Fewer people are hunting. What does that mean for Michigan?

It’s a chilly November evening, and the sun’s starting to set in the woods outside Traverse City.

Nia Becker points out some hardly noticeable deer tracks.

“They’re kind of like heart-shaped indentations in the ground, like a point,” she says. “I think these freshly fallen leaves have covered up some of the tracks, so it’s a little hard to see.”

Becker is scouting the swampy, forested area where she last harvested a deer, and seeing whether it might be a good place to hunt again this season.

“They’re totally coming through this area,” she says in a whisper.

Becker, 29, didn’t start hunting until about four years ago. She’s a forester, and she says she noticed how the deer were affecting the forest’s ability to regenerate.

That sparked her interest in hunting, but her main motivation is pretty simple.

“The deer are delicious,” she said. “And it’s also a great way to have a local source of food. I think there's a lot of pride that comes from being able to basically harvest your own food and provide for yourself.”

Becker is not your typical Michigan hunter. She’s young, a woman, a person of color and she didn’t grow up hunting as a kid.

And while more women are hunting in Michigan now versus 20 years ago, the number of hunters overall is declining.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources estimates that by the end of the decade, the sale of hunting licenses will have decreased by 50 percent from its peak in 1995.

The fees from those licenses make up the bulk of the DNR’s budget.

But the problem extends beyond just the DNR.

DEER, EVERYWHERE

“The two real services that hunters provide: one is their population control of the animal they’re hunting. And two, through the purchase of licenses, they're helping to fund conservation in America,” said Shawn Riley, a professor of wildlife management at Michigan State University.

With fewer hunters, deer populations are growing in many parts of the state, and they likely won’t stop.

Riley, who studies people’s interactions with wildlife, says that’ll mean more Michiganders will encounter deer.

For those in suburban environments, it could mean deer to run in front of your car; more deer to eat your freshly planted hostas; more deer in yards and forests and roads.

For more rural communities, it could mean damage to crops, damage to forests, more car collisions and a higher risk of illnesses like chronic wasting disease and bovine tuberculosis among the deer herd (and occasionally to livestock).

So why are there fewer hunters now?

“This is yet another effect of the baby boom moving through the population,” Riley said, “and the baby boom was probably the most heavily involved with hunting.”

Brian Frawley, the survey coordinator of the DNR’s Wildlife Division, says the problem is compounded: As baby boomers age out of hunting, not as many young people are replacing them.

“There's more competition for recreational time today than … 20 to 30 years ago,” Frawley said. “The internet, social media, as well as electronic games … compete with time spent hunting deer. And as the latest generations have adopted those, they have pushed aside more traditional recreation like deer hunting.”

SHIFT TO CITIES

Both Riley and Frawley say there’s also an overarching cause for the decline – a trend that’s been around longer than the internet.

“Over the last 100 years … we’ve seen internal migration from the rural towards the urban-suburban environment,” Riley said. “Sociologists think it takes one or two generations after somebody moves either direction to really take on the values … of that community.”

One common value in more urban-suburban environments? Riley says it’s the idea that we should protect and live with wildlife, rather than take or use it for purposes like hunting.

“They think we should be in one community with wildlife, but they’re actually detached and don’t have much direct experience,” he said. “So they’re basing those attitudes on media and what people that are important to them believe.”

Riley says those folks are mostly interacting with only urban-suburban wildlife: animals like skunks, opossums, raccoons, squirrels, and, increasingly, deer.

But a preference for protecting wildlife, rather than taking it, likely won’t change until interacting with deer starts to pose serious health or economic threats to humans, Riley says.

And until we reach that point, Riley says people will increasingly grow to see deer as an annoying disturbance.

“We've created a situation, sort of in the name of protection, that's now changed the behavior of the animal and its interactions with humans. That leads people to consider them pests,” said Riley.

He says he worries that this changes our view of wildlife to “defiled life,” and weakens yet another link to the natural world.

“It’s now a pest that we have to control rather than this organism we’ve lived with since our very being as a species,” he said. “As people become disconnected, it’s going to be difficult to find ways that are acceptable [and] efficient to control populations on a landscape scale.”

But some hunters, like Nia Becker, are trying.

DIFFERENT TARGETS

Becker harvests mainly antlerless deer, like does and young deer.

In fact, the DNR went so far as to write an open letter urging hunters to do exactly that, since it slows the pace of population growth.

But it’s a difficult ship to turn. A little over 85,000 deer have been harvested so far this season in Michigan. Only about a third of those were antlerless.

Becker says she hopes that changes.

(Photo: Ellie Katz/IPR News)

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(Photo: Ellie Katz/IPR News)

But the key to getting more folks into hunting in general? She says it might just be a reframing of how people think about the activity.

“I guess I don't always necessarily consider myself a hunter as part of my identity. I consider it more just something I like doing. Maybe that can draw more people to it, like, you don’t have to be a hunter to hunt,” she said. “There’s a whole diverse suite of people either hunting or wanting to hunt. You don’t have to be the stereotypical hunter to do it. I mean, I guess I am wearing flannel right now but…”

But it keeps her warm.

And maybe, she says, with things like better public deer blinds and more awareness of how easy it is to access many state and federal lands, new people might give it a try.