, not skin, where it kills ticks on contact. We compare the options head to head in our review of DEET, picaridin, and permethrin.

Clothing helps more than people expect. Light colors make a poppy-seed nymph easier to spot. Tucking pants into socks looks ridiculous and works anyway. And remember the UMaine finding that two-thirds of exposures happen at home: keeping grass short, clearing leaf litter, and putting a few feet of wood chips or gravel between the lawn and the woods all reduce the tick zone where you live. The daily tick check, ideally in the shower where you can feel for anything new, is the single habit that catches the most bites before they become a problem.

When symptoms linger

Most people treated for Lyme get better. A minority do not feel right for months afterward, with lingering fatigue, body aches, and trouble concentrating. The CDC calls this post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome and reports that these symptoms run about 5 to 10% more common six months out than in people who never had Lyme. It is real, and it is frustrating.

One thing the research is clear on: longer courses of antibiotics do not help. The CDC states that extended antibiotics are no better than a placebo for these lingering symptoms, which tend to improve on their own over time, though that can take many months. If you are dealing with this, talk it through with a provider who knows the local picture. We summarize the evidence, carefully, in our overview of what the research shows about post-treatment Lyme.

A season-by-season approach for ME and NH households

Spring is nymph season. April through July is when those poppy-seed ticks are out in force and most infections happen, so this is when daily checks matter most and when yardwork carries the most risk. Summer keeps the pressure on, especially around brushy edges and tall grass. Fall brings out the adult ticks, which are larger and active well into the cool weather, so do not drop your guard after Labor Day. And winter, which used to be a reliable break, no longer is. On a thawed January afternoon, an adult tick can still be looking for a host, which is part of why the season has stretched and the case counts have climbed.

The honest summary is that ticks are now a year-round consideration in Maine and New Hampshire, heaviest in late spring and summer, lightest but never zero in deep winter. None of this means staying indoors. It means a few small habits, a repellent that suits how you spend your time, and a tick check that becomes as automatic as locking the door. For the broader regional picture, our overview of tick season across New England ties the prevention and testing pieces together.

Sources

• Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine Tracking Network). Tickborne Diseases (annual Lyme, anaplasmosis, and babesiosis case counts). 2025. https://data.mainepublichealth.gov/tracking/tickborne
• WGME (CBS 13). Maine broke its tick-borne disease record in 2024. 2025. https://wgme.com/news/local/maine-broke-its-tick-borne-disease-record-in-2024-lyme-disease-anaplasmosis-babesiosis-maine-climate-change-global-warning-rain-winter-spring-powassan
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lyme Disease Surveillance and Data. 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
• New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. NH DHHS Health Alert: Lyme Disease and Other Tickborne Diseases. 2016. https://www.dhhs.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt476/files/documents2/lyme2016.pdf
• New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. Tickborne Diseases. 2024. https://www.dhhs.nh.gov/programs-services/disease-prevention/infectious-disease-control/tickborne-diseases
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lyme Disease Causes and How It Spreads. 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/causes/index.html
• University of Maine Cooperative Extension. 2024 Surveillance Report from UMaine Extension Tick Lab Highlights Tick-Borne Disease Risk. 2025. https://extension.umaine.edu/2025/04/17/2024-surveillance-report-tick-lab-highlights/
• National Library of Medicine (NCBI Bookshelf). Lyme Disease – StatPearls. 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK431066/
• American Family Physician (AAFP). The Presence of Bull’s Eye Lesion Is Not Required to Diagnose Lyme Disease. 2018. https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2018/1015/p474.html
• Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine DHHS). Lyme Disease. 2024. https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/infectious-disease/epi/vector-borne/lyme/
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic Symptoms and Lyme Disease. 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/signs-symptoms/chronic-symptoms-and-lyme-disease.html
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What to Do After a Tick Bite. 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/after-a-tick-bite/index.html
• Emerging Infectious Diseases (U.S. CDC). Alpha-Gal Syndrome after Ixodes scapularis Tick Bite and Statewide Surveillance, Maine, USA, 2014-2023. 2025. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/31/4/24-1265_article
• University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab. Tick Testing Frequently Asked Questions. 2024. https://ticktesting.umaine.edu/ticktestinfo.php

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare provider before making any health decisions.