I am trying to get a handle on exactly what's going on. Help me to understand.
I take it the deer have disappeared. What's caused it?
Nobody's going to camp anymore. Folks dying off? No interest from the new generation?
I've only hunted MI once, many years ago. What I remember was that treestands and bait piles were everywhere on the public land. Every filling station out on the highway was selling carrots and pumpkins and such. I saw lots of deer, but they were always on the run.
Here’s my perspective Shaman and I apologize if it’s been repeated.
You’re right in some of your observations. Hunting is definitely changing and the younger generation doesn’t put out as many hunters as it once did. Hunting is a family tradition passed down and let’s face it, families are more broken and smaller than ever so it’s catching up to the tradition of hunting. Political views towards hunting is less popular and that has its effect as well. As for Michigan it has its own unique issues. The once great hunting ground in the UP has suffered some extraordinarily mis management. The wolves were brought in around 1995 and just as they took a foot hold we had three back to back killer winters losing an estimated 75% of the herd. It never recovered to those previous numbers. Those numbers weren’t healthy either and they actually destroyed much of the cedar that they depended on for winter forage in the deer yards So, with all of that ,many of your deer hunters from the lower peninsula either quit hunting totally or stay below the bridge. The UP is a unique animal in many ways. There isn’t a lot of work so many of the people,myself included, leave for work. I still go back for deer season but live near Grand Rapids. So you end up with a dying population. It’s been that way since the copper boom ended. Given all that it’s not surprising that deer hunting has gone down hill. You have a mismanaged deer herd where a large chunk of public land is located, a change in family tradition and a change in the perception of deer hunting itself then have the disease outbreak where a majority of hunters are now located and a generous topping of predators that aren’t controlled.
