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Baiting decision leaves northeast
With a large fawn crop adding to Michigan's deer population, agricultural and wildlife officials are uneasy about the recent baiting decision by the Natural Resource Commission.
In tree stands, above the political rub, bow hunters could be oblivious to the anger caused by the recent Natural Resources Commission decision on baiting.
Mostly, the anger comes from farmers in the state's core tuberculosis area, where efforts to eradicate the disease from deer - thus keeping them from infecting cattle - recently have been concentrated. They accuse the powers that be with ignoring sound science, caving in to political pressure and basically throwing northeastern Michigan cattle herds to the wolves.
The NRC decision that was made less than two weeks before the opener of the 2001 bow hunting deer season - and without public comment - allows hunters in Deer Management Unit (DMU) 452 to bait deer by spreading no more than one gallon of grain per day in an area no smaller than 10 feet by 10 feet between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30. Hunters - both bow and gun - in DMU 452 are required to turn in deer heads to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for TB testing.
"If they're going under the premise that baiting in the 12 other counties where positive deer have been found is prohibited, yet they turn around and allow baiting in the hottest spot in the state, where the most TB has been found, how do they explain that scientifically?" asked Mike Tulgestke, a dairy farmer from Presque Isle County. "TB has already picked off 18 farms. Sixteen already have all their cattle gone, and me and another dairyman have been quarantined for nearly two years. How many farms does it take before it sinks in that we have a disease that's beyond the normal hunting regulations, beyond the normal realm of 20-year-old thinking?"
Thinking among many groups involved with the issue is that increased deer kills will cut down or eliminate tuberculosis from the deer herd. That premise even prompted Michigan Farm Bureau to threaten a lawsuit in 1998 against the Department of Natural Resources if it did not reduce deer numbers. It is how those numbers should be cut that's been a bone of contention. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has tried everything from unlimited doe permits to asking people to pray for harsh winters. But reinstating baiting in the core TB area, regardless of how limited it may be, goes against sound science, say several officials and experts, including Dr. Mitch Palmer, a veterinary medical officer with the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa.
"I've heard the debate on limited baiting and spreading it out, but from a scientific point of view, I stand firm," he said. "From everything we've seen, baiting is not a good idea."
Baiting originally was outlawed in the TB core area because of another factor that contributes to tuberculosis' spread -contact nose to nose.
"We don't know which is more important, taking the number down or keeping deer from congregating" said Bob Bender, coordinator of the Michigan Bovine TB Eradication Project. "And if you look at where we were five years ago compared to where we are now, we've made tremendous progress. We've essentially eliminated the large scale supplemental feeding that was common among hunt clubs, and the NRC is on record saying its goal is to eliminate feeding, period."
Baiting with one gallon, of course, is a far cry from the truckloads of feed that were once common practice in northeastern Michigan's hunt club territory. Still, any practice that brings deer nose to nose - the most common way of transmitting the respiratory disease - is a huge risk, said James Goodheart, executive director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, and a biologist.
"People are gambling with a lot," he said. "Everybody was caught off guard. One thing that concerns us is the lack of cooperation and coordination between the agriculture commission and the natural resources commission. We were led to believe by the agriculture commission and the natural resources group that a very limited approach was to be approved. The end result was a much larger expansion. Hence, our rising concern over the lack of coordination."
Goodheart said he's not convinced that baiting - even limited baiting - will help hunters kill more deer since DMU 452 contains a bumper acorn crop this year. In fact, even the DNR isn't sure if it will help. Still, the NRC, in a letter signed by Michigan Natural Resources Commission Chairman Keith Charters and Michigan Commission of Agriculture Chairman Jordan Tatter, said the experiment will allow researchers to "gain valuable knowledge about the degree to which baiting impacts hunting."
In order to gain such knowledge, however, researchers must compare kill numbers from year to year. But the DNR has no numbers to compare.
"We have no idea of the numbers," said John Urbain, big game specialist with the DNR. "After this season, we will survey, and then we will have the numbers."
It was without the numbers, then, that the NRC decision was made, although it has been accepted by many experts that deer kill numbers are down significantly in DMU 452.
Declining kills in the area, in fact, is a reason the NRC decided to move back to limited baiting.
"In 1999," said the letter from Tatter and Charters, "the NRC implemented a ban on baiting and feeding deer in DMU 452. Since that time, hunters in that area have voiced concerns over reduced success rates ... After we had a three-day visit with 17 hunt clubs in DMU 452, the NRC decided to move ahead with a one-time project."
Farmers in the area, however, suspect that this is not just a one-time project. If there's no baseline deer numbers already, reasoned Tulgestke, what makes anyone think that the program will not be in place again next year, using this year's numbers for comparison.
Even though the numbers are not "black and white," said Urbain, unlimited doe licenses indicate that the deer kill in the five-county area that contains DMU 452 has declined from 160,000 to 110,000 over the past few years. The problem, he said, is that hunters have not been convinced that they should take more than one deer.
"Very few hunters take more than one," he said. "Only about 11 percent take two or more."
Farmers, Tulgestke said, are willing and able to take more, but the DNR won't allow it.
"We had a field where you couldn't spread your hand on the ground without touching a deer track, but the DNR officer for some reason couldn't see the damage," he said. "There are fields here where you can count 600 deer. Mother nature never intended to have 600 deer feeding off a pile of sugar beets. Besides, people don't hunt in DMU 452 because there are diseased deer there. Also, a study quoted at the March 2000 symposium on TB showed that only 18 percent of deer visiting bait are harvested. That leaves 82 percent still in the woods, spreading the disease. Baiting would be good if it killed everything that showed up, but if you're coming at it with the presumption that baiting is a way to increase harvest, I say it's also a way to spread disease and increase risk to agriculture. And I think science bears that out. If you want to increase the kill, you leave the season open until the number of deer you want killed are killed."
For the time being, there are no plans for lawsuits that would seek to stop baiting this year. Bender said he must play the hand he was dealt. Goodheart expressed similar resignation.
"We're not coming out in support of this, but we won't work terribly hard against it," he said. "We are glad that there's a mandatory deer check, and we recommend much tighter monitoring than there has been. Right now, we're putting all our eggs in the mandatory checking basket."
Farmers, however, are laughing, Tulgestke said, because it's all that's left for them.
"I'd say the mood here is one of sarcasm," he said. "You can only beat your head against the wall so many times before it hurts or starts to be funny. Well, we're not dead yet, and we're beyond hurting, so it must be funny."
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