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You won't be able to, cuz he don't care and the people he rents his farm to don't care either!

Is he poaching or just taking advantage of the rules?

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.

In several michigan counties CWD (chronic wasting disease) has been found so in those counties baiting has been eliminated and next year all baiting will be prohibited. I'm fine with it but many of today "deer hunters" sit in a heated shack and watch a pile of bait and shoot a deer. IMHO that is not hunting. Those that know no other way are lost.

Yeah, I am sure fewer hunters will make my hunting more enjoyable.
The only good thing about CWD is the baiting ban.
We will lose 30-40% of our (so called) hunters with the ban.
Another 20% will ignore the rules like they have all along.

I hunted in the U. P. for years and never used bait. I'd go up a few days before season do some scouting and build a brush blind. I always got a deer and back then a buck was a buck but I did get one of my best bucks that way a nice 10 point. IMHO baiting has ruined deer hunting for an entire generation. A good friend from Negaunee shot two nice bucks up by Amasa this year.

Nobody finds themselves in Amasa by accident. You have to try to get there.

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.

Yes I agree. Baiting has ruined deer hunting IMHO as well. My dad who is now 82 has baited deer much of his later years. The old excuse of I’m to old to walk that far comes up. Funny thing was I went hunting with him this year and he just sat in the truck while I went out and put on six miles still hunting. He seen just as many deer sitting in the truck as he had years past over a bait pile.
People don’t recognize natural forage if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. Every old skidder trail is a literal smorgasbord for deer it seems. The clear cuts that people bitch about are a dinner bell for deer. I never bait deer because all you’re doing is baiting wolves and coyotes. They hang by bait piles for easy pickings. Not to mention that it just makes deer suspicious. Think about it. What would you think if you and your family came home and someone broke into your house and made a standing rib roast dinner and had it waiting on the table for you. Would you eat it?
On the other hand I will help out with local Whitetail unlimited clubs during a harsh winter with hay to help the herd. That is because I know that the yards haven’t recovered from years of over browsing.

My father and I used to hunt the Bates/Amasa area. We shot some decent deer back in the day and much of our hunting centered around 2-3 man pushes of swamps that we knew had bait piles in the general vicinities. And we sure created some hurt feelers from the plywood and pile-o-rutabaga crowd. A couple of bad winters and an increase in folks guarding their bait piles to shoot anything with 3" of bone did a number on the buck population.

Sadly, the "U.P. Way" began to creep into northern WI some 15-20 years ago and has pretty much done the same thing for the deer population there albeit not quite to the extent. And the lack of logging sure hasn't helped either.

I continue to hunt in northern MN - no baiting and it's possible to not only see deer, but mature deer. Interestingly enough, MN boasts a greater wolf population than MI and WI yet the hunting is better (only one man's opine) so I can't buy the wolf rationale.

Today, sadly, I see camaraderie being the ONLY reason to justify hunting in Michigan's U.P.

Michigan is in a tough spot. With the declining number of hunters pretty much across the board, total elimination of baiting (U.P.) will be death to license sales and a real hit to the places selling bait.
Outside of a disease disaster, I doubt any politician is going to agree to it and the cycle will continue.

My family had some land up by Mancelona we deer hunted on annually back in the 80s. I remember the neighbors would literally bring in dump trucks of carrots in an attempt to lure any deer off of the surrounding properties. It seemed to work. That memory has always made me a proponent against baiting.

That being said, my retirement plan is leaning heavily towards somewhere around the Grayling area. I hope the Michigan deer herd recovers.

I have place in Channing and do quite a bit of bird hunting around Amasa.

Skeen I wouldn't leave Kansas for Grayling. We had a place near Lovells and I have friends there still. The bird hunting is ok but my buddy hasn't seen a decent buck in years.

I've hunted the U.P. and the MN. season too and I sure like their earlier gun opener which gets the rut activity. WI. gets the post rut and that is tough hunting. Any weekend we would see hunters with an ATV and sacks of corn and apples heading north and it reminded me that lots of people have forgotten how to hunt deer. I took my son to hunters safety meetings and one day the instructor asked the class of young fellas what is the first thing that you should do before deer season? He was looking for something like sight in your rifle, but what he got was a kid telling him how you should check to make sure that your bait pile had plenty of bait for the season. Sad but true. Baiting has turned deer nocturnal and like the U.P, northern WI. turned into who could out bait who. I left, sold my place and hunt the other side of the state where there isn't baiting, poaching and wall to wall ahole hunters.

First off, thanks for the detailed answer.

