The state needs to return baiting to a legal hunting method.

Bait, wisely used, can help hunters locate deer. The state needs baiting.

The wait may soon be over for state deer hunters and the baiting-feeding issue..

The Department of Natural Resources - Environment (DNRE). The DNRE will meet soon and hopefully settle this idiotic ban on baiting-feeding that has plagued this state and its deer hunters for three years. The use of bait was halted after a deer was found on a game farm with chronic wasting disease.

But a nagging remains: was that deer actually infected with CWD or not? It supposedly was tested in Michigan, found not to be infected, and the carcass was sent to Ames, Iowa for further testing. That organization came back with a positive report.

Is the end in sight for a return to baiting and winter recreational feeding?

The question three years ago was begged: If it’s not CWD-positive, why shop the thing around until the Federal testing lab came up with a positive test. The result was that sportsmen numbers fell, license sales fell, and Federal  monies based on a percentage of sporting goods money spent within this state also fell.

That meant a reduction in Federal monies paid to Michigan for such things as some money for habitat, hunter education and other necessary items that Michigan sportsmen have long paid for. One part of this lack of funding was for Hunter Education, and at a time like this when the state needs more hunters -- not fewer -- the wheels fell of the state’s deer program.

Oh yes, I know the state’s argument when it comes to bovine tuberculosis. It is passed by nose-to-nose contact. Well, guess what? Whitetail deer continued to touch noses, and a few cases of bovine TB have showed up.

Once, while out with a state game biologist, I asked the burning question: “Tell me please, when will bovine tuberculosis end in this state. Is there hope for the future?

The biologist was silent for a minute while considering my question before stating: “Bovine TB will disappear when we stop looking for it. We’ve always had bovine TB, and there was an outbreak of it back in the 1940s. The disease has always been found among cattle, and deer to a lesser extent, will get it. We can chase after it but as long as we look, we’ll find some of it.”

Baiting, in moderation, levels the playing field for all hunters.

It’s a fact that CWD is fairly widespread in some states and Canadian provinces, and often is found in isolated pockets. Baiting hasnt brought this disease to the forefront; it is, like bovine TB, fairly easy to find and quite difficult to eradicate.

So, if we see a return to baiting in Michigan, I’m all in favor of it’s return. Am I a fan of baiting? It’s immaterial to me, but baiting does held level the playing field. It forces people to abide to a two gallons of bait broadcast on the ground over a 10-foot by 10-foot area. This means that a hunter who is surrounded by carrots,  corn,  potatoes, sugar beets or other truck crops can compete with landowners with 40, 80, 160 acres or those that are a mile wide. A few deer will go to an area where they can find a small portion of their daily sustenance and provide a better than average chance for those with less property.

The playing field gets levels for all sportsmen, and it helps provide a more static posture for feeding deer and hunters. Baiting is not a guarantee to solve all of a hunter’s woes, but it can help a little.

It also helps hunters, and the state, to better control deer numbers. Properly broadcast on the ground, bait does reduce some nose-to-nose contact.  Years ago, when baiting and feeding deer had reached a zenith, hunters got carried away. Those with the biggest bait pile won, and I remember seeing piles of bait stacked 15 feet high with feeding deer at or near the top.

Two gallons of bait is plenty, and why not charge a $5 baiting fee to raise money.

That was poor deer management at its worst, and was not only bad for the hunter’s image, it wasn’t good for the deer and was a remarkably nasty eyesore. Things tamed down when the DNR cut the use of bait to two gallons broadcast over a wide area per hunting site.

More deer were shot, which was good for our burgeoning deer herd, more hunters had success, and it may have solved a few hunting accidents. This last is an unknown factor, but hunters moved around less than before. That means the fewer hunters were moving around as they did years ago, but in the end, I believe more deer were taken.

The whitetail deer harvest over the past three years has been pitiful. To compound an ugly situation, the DNRE created contention among our hunters by allowing Upper Peninsula to retain the two-gallon baiting practice while outlawing the use of bait in the Lower Peninsula.

Michigan once led the nation in the number of man-days spent deer hunt, the legal kill, and in money in the till of the private sector. People like farmers, trucks, party store owners, Mom and Pop gas stations and others made money. The money tap dried up during the past three years.

Some hunters broke the rules and baited. Many were ticketed as they should have been, but bringing a halt to the use of bait or winter recreational viewing, in retrospect, seemed to have been a knee jerk reaction and a huge mistake.

I hope the DNRE will see fit to reinstate baiting statewide, and limit it to two gallons of bait per hunting site. If they want to make some more money I’d suggest a baiting fee, Say, $5 per hunter who wishes to bait, and that would give conservation officers increased knowledge of who and where baiting is taking place, and I doubt hunters would argue that point.

Countless states allow baiting or feeding of some sort, and having gone three years without bait, serious hunters struck out again. The only thing that makes sense, when it comes to helping to control deer numbers, is through deer management. It’s long been said that the best way to many our wildlife populations is manage the hunters.

What happened three years ago was a case of Chicken Little claiming the sky was falling. Decisions were made, and not apparently in the best interest of the resource, and the result was three years of very bad hunting and angry hunters.

Title: The state needs to return baiting to a legal hunting method.

Tags: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors, deer, baiting, solve, this, issue, legalize, it, attract, more, hunters))

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors