It’s been a major motivation for deer hunters for generations, bagging a big buck with a large, many-pointed antler rack.
But that longstanding focus on bucks has thrown the male-female ratios of Michigan’s deer herd out of whack. It’s led to overpopulation and crop damage in southern Michigan and has contributed to a perceived underabundance of deer in parts of the Upper Peninsula. Many hunters report finding fewer and fewer of those older, trophy bucks.
In response, Michigan wildlife managers are proposing significant changes to the state’s iconic firearm deer season: most notably, a one-buck-per-hunter limit and a significantly shortened December hunt no longer limited in the Lower Peninsula to muzzleloader firearms.
Michigan Department of Natural Resources staff presented these and other recommendations for 2026 through 2028 to the Natural Resources Commission at its meeting on Wednesday, April 8. The commission, a seven-member public body appointed by the governor, oversees the state’s hunting and fishing policies.
Why the decline? Nobody wants does
Brent Rudolph, a deer, elk and moose management specialist with the DNR, told Natural Resources Commission members that Michigan has seen a 30% decline in the number of hunters since its all-time highs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The total number of deer harvested has commensurately declined, but the number of deer taken per hunter has slightly increased over the past few decades − except for the number of antlerless deer taken in the Upper Peninsula and southern Lower Peninsula. Those numbers have continued to drop.
A use-it-anywhere, universal antlerless license adopted in 2021, and the ability to take up to 10 antlerless deer, has not dramatically increased their harvest, Rudolph said.
“Recognizing that there are a limited number of hunters, and what we expect will be a declining number … how can we reapportion our limited harvest to be able to create more emphasis on antlerless deer relative to bucks?” he said. “It’s great if bucks get folks out into the field, but it’s more important that they have a higher prioritization of antlerless deer.”
How the changes would work
DNR staff propose a one-buck rule to take effect before deer seasons in 2027. Single deer licenses would be limited to antlerless deer only in the Lower Peninsula, with combination licenses only allowing the shooting of one buck and one antlerless deer, or two antlerless deer. The state currently allows the taking of two bucks. Antler point restrictions in place in some parts of the state, where a shot deer is required to have a certain number of points on one side of its rack, would remain in place under the proposed change.
According to the DNR, Michigan is unique among Great Lakes states in its propensity to harvest bucks over does − in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, more antlerless deer are typically taken. But in southern Michigan, hunters haven’t taken more antlerless than antlered deer since 2012. In the northern Lower Peninsula, in records from 2001 through 2024, taking more antlerless deer has only occurred three times, in 2001, 2002 and 2020. Nearly 80% of Michigan deer hunters do not take antlerless deer, Rudolph said.
The one-buck proposal got a mixed reaction from hunters at Wednesday’s Natural Resources Commission meeting. Some expressed support for the proposed change.
“The size of the antlers do not make you a good hunter, or make it a good hunt,” said Mike Thorman of Mio.
Jacob Ostermeyer, a representative of U.P. Whitetails organization in Baraga County, said the hunt needs a change.
“Simply put, what we are doing now is just not working,” he said. “We’ve lost 30-plus percent of hunters over the past 30 years. In the U.P., less than 40% of hunters say they are satisfied with the way their hunts are going now, according to recent surveys.
“People are not taking a week off from work to go to Michigan (to hunt); they are going to states around us. We have poor age structures, poor sex ratios and densities that are way too high and way too low in different areas.”
Ostermeyer also cited “disappearing traditions” around the annual deer hunt.
Bars, restaurants, gas stations are empty: ‘Worse and worse’
“I can tell you firsthand that Nov. 15 (the opening day of firearm deer season in Michigan) in the U.P. is not what it once was,” he said. “Bars are empty, restaurants, gas stations … it continues to get worse and worse.”
But Paul Sikkenga, a Muskegon native who serves on multiple deer management citizen advisory boards, wasn’t supportive of a one-buck limit.
“If you make people buy a doe license who don’t want to shoot a doe … I quit hunting over baiting (bans). There are a whole lot more people who will quit over not being able to choose.”
Michigan’s late-season muzzleloader deer hunt was expanded in 2022 to allow the use of all legal firearms. Typically running over 10 days in December, DNR staff now propose that the season be renamed the December firearm season and run over a weekend, the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday of December. The hunt would remain a traditional muzzleloader hunt in the U.P.
The move goes against the recommendations of the Lower Peninsula Deer Advisory Team, a citizen and hunter panel advising the DNR, where a return to a true muzzleloader season for the Lower Peninsula was recommended. But Rudolph noted that a 2023 survey of hunters showed 63% supported being allowed to use all legal firearms during that hunt. The reduced days will take pressure off buck harvests as they are moving to winter stands, potentially improving age ratios and buck quality.
A late antlerless season would then open on the Monday following the weekend December firearm season, under the DNR’s recommendation.
“Those things combined mean there are no loss of firearm hunting days in the Lower Peninsula,” Rudolph said. “We would have archery season where you could take bucks, but we would be shifting after those three days in December that anything with a firearm in the Lower Peninsula is going to be antlerless only.”
Todd Johnson of West Branch is the director of policy and advocacy for the Michigan state council of the nonprofit National Deer Association. He expressed support for DNR’s proposed hunt changes.
Other states are ahead on deer management
“A lot of our neighboring states, like Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, have evolved into a quality deer management situation,” he said.
“The deer herd is at or below the carrying capacity of the habitat, so that means you’re not running into habitat degradation issues. And you have a balanced buck-to-doe ratio, as well as a more evenly dispersed age structure. That balanced herd structure provides you with the greatest opportunity for herd health, and you avoid a lot of disease outbreaks that, quite honestly, Michigan has been plagued with.”
The hunt changes will be a driver to “break the paradigm of this buck-centric culture we have in Michigan,” Johnson said.
“Too many of our hunters, over three-quarters, don’t harvest antlerless deer,” he said. “That is not a good stat. I’m embarrassed by that stat.”
The Natural Resources Commission will again take up the deer hunt changes and possibly vote to adopt them at its May 13 meeting in Gaylord.
Contact Keith Matheny: kmatheny@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan considering 1 buck per deer hunter limit
Reporting by Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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