The Michigan House has advanced a bill that would allow deer baiting in the Lower Peninsula.
Baiting — putting out piles of food to attract deer for hunting — has been banned in the Lower Peninsula since 2018. State wildlife regulators enacted the ban with the goal of preventing the spread of chronic wasting disease, a fatal, contagious brain disease which has now been found in 16 Lower Peninsula counties.
While the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has opposed past efforts to lift the baiting ban, that tune has changed.
“We’re certainly open to that discussion,” said Taylor Ridderbusch, chief of staff at the DNR.
But the department doesn’t want the change coming from the Legislature. It wants it to come from the Natural Resources Commission.
“The Natural Resources Commission is charged with using sound scientific management when they're creating regulations,” Ridderbusch said. “There's just that extra layer of protection in terms of what they put forward through a wildlife conservation order as opposed to what the Legislature is bound to when they are considering legislation.”
Jim Sweeney, a hunter from Leelanau County and lobbyist with the Concerned Sportsmen of Michigan, agrees.
“There's a reason we delegate natural resources policy to the experts, which is the Department (of Natural Resources) and the Natural Resources Commission,” Sweeney said. “By usurping that authority, we get into very dangerous territory, because, essentially, then you're managing our natural resources by popular vote. Because that's what politicians are chasing at the end of the day.”
He worries changing hunting regulation via the Legislature would create a dangerous precedent for natural resources management in Michigan, shifting power from a group whose decisions are bound by science to one whose decisions are more closely tied to popular opinion.
Despite that, Sweeney wants to see baiting allowed again in counties where chronic wasting disease hasn’t been detected. His previous support for the ban dulled when he saw other contradictory regulations, like antler point restrictions, go into effect. (Antler point restrictions prevent hunters from killing young male deer to promote age diversity and antler growth, but adult male deer are thought to have higher CWD prevalence and might be more likely to spread the disease farther.)
Critics of the ban point to other contradictions, like poor enforcement of the rule and the natural tendency of deer to congregate, which spreads chronic wasting disease.
“This week on a drive to Hillsdale, my husband and I counted more than 30 deer feeding together in a single field,” said state Rep. Jennifer Wortz, R-Quincy, in an address to the state House on Wednesday. Wortz is the lead sponsor on the baiting bill that passed.
“The baiting ban has not stopped disease,” Wortz said. “What it has done is contribute to exploding deer populations, increased crop damage and more dangerous encounters on our roads.”
Wortz said lifting the ban would encourage more hunting opportunities and therefore help lower overabundant deer populations.
There is limited scientific evidence to suggest baiting would lower deer populations. A 2003 study in Wisconsin found that baiting does not increase harvest success.
Wildlife disease experts say that more deer in closer contact increases the risk of transmitting chronic wasting disease. A 2025 study from Michigan State University and the DNR looked at the different types of contact deer have when feeding. Researchers found that deer concentrate more densely at bait sites than at food plots or on the natural landscape.
While an outright baiting ban likely won’t prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease, scientists say it can buy resource managers and researchers more time to figure out a better way to deal with the outbreak.
As is, the baiting bill that passed the Republican-controlled House makes no exceptions for counties where chronic wasting disease has been detected. The bill will now go to the Democrat-controlled state Senate for review before it can move ahead.
Sweeney, the hunter and lobbyist, is hopeful the DNR can present the NRC with a proposal to modify the current baiting ban before the state Senate acts on the bill.
But if not, and the bill passes, he said, “I think we’re on a very slippery slope here.”
