DNR Reports Decline in Deer Hunting
Michigan Department of Natural Resources reports a 15% drop in deer harvest.
A new state survey finds fewer people are hunting deer in Michigan. The state Department of Natural Resources reports a 15 percent drop in the 2014 deer harvest, along with a decrease in the number of hunting licenses sold. Deer management specialist Chad Stewart says the 329,000 deer harvested last year marks a significant decline.
“It’s certainly down quite a bit from where we were at our all time high back in the late ‘90s. We were taking almost 600,000 deer at one point; we’re not trying to get back to those levels by any means.”
Chad Stewart, Deer Management Specialist – DNR
Stewart says the state has enacted stronger regulations on deer hunting in the Upper Peninsula, where the overall harvest was down nearly 36 percent, to bolster the population there. He says deer hunting appears most popular in the southern portions of the Lower Peninsula.
