OPENING WEDNESDAY: Up North deer hunters migrating down south
Change affects businesses, annual tradition
November 13, 2006
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER
ERIC SHARP
The 15-day firearms deer season that starts Wednesday is still the Super Bowl, World Series and Masters of Michigan's outdoor year all rolled into one, pumping $500 million into the economy and involving 725,000 residents.
Yet because the bulk of the deer population has shifted to the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, and archery and black powder seasons have grown so popular, there has been a sea change in what used to be the red-coated army's annual exodus Up North.
"More of our hunters stay right here in southern Michigan now than go north" to the traditional deer hunter areas of the 1970s, said Tom Knutson, a partner in Knutson's Recreational Sales in Brooklyn.
That's because a deer herd in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula that was less than 15,000 in 1948 and only 100,000 in 1975 has burgeoned to about 800,000 today, which is half of the statewide total.
Also keeping deer hunters near home is the explosive growth of archery hunting, which runs Oct. 1 to Jan. 1.
"In the outdoor industry, firearms deer hunting is huge; it still takes center stage over everything else," said Rick Garrett, events coordinator at the Cabela's outdoors superstore in Dundee. "But archery hunting has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years. And since it starts the first of October, by the time the firearms season arrives, most people have already geared up with the major stuff."
Garrett added that hunters only come in the week before the firearms season for ammunition, a few smaller items and possibly some warmer clothing if the weather turns colder.
Knutson said for businesses, "the problem with the season is that it's so short." He said firearms hunters would start buying over the weekend and continue through next weekend, but that's only because of a mid-week opener.
"The firearms season is really about a one-week run," he said. "But it's a really big week. Then it's over, and we'll start selling ice fishing stuff."
More deer populate south
Tens of thousands of hunters still make the trip Up North, including Peter Lehman of Kalamazoo, who said he still would go to a traditional deer camp near Baldwin for the first five days of the firearms season.
"But I go mostly to hang out with guys I've hunted with for 30 years," he said. "I got into bowhunting big time about 15 years ago, and I'll spend maybe 40 days in a tree stand before the bow season ends, and I can't be running Up North all the time. There are a lot more deer within an hour of my house."
People who began hunting in the last 25 to 30 years probably find it hard to conceive of a time when the deer were rare in southern Michigan. But whitetails were nearly extirpated in the region by development and over-hunting, and the southern Lower Peninsula was closed to deer hunting from the early 1900s until it reopened statewide in 1948, when deer from northern Michigan began to re-colonize the region.
The deer in the 20,000-square-mile area of the southern Lower Peninsula in 1948 was less than one per square mile. Even as late as 1975, the region's deer herd was only 10% of the statewide total of 1 million.
Today, the southern Lower Peninsula has a deer density of about 40 deer per square mile. And deer that feed in the rich farm croplands of southern Michigan are larger and have better antlers than those in the north.
The change is best illustrated by one statistic: For the past two years, 60% of the 415,000 deer killed by Michigan hunters have come from the southern Lower Peninsula.
Riley Daniels, general manager of the Bass Pro Shops superstore at Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills, said that while younger hunters like to stay in southern Michigan to hunt, "the middle-aged and older guys still like to go Up North."
"It's still a very strong tradition for them," he said, "to get together with their buddies for a week of playing cards and shooting deer."
Daniels said marketing experts from Bass Pro's headquarters in Springfield, Ill., "did an analysis of our customer base last year and they identified what they called the Up North phenomenon.
"This is still a time for guys to get away for a few days and get into the woods," he said, "and it's really important for us to meet their expectations when it comes to supplying gear."
Jim Knutson, Tom's father and partner, began deer hunting in the Brooklyn area in 1960 and put the changes in the sport in perspective.
"In those days, if you saw a deer a season, it was an accomplishment," he said. "Not got a deer, just saw one.
"We have more deer down here now than they do Up North. But they're all on private land, and people are starting to pay to hunt. I was talking to some guys the other day who leased 200 acres for $2,000 for the season.
"I just came back from the UP, and I only saw a handful of old guys who were out getting their camps ready. They told me that the traditional deer hunter, who used to go to camp for a week or two, is becoming irrelevant. The big thing in the UP now is snowmobiling. The young hunters show up the day before the opener, stay three or four days, and go home."
Denis and Christine Heckaman of Norvell and their son, Denis Jr., have killed bucks during the bow season and will hunt during rifle season on a 170-acre farm near their home in Jackson County, which has become a mecca for Michigan whitetail hunters. They will be joined by several members of Christine's family, who now make the annual trip south from Germfask in the Upper Peninsula.
Denis Heckaman began hunting around Norvell in the 1970s when "there weren't anywhere near as many deer. But today there are tons of them, and they're a lot bigger than deer in the UP. The guy who owns the place where we hunt has 170 acres of corn, and he hates deer. He says we should kill them all."
Illness drives hunters away
Alpena is in an area called Club Country, dotted with private hunting clubs. The area once drew huge numbers of hunters to the vast acreages of public woodlands. But while the clubs are still active, the number of individual hunters on state land has decreased dramatically the past decade.
That's because bovine tuberculosis was discovered in wild whitetail deer in the northeast quadrant of the Lower Peninsula, and the state has cut the size of the regional herd in half to fight the disease and banned deer baiting there, a popular form of hunting before the TB outbreak.
"I talked to some motel owners who said they've hardly seen a deer hunter for years, where they used to have to turn them away," said Richard McElroy, a retired executive director of the Alpena area Chamber of Commerce.
He said that while the private camps were very active, the huge reduction of deer on state land discouraged many hunters who "used to come up from Detroit and Saginaw."
"There are so many deer in southern Michigan now, and they are so much bigger than our deer, they have less reason to come here now. Hunting down there isn't like getting out of town with the guys, but if you just want meat ..."
Contact ERIC SHARP at 313-222-2511 or
esharp@freepress.com. Order his book "Fishing Michigan" for $15.95 at
www.freep.com/bookstore or by calling 800-245-5082.
Deer season facts
• Hunters can buy a firearms license for a single buck for $15 or a combination license for $30, which can be used for two deer during the archery, firearms and black powder seasons.
• About 70-75% of the deer killed during the firearms season will be shot in the first two days.
• About 32% of Michigan deer hunters are younger than 35, 41% are 35-54, 11% are 55-64 and 15% are older than 65.