Let me just give you an opinion from a guy who is currently living through a serious deer boom here in Northern KY. I grew up dreaming of going to MI, and always thought the guys who hunted up there were specially blessed. Of course, that was in the 60's. Times change.

What I can say from my experience hunting Ohio, IN, KY, and 1 season in MI is this: It can and probably will come back around.

1) Habitat changes. Our surge here in the Trans-Bluegrass is mostly due to an ideal circumstance of farms being left to go fallow after the big Tobacco Buyout. Habitat is very transient. MI's big boom was from the timber industry cutting down stuff and letting the light in. Where there is Edge habitat, there will always be deer. Where possible habitat management can pay off tremendously
2) Having the old farts leave is not such a bad thing. Yeah, the culture of deer camp changes, but nothing stays forever. We've got the same thing down here. All the old farts are dying off. In the end, that can mean more deer, or more precisely, a faster bounce back to what it was.
3) I've got very mixed feelings about bait piles. I've got a few people that bait around me. One fellow poured $800 annually into his corn feeder, but he was the first to admit he mostly fed my deer and had little return on his investment. When he stopped last year, we suddenly started seeing 30-some deer out in our fields in the evening where before we'd seen only 1 or 2. Outlawing bait will change things, but I'm not sure it's for the worst.
4) Whatever is happening, it is all transient. We had neighbors poaching for about 3 years and wiped out the local herd. It took 3 years to recover. However, after that, it was better than it had ever been. My point is that at a low point like this, it's hard to think of what's ahead.

Is the UP very flat with few, diffuse funnels?

That would make me want to bait.

Having the old farts leave is not such a bad thing. Yeah, the culture of deer camp changes, but nothing stays forever. We've got the same thing down here. All the old farts are dying off. In the end, that can mean more deer, or more precisely, a faster bounce back to what it was.

Really!

Look maybe I've said that wrong. Let me make another stab at it. My apologies. I'm working with just one eye today instead of the usual complement.

Yes, it's a bummer when the old farts leave. Camps die off because of it. However, it is after all inevitable. I'm the patriarch of my camp. I've done everything to make sure it survives me, but I can't predict the future. On the other hand, a reduction in the overall number of camps and of hunters reduces the number of deer being taken. That will bring back the numbers quicker.

As to the loss of the camps and the old guys in them, I'm a bit bitter about this subject. I started my own camp as soon as I could because I had come of age with 5 wonderful guys who helped me get into shooting and hunting and they're all dead but one, and he hasn't hunted with me since 1985. Bitter? Yes, and jaded too. I've seen a lot of camps go down the tubes over the years and folks whine about it, but they let them go nonetheless. The camp next to me died off three years ago. The patriarch came to me long before complaining that he was getting tired of doing all the maintenance himself. He later had a bad heart attack and was laid up for a long while, but when he got back on his feet he was back out at camp. . . alone.

My point is this: Guys like him, guys like me, guys who start camps and make them work are not infinite resources. I started our camp at 42, I'm 60 now. It's damn hard to get anyone out to help when you need them and nobody wants to work on weekends. I don't mean to pi$$ in the collective bowl of Wheaties, but deer camps are extremely wonderful things, and when they die off, it is not by bad luck.

However, I also will tell you that deer camps are wonderful because they are so carefree for most of the folks that come. Kids show up at camp and think it's the greatest thing in the world. Guys spend their whole lives using Camp as the one place to get away. Folks seldom realize there's just one guy or a couple or maybe a few that are making it happen, and they don't realize how much they sacrifice for the camp and nobody makes provisions for the camp's continuation. Deer Camp is an ephemeral thing. Having gone through its loss and dedicating the past 18 years to making a second one happen, I can tell you. I'm sure my three sons have no freaking clue, even though I've hidden nothing from them. I realize that my deer camp is my big elaborate sand painting, a Mandela. When I go, the monks will scoop it up and throw it out. At some point, a doe will come up and crap on the sand pile and the circle will be complete.

I'm not in the logging business and don't know what pulp wood is selling for currently, but from what I've seen there is much less logging going on in northern Wisconsin and the U.P. than there was a decade or two back. Our softwood forests are growing up and anything over about four feet high is pretty useless to foraging deer. The paper industry is really big here, more specifically the tissue and toilet tissue industry and all you nose blowers and butt wipers prefer the much softer eucalyptus pulp that ships in here from South America. Our best deer hunting counties are way south of where they once were when I was growing up due to better agriculture that turns deer into grazers, milder winters, fewer predators and less poaching.