I did notice more camps on public land this year than years past for rifle season.....at least where I'm at. One stretch of the road had 4 camps on it. I spoke to some down state guys camped near one of my spots. All they seen were does. I noticed some campers and camps were set up a good week before the opener. Some were empty, I guess they were staking out a spot and setting the camp and then came back up for the opener. Not sure if the fantasy of big APR bucks or the concern of CWD further south was pushing hunters north. It might be a combo of both?? One of my other spots had some guy in a camper squatting there throughout the summer and fall. He would leave his dog tied up and go off working somewhere and come back at night. The dog loved to bark.
I also hunted a private land spot just under 400 acres SE of Cadillac. Had some good cam bucks. Got some good Handicam footage of young bucks sparring. Didn't see any legal bucks while in the stand and blind. We did have adjacent property owners hanging stands on the property lines facing into our property.
Overall....the number of hunters in early bow season seemed to be up. The number of hunters I seen for gun season was overwhelming. IMO I can't help but think there are way too many hunters competing for the same small pool of bucks. Me personally....I'd like to stop the unlimited OTC license structure we have in place and go to draws and units for the gun season to spread out the hunters and give the deer a chance.
On balance.....the late bow season was good in the context there was hardly any hunters out. I had the woods to myself just like last year and seen a few more deer, mostly does but constant deer none the less. I am seriously considering going out of state in 2018 for gun season. I have relatives in Montana and Oklahoma and can hunt both places. Anyone else contemplating going out of state?
The longer they make it illegal to harvest a doe on my land with a bow.... The closer I get to not buying a Michigan hunting license...... and spending my money to hunt elsewhere...... screw the DNR. And the NRC.
I'm wondering if we're our worst enemy. With all the new food plots I added to our crappy land, we might have too many doe groups on the land because we have lots of does and fawns. I think we should be killing more.
My goal this year is to do some hinge cutting in sections of the land we'll stay out of hoping to create more buck bedding areas. I am limited when it comes to high dry land. This chain saw work might be what we need but I just have this feeling that my land won't ever be conducive to big buck activity.
2017 deer season preliminary report Chad Stewart made a preliminary report on how the 2017 season has gone so far. He cautioned that these results may change after all of the data is gathered once deer seasons are fully over. The number of unique license buyers was down 2.1% from last year, although license sales were only down .7%. This drop is similar to what has been an ongoing trend over recent years.
Total deer checked as of 12/4
UP: +28.1%
NLP: -10.6%
SLP: - 11.0%
Statewide: +.5%
Antlered Bucks checked as of 12/4
UP: +27%
NLP: -19.3%
SLP: -1.7%
Statewide: No change
When asked by Commissioner Schlaybaugh as to what conclusions could be drawn from these numbers, Chad said that clearly the herd in the UP is rebounding from the back to back bad winters several years ago but that he did not want to draw any conclusions from the large drop in antlered buck harvest in the NLP as the check station data was not comprehensive enough. He did mention that they feel the herd is growing in size in the NLP.
He also provided a graph that showed that yearling buck harvest, as a percentage of the antlered harvest was about 50% in the UP, 40% in the SLP and around 32% in the NLP.
There is not one person I talked to this past fall that didn't ask the question "where did all of the deer go?"
I have 200 acres that is some of the best habitat that you can find here in southern michigan all to myself for the archery season and my dad and son hunt with me during the firearm season so this property gets minimal pressure. I did not have one sit at any point this past season where I seen more than a dozen deer. There were multiple days where I seen less than 5 deer. In the early to mid 2000's it was nothing to see 25 to 30 deer per sit with a half dozen of those deer being 2.5 year old bucks or better. This year I seen just 2 bucks all season that were 2.5 years or older. I sat all day opening day of gun season and seen a grand total of 4 deer all day. I seen 1 spike at daybreak, a doe at noon and 2 does and the same spike right at dark. UNBELIEVABLE. 10 years ago I would have seen at least 40 deer if I sat all day and there would have been at least 6 bucks of age 2.5 or better. It was once that good.
""January Hunts
The DNR announced that two January disease control hunts will occur, both in the TB zone in Alpena Co. and in portions of Montcalm & Ionia Counties. The Alpena hunt is going to be on selected private land only parcels that are in close proximity to farms where cattle have tested positive for BTB. For some reason the DNR is not making testing mandatory for the deer harvested, which seems like a lost opportunity. Chad Stewart said that the purpose of the hunt is less about successfully harvesting deer and more about establishing relationships with private land owners and encouraging them to participate in the HAP program to allow more hunters access to private land. The Montcalm/Ionia hunts will take place on both public and private and in 6 Eastern Townships in Montcalm and 8 Northern Townships in Ionia County. Testing of harvested deer is mandatory. The purpose of those hunts is to increase sample sizes of deer tested in those townships and to try and see if CWD will be found in the area in Ionia County, between where it's been detected in Montcalm & Clinton Counties, which could provide some insight as to whether the two areas of outbreak are related.""
Back in 2012 when we got hit hard by the EHD bug there was several members of the hunting community that pleaded with the DNR to suspend, at the very least, the early and late doe hunts until we found out how much of an impact there was on the herd. Those of us that spent time in the field knew that the impact was going to be big, trying to convince the DNR of this was another matter. These request were made as early as June.
Per those that I and many others spoke to on the phone and sent emails to within the DNR this wasn't possible as the season dates were already set and some licenses had already been sold and couldn't be refunded because they claimed their computer system wouldn't allow it.
North and South Dakota both experienced EHD with the same time frame of infection as Michigan that year and their DNR took it upon themselves to be proactive and suspend their doe seasons and refunded any tags that had been bought. But not Michigan because our state is all about license sales and revenue. But now lo and behold with 2 weeks left in December the DNR can now all of a sudden make new seasons to kill more deer just to see if they have the potential to die someday from CWD.
Turkeys on the other hand were plentiful and I had my first year with both a spring and fall archery kill. Since the visible decline in whitetails appears to be a state-wide phenomena, it seems that my repeated concerns about a firearms youth hunt in September, adding crossbows to "archery" season, plus the expansion of muzzleloader and the late antlerless seasons in December has achieved the goal of the Farm Bureau and auto insurance industry to seriously reduce deer numbers in the mitten. I would love to invest in some hunting land of my own.....but it is hard to get motivated when the prospects seem so dim at present. Maybe best to invest that on out-of-state hunts???
If CWD is such a threat, if there is a new study being funded, ($$$$$$) for the UP, why can you continue to transport deer over the bridge, from CWD areas from the south?
Yes the transport thing don't make sense. Can't bring a buck from Wisconsin side of river back to a Michigan side camp, but you could bring a l.p. cwd deer into the u.p.