Report Nr. 3213 100 Years of Deer Management in Michigan

This brochure discusses deer management in Michigan for the past one hundred years, as 1994 was the centennial anniversary for licensing hunters in the state. As market hunting was responsible for the majority of kills, the Michigan legislature first attempted to restrict the sale of game to other states. However, one of the biggest blows to the practice was the passing of an 1895 law establishing a designated hunting season; participation required a license. While the amount of deer hunters were comparatively few, they were highly efficient, forcing the bag limit of five deer to be lower to three in 1901, to two in 1905, finally settling on one in 1915. In 1928, the Department of Conservation established the Game Division, which led to better collections of data from both conservation officers and hunters. By the 1930s, a large problem had developed: the population of deer had rebounded. While the Department of Conservation combated the problem as best as they could by providing more public hunting lands and experimenting with the reintroduction of antlerless deer hunting in 1941, 1949, 1950, and 1951, the "slaughter of 1952" revealed the need for a more formalized system. With that, the Department of Conservation introduced the area and quota system which is still in place today. Soon after, and unrelated to the antlerless deer hunting,, the deer's native habitat went through a period of decline. In 1971, the Deer Range Improvement Program was introduced and from 1971 to 1987, twenty million dollars was invested in habitat improvements. At the time of publication, one of the more pressing matters concerned the reduction of the buck harvest.