Iron Mountain council votes to kill deer inside public pen
Faced with mounting costs and years of inbreeding, a vote was cast to kill a park’s deer. A public outcry quickly followed.
- Michigan’s Natural Resources Commission has approved a one-buck limit for hunters in the Lower Peninsula, starting in 2027.
- Several changes will take effect this fall, including a shortened muzzleloader season and the elimination of certain hunting zones.
- The new regulations are intended to balance the state’s deer herd and improve the quality of the hunt.
Hunters in the Lower Peninsula will be limited to one buck starting with the 2027 deer hunting season, after the Michigan Natural Resources Commission approved the move in a marathon meeting on Wednesday, May 13, in Gaylord.
The changes, approved by the Natural Resources Commission, a seven-member public body appointed by the governor that oversees the state’s hunting and fishing policies, following a more than 9½-hour meeting on Wednesday, include the following for the 2027 deer hunt:
- Limiting the deer harvest to one buck per hunter in the Lower Peninsula.
- The single-tag deer license in the Lower Peninsula will be valid only for a deer with at least three antler points on a side, or an antlerless deer.
- The combination license will allow hunters to take one antlered deer with no point restrictions and one antlerless deer; or two antlerless deer.
- In existing deer management units with specific antler point restrictions, those restrictions will remain unchanged.
- No changes to deer hunting regulations in the Upper Peninsula
The commission also approved changes that will take place with this fall’s deer hunt, including:
- Eliminating an antlerless access drawing in the Upper Peninsula.
- Reducing the length of the statewide muzzleloader season from 10 days to three days, beginning on the first Friday of December.
- In the Lower Peninsula, any legal firearm will be allowed for muzzleloader season, and the season will be renamed the December Firearm Deer Season.
- The Late Antlerless Season will open earlier, beginning on the Monday following the December Firearm Season and continuing through Jan. 1.
- Eliminating the Limited Firearms Deer Zone in the Lower Peninsula, allowing for the use of all legal firearms across the Lower Peninsula.
- Eliminating the extended late antlerless and January archery seasons, so that all deer hunting for the season concludes after Jan. 1.
- Have an early antlerless firearm deer season run concurrently with the Liberty Hunt in the second weekend in September.
The changes have been in discussion for years and are designed to boost a lagging Michigan deer hunt. Michigan’s hunt is uniquely skewed toward bagging a buck in comparison to other Midwest states around the Great Lakes, where does are more often harvested. It’s led to a disruption of natural male-female ratios of Michigan’s deer that some say contributes to overpopulation and crop damage in southern Michigan and an underabundance of deer in parts of the U.P. Many hunters report finding fewer and fewer older, quality trophy bucks.
The commission amended DNR staff’s recommendations, notably in excluding the Upper Peninsula from the one-buck limit.
Natural Resources Commissioner David Nyberg, of Marquette, noted that the U.P. deer population features unique challenges such as cold, heavy snow winters and predation from wolves, cougars, bears and other animals. Restrictions on buck harvest in the U.P. could lead to a worsening economic impact beyond that already occurring from the struggling hunt. And of U.P. hunters with the opportunity to take more than one buck, only about 2% do so, Nyberg noted.
“It’s less about the desire or expectation of harvesting two bucks; it’s more about the opportunity to participate in hunting traditions that may be somewhat unique to the U.P.,” he said.
Many − but not all − hunters support the changes
Thumb-area resident Rashel Hubbard told commissioners the one-buck limit was appropriate “so that we don’t see year-in and year-out a deer herd that is imbalanced, that doesn’t look anything close to what it biologically should.”
“The mentality of ‘give two doe tags but keep two buck tags’ is what we have been doing for decades, and how has it worked?” she said.
Hunter Justin Root, of Howell, cited the success of a one-buck policy in Pennsylvania, a state whose deer and hunter densities closely mirror Michigan’s. In the 2025 season, 22 years after Pennsylvania adopted a one-buck limit with antler point restrictions, some 320,000 does were harvested in the state, compared with 142,000 does in Michigan. Pennsylvania, during that season, harvested 185,000 bucks compared with Michigan’s 152,000 — meaning the doe-to-buck ratio in Michigan was 0.9 compared with 1.7 in Pennsylvania.
“In 2003, 85% of Pennsylvania’s buck harvest was less than a year-and-a-half old; last year it was under 35%,” Root said. “What more do we need for an example of how to manage populations, sex ratios and age structure than those numbers?”
But not all hunters who spoke to the commission on Wednesday were in favor of the changes. Hunter Roger Thorman, of Croswell, noted that of the hundreds of thousands of Michigan deer hunters who had bought combo licenses, only about 6% took a second buck.
“So basically, we have been doing the one-buck rule now for years, other than a minor little percentage,” he said. “I haven’t seen a change. I don’t know why we would want to force it on people.”
Lower Peninsula pilot program could allow hunters to earn a second buck
The Natural Resources Commission also called on the DNR to develop a pilot “earn a second buck” program for the southern Lower Peninsula. Under this new rule, hunters would have to harvest an antlerless deer before being permitted to harvest a second buck with an antler requirement of at least four points on one side.
Commissioners called for DNR staff to assess deer populations and breakdowns in the pilot area of at least two Lower Peninsula counties in size, set up a comparable control area, and then assess how the second-buck path affected the deer herds.
“We need to be able to measure results,” Commissioner Mark Eyster, of Williamston, said.
Contact Keith Matheny: [email protected].
