The Deer Report with the DNR

Top five things to know for November’s hunting season

By Victor Skinner | Nov. 2, 2024

The lead up to the 2024 Michigan firearm deer season featured one of the biggest deer disease die-offs in recent years, regulation changes to address population imbalances in both peninsulas, and continued concerns about the future of wildlife funding amid declining hunter numbers.

Those issues and others could factor into how many of Michigan’s roughly 600,000 hunters approach the 2024 season as they head into the woods for the firearm opener on Nov. 15.

While a relatively mild 2023-24 winter is expected to translate into hunters generally seeing more deer this season, Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials point to deer disease outbreaks, a focus on harvesting more does, and expanded harvest options as important considerations. Here are the top five things to know for 2024.

1. Deer Diseases

Reports of deer dying of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, commonly known as EHD, started early this year and increased quickly, though the outbreak isn’t expected to have a significant impact in the northern Lower Peninsula.

“This year, conditions were kind of perfect for this virus to show up early,” says Chad Fedewa, acting deer specialist for the Michigan DNR. “It’s been fairly extensive, but the impact on the deer population is very localized.”

The disease is transmitted by a biting midge, which thrived following a relatively mild winter and warm spring, prompting outbreaks in May that typically don’t materialize until late July. DNR officials confirmed the disease in a dozen counties in southwest Michigan this year, and have confidence in reports from many others, including one pending confirmation in Manistee County, according to Mitch Marcus, the DNR’s Wildlife Health Section supervisor.

“Once the hard frost happens, then the vector that transmits the disease dies,” Marcus says.

Fedewa stressed that while EHD can significantly impact deer numbers in localized areas, evidenced by “multiple dead deer … in and around water sources,” it does not pose a threat to human health, and it’s “not even on the radar” in the northern Lower Peninsula.

In total, the DNR has confirmed about 3,000 deer have died from EHD in 2024, a toll that pales in comparison to the state’s biggest outbreak that claimed a minimum of 15,000 deer across 32 counties in 2012.

DNR officials are also “still concerned and still testing” for chronic wasting disease on a rotational basis across the state, with focused surveillance this year in Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Antrim, Otsego, and Cheboygan counties, among others. The disease, which has not been detected in northwest Lower Peninsula, is transmitted by a prion passed between deer.

So far in 2024, Marcus says, the state has tested a little over 1,100 deer and found only two positive deer in Jackson County and one from Montcalm County. Hunters can find information on submitting their deer for testing at Michigan.gov/CWD.

“Even if they have a nice buck ... there’s still ways to have that deer tested and get the mount they’re looking to get,” Fedewa says, noting the DNR offers a list of processors who can extract the lymph nodes needed for testing while preserving the hide.

Bovine tuberculosis, a highly infectious disease that can infect humans, also continues to persist at low levels in several northern Michigan counties, with a detection in Benzie County in 2023. Hunters in Montmorency, Alpena, Alcona, and Oscoda, and surrounding counties must submit harvested deer heads for testing, while hunters elsewhere should look out for white nodules on deer lungs or inside the chest cavity as an obvious sign, Fedewa says.

“People have contracted TB from infected deer,” he says. “It’s pretty rare, but it can happen.” Information on TB testing and precautions for processing deer are available on the DNR website.

2. Deer Population Trends

Deer numbers in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula continue to rise, while the population in the Upper Peninsula remains below what the DNR and hunters would prefer.

While the DNR does not produce population estimates for deer, a variety of trend indicators suggest growing numbers below the bridge are having a significant impact in a number of ways.

“A lot of things are going well for deer population numbers and allowing them to increase,” Fedewa says.

Less winter mortality due to milder temperatures, declining hunter numbers, a lack of predators, and other factors are contributing to the increase that’s causing more deer-car collisions, as well as more requests for agricultural deer damage permits that allow farmers to kill troublesome deer outside of the season.

“The number of permit requests have increased pretty substantially across the northern Lower Peninsula over the last five years,” Feweda says. “In some counties, it’s probably double.”

With about 55,000 deer-car collisions per year, officials at the DNR and Michigan Department of Transportation this year applied for nearly $500,000 in federal funding to study ways to mitigate the damage.

While officials await funding determinations expected in the spring, “we’re seeing impacts on the health of our forest” from the overpopulation, Feweda says, because “they kind of graze on the understory.”

“They favor native plant species … so that can add to the advantage of invasive species in our state,” he says.

3. Declining Hunter Numbers

The struggle to manage the Lower Peninsula’s growing deer population is tied in part to a decades-long trend of declining hunter numbers that’s not expected to change any time soon.

The number of Michigan deer hunting license buyers—by far the biggest group of hunting license buyers—has declined from 871,678 in 1995 to 593,934 in 2023, a 32 percent drop driven mostly by the baby boomer generation retiring from the pastime.

“The youngest boomers are 60 years of age right now,” says Brian Frawley, the DNR’s survey coordinator. “Generally, by the time you’ve reached 70-plus, you’ve aged out of the hunting cohort.”

The COVID pandemic boosted license sales by 5.4 percent in 2020, and sales increased again by 1.3 percent again last year, but the decline has otherwise followed a roughly 1.6 percent annual slide since 2013, Frawley says.

About 70 percent of the DNR’s budget comes from license sales and federal funding generated from excise taxes on hunting equipment that’s allocated based on sales. It’s a similar dynamic with fishing licenses. Combined, the two sources constitute the vast majority of the DNR’s wildlife management funding, for both game and all other wildlife species, suggesting a significant funding shortfall looms on the horizon with about 100,000 hunters expected to drop off over the next decade.

“We just don’t have the same level of participation in the younger generations,” despite years of hunter recruitment and retention efforts, Frawley says.

The majority of Michigan deer hunters purchase their license the week before the season, but Frawley expects 2024 license sales to come in similar to last year based on early numbers.
“We’re about spot on with the number of hunters and the number of kill tags are up 0.5 percent,” he says.

“We’re going to have a Friday opener, so it will help a lot of hunters,” Frawley says. “If the weather is cooperative, I think we’ll see as many hunters, if not a slight increase” from 2023.

4. More Hunting Opportunities

In an effort to reduce Lower Peninsula deer numbers, the Michigan Natural Resources Commission this summer approved several regulation changes to expand opportunities for hunters to harvest more deer.

Those changes include a muzzleloader season in the northern Lower Peninsula that now allows hunters to use any legal firearm, as well as opening public land to hunting during the late antlerless season, which was previously restricted to private land only.

The muzzleloader season runs from Dec. 6-15, while the late antlerless season runs from Dec. 16 to Jan. 1.

5. A Focus on Does

Unlike many other states in the Midwest that harvest more antlerless deer than bucks, “antlerless numbers have been much lower than antlered numbers over the last 10 years” in Michigan, Fedewa says.

That reality has contributed to Michigan’s deer overpopulation, and regulations adopted this summer aim to encourage hunters to harvest more does to limit reproduction. In addition to the expanded late antlerless season, the DNR created a universal antlerless tag that can be used across deer management units, rather than restricting the doe licenses to specific units.

Individual buck tags and the combination license to harvest two deer can also now be used for antlerless deer in the Lower Peninsula.

“To manage the deer population on the larger scale, the focus has to be on antlerless deer,” Feweda says, adding the DNR is strongly encouraging hunters to harvest at least one. “Certainly at a minimum for every buck they shoot, they should shoot an antlerless deer.”

Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources