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MDNR Report

Deer hunter with harvestDeer hunter with harvest

Michigan’s annual deer hunting seasons – to many, as much a fall tradition as football, apple cider and pumpkin patches – are once again underway.

Starting with the fall 2022 deer seasons, all hunters who successfully take a deer are required to report it through the DNR’s online harvest reporting system.

This new reporting system is something many hunters have been requesting for several years. During this first fall with mandatory online reporting, conservation officers will focus on educating hunters on the new process, rather than issuing tickets, then begin enforcement next year.

Since the 1950s, the DNR has gathered deer harvest information by mailing surveys to a sample of hunters.

“The new system represents a major change for all Michigan hunters,” DNR deer, elk and moose management specialist Chad Stewart said. “The system will provide us a near real-time estimate of deer harvest as it occurs, something Michigan has never experienced before.”

One of the most important reasons for the move to online harvest reporting, according to Stewart, is more data.

By Louie Stout

Michigan BuckMichigan Buck

If you have a lot of hunting friends on social media, you know that the bow season produced a lot of nice bucks.

Will we see the same during the gun season that opened Saturday in Indiana and begins Tuesday in Michigan?

We always do, and that should include a few giant bucks getting knocked down by fortunate hunters.

Based upon mandatory harvest reports compiled by Michigan for the first time this season, there have been nearly 86,800 deer taken in that state through Friday. Buck harvest in border counties included 544 in Berrien, 565 in Cass, 527 in St. Joseph, 668 in Branch and 1,058 in Hillsdale.

In Indiana, 28260 deer have been harvested as of Friday with 11,407 of them being antlered bucks, slightly behind last year’s buck harvest for the same period of time. Northern Indiana border county buck harvests are Lake (157), Porter (157), LaPorte (232), St. Joseph (165), Elkhart (266), LaGrange (336) and Stueben ((350).

MDNR Report

Michigan Game WardensMichigan Game Wardens

Hunters can expect excellent conditions for the 2022 firearm deer season, which begins Nov. 15. To ensure a safe season, too, Michigan DNR conservation officers are sharing best practices and tips to avoid the most common violations and mistakes they see every year.

“Most of the violations conservation officers encounter during firearm deer season are simple mistakes people make when they get caught up in the excitement of the hunt or forget to put safety first,” said F/Lt. Jason Wicklund, DNR Law Enforcement Division. “Our top priority is keeping people safe, so they have a good story to tell friends and family about their successful hunt.”

Here are 10 best practices for hunters to remember:

1 – Properly tag your deer

Before field-dressing or moving a deer, kill tags should be filled out (including the month and date the deer was taken and the deer’s gender and number of antler points) and properly placed on the deer. Conservation officers often see the wrong kill tag on game – such as fish or turkey licenses on deer. Often, this is a simple mistake made in the dark and can be corrected by re-tagging the deer as soon as you notice the error.

Remember, too, that reporting your deer within 72 hours of harvest is just as important as tagging it. Everything hunters need to know is available on the DNR’s harvest reporting webpage.

IDNR Report

With the deer reduction zone season underway and the statewide archery deer season starting Oct. 1, Indiana Conservation Officers remind hunters to stay safe.
The various deer hunting seasons run through Jan. 31, 2023. It is estimated that more than 300,000 people will participate in some form of deer hunting in Indiana during that span.

The most common injuries during deer seasons are accidents involving tree stands and elevated platforms. Hunters should follow the safety tips listed below when hunting from an elevated position.

Before the hunt:

  • Read and understand the tree stand manufacturer’s instructions.
  • Check tree stands and equipment for wear, fatigue, and cracks or loose nuts/bolts, paying particularly close attention to parts made of material other than metal.
  • Practice at ground level.
  • Learn how to properly wear your full-body safety harness.

During the hunt:

  • Wear your full-body safety harness.
  • Use a tree stand safety rope.
  • Make certain to attach your harness to the tree before leaving the ground, and that it remains attached to the tree until you return to the ground.
  • Maintain three points of contact during ascent and descent.
  • Use boots with non-slip soles.
  • Use a haul line to raise and lower firearms, bows and other hunting gear.
  • Make sure firearms are unloaded, action is open, and safety is on before attaching them to the haul line.

Additional safety tips:

  • Carry emergency equipment, such as a cellphone and flashlight.
  • Make a plan before you hunt.
  • Tell someone your plan, including where you will be hunting and when you plan to return.
  • Stick to your plan.
  • Identify game before pointing a firearm.
  • Know your target and what is beyond it.

For more information, see hunting.IN.gov.  

By Chad Stewart - Michigan Deer Biologist

Deer hunterDeer hunter

The 2022 deer hunting season is upon us and is shaping up to be one of the more historically important hunting seasons Michigan has ever experienced.

In 2022, for the first time, hunters taking a deer in Michigan will have one additional step to complete beyond tagging their deer before they have finalized their harvest. Successful hunters will now be required to report their harvest online through Michigan’s new harvest reporting system or recently developed mobile app.

The good news is that successful hunters will have time, up to 72 hours, to report their harvest, so this final step doesn’t have to be done right away. The other good news is that when this system was tested in 2021, most hunters were able to complete the harvest report in under five minutes.  On average, reporting a buck harvest took about 30 seconds longer than reporting a doe harvest because of some additional questions about antler points. Hunters who harvested and reported multiple deer through the system seemed to work through the report faster the second time, which tells us that the report process is easily understood after someone goes through it once.

Why is Michigan moving to an online harvest report now after so many years? Or, why hasn’t Michigan done this sooner, the way that all surrounding states have done?  Those are great questions, and fortunately, there are answers.

For years, Michigan has estimated its deer harvest through a postseason harvest survey sent to a random subset of Michigan hunters. This survey and estimate are conducted using standard statistical protocols and allow our state to not only estimate harvest numbers by state, county, season, etc., but also to include confidence limits with each estimate. Very few states have been able to produce this type of estimate. This technique served us well in the past, but we are experiencing challenges with this system. For example, hunters do not respond to the harvest reports the same way they have in the past. In 2000, 74% of hunters receiving a survey returned it. In 2021, the response rate was 33%. These lower response rates create more uncertainty with our primary estimate. We feel it’s important to have confident harvest estimates to make the best, most informed management decisions for one of our most prized natural resources. We will continue to incorporate our deer hunter harvest survey, as we feel it still does a great job at estimating our harvest. However, the scale of the survey will be reduced since we no longer have to estimate our harvest beginning at zero deer for the year.

Speed of available information

The amount of information we’ll now have available, and the speed at which it is available, is one of the biggest advantages to this new system. Our new system, with its corresponding public-facing dashboard, will show hunters every day how deer harvest is progressing across the season, with up-to-date accounts on total harvest in the state, harvest by county, season harvest and even harvest by day.

Additionally, our state will be able to tie harvest to individual licenses, which is a feature we’ve been unable to incorporate previously. This means we’ll have a better understanding of how many hunters are using one of their combination license tags to take an antlerless deer in the archery season. Right now, we know what the estimated antlerless harvest is in the archery season, but don’t necessarily understand which licenses hunters are using to make their harvest decisions. We’ll also have a better understanding of reported harvests of button bucks, bucks with shed antlers and bucks with antlers less than 3 inches. Currently, all of those deer are reported as antlerless deer, but we have never been able to fully quantify the values for any of them.

Disease monitoring

Another function of the online reporting system will be the integration of disease monitoring information. Hunters reporting deer harvested in disease priority areas will receive notifications and instructions on submitting their deer for testing, should they choose to volunteer their deer for either chronic wasting disease or bovine tuberculosis testing>