By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

FLINT, Mich. — Things seemed to have changed a lot in the last six months in Michigan, regarding deer baiting and feeding. It was only last November that Wisconsin officials announced they had discovered a sick deer that many suspected had chronic wasting disease (CWD). The deer was located in Ashland, less than 50 miles from the Michigan border near the Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

If it had been confirmed there, it would have meant a near-immediate ban on deer feeding and baiting in the U.P. That would have been devastating for that part of the state, where the fragile rural economy depends on activities that grow out of hunting and tourism. Deer feeding and baiting helps some farmers sell carrots and other items typically used as deer feed.

Luckily, the deer didn’t have CWD after all. Everyone seemed to breathe a big sigh of relief. But the ban on deer feeding and baiting has continued in the Lower Peninsula, where it’s been in place since September 2008, after a single deer with CWD was discovered in Kent County on a private cervid facility. No others have been found since then.

Over the past several months, the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) has been holding meetings and discussing the baiting and feeding ban. At its last meeting on May 12 in Flint, the NRC recommended an end to the ban. It is set to have a final vote June 9.

“The public wants it lifted,” said Mary Detloff, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE). Some people feed deer for recreational viewing, Detloff said. Others bait deer for hunting purposes. Either way, the new rules would be the same and would return to what was in place before the ban and to what’s in place now in the U.P.
Under the new rules people could feed and bait deer Oct. 1-Jan. 1, through the deer hunting season. Two gallons of feed could be on the ground at any one time in a 10-by-10-foot area. If a person puts two gallons of feed on the ground one day and comes back a day later, no more feed could be put there if the old feed is still present.

In conjunction with the possible rule change, Detloff said the department is hoping to get the legislature to stiffen penalties for violations of the feeding and baiting rules. Right now she said the fine for a violation is $50, not enough of a deterrent. Although a violator could be sentenced to up to 90 days in jail, she said that doesn’t usually happen. On a related issue, she said the DNRE is asking the legislature to appropriate more money so the department can develop wildlife food lots on state lands. “The goal there is to improve habitat on state lands,” Detloff said.

She explained many deer gravitate to private land where owners lay down feed to attract them; that’s a problem because most hunters use state land.
On the issue of CWD, Detloff said the DNRE did its due diligence. “We did testing for the past three years and we didn’t detect it,” she explained.