By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

LANSING, Mich. — The ban on deer baiting and feeding in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is now permanent.

Actually, the ban was made permanent last October at a meeting of the Natural Resources Commission, which voted unanimously to make the interim ban permanent. An interim ban was put in place last August after a deer in a privately owned facility in Kent County was found to be positive for chronic wasting disease(CWD). Without the change the ban would have expired this coming February.

At the Michigan Farm Bureau’s annual meeting last month, Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) Director Rebecca Humphries said, during a panel discussion, that the ban would not be lifted anytime soon and that it was likely to be extended to the Upper Peninsula in the near future.

Speaking through Mary Detloff, a spokeswoman for the DNR, Humphries clarified these comments last week by stating the ban on feeding and baiting of deer would not be lifted “anytime soon,” based on the department’s experience with bovine tuberculosis.
She also said that Wisconsin has not been able to stop the spread of CWD there; and since Wisconsin was likely going to pursue its own deer baiting ban sometime this year, it was also likely that an extension of Michigan’s baiting ban to the Upper Peninsula would be put into effect “sooner rather than later.”

Detloff said that the ban didn’t affect the hunting season, although she said people do call to complain about it. She said that there was speculation that the department couldn’t or wouldn’t be serious about taking enforcement actions. She described the department’s enforcement actions this hunting season as “vigorous.” The department issued over 600 citations for deer baiting this past hunting season.

Detloff said she understands that there won’t be 100 percent compliance with the ban, however. A casual drive in rural areas of southeastern lower Michigan late last year showed that this must be the case. Deer feed for sale was frequently in evidence both in retail stores and roadside stands.

When asked about the presence of small plots of corn and other produce that might actually be intended as deer bait, Detloff said that such produce “is considered an agricultural product until it’s placed on the ground.”

So, what are farmers supposed to do with their cull crops now that they can’t be used as deer bait, at least not legally? In addition to marketing the crops as feed for cattle, discontinuing growing crops that are used exclusively for deer bait, other answers might be found through the Michigan MarketMaker, a website created by the Michigan State University Product Center, along with a number of partner organizations.

The site is self-described as “an interactive mapping system that locates businesses and markets of agricultural products in Michigan, providing an important link between producers and consumers.” This tool might be helpful to producers of cull crops looking for new markets, but it’s really just a tool, not a set of ready answers.

The site is online at the following: http://mi.marketmaker.uiuc.edu