State Rep. Jennifer Wortz speaks on the House floor. Courtesy | Michigan House Republicans
Michigan hunters could soon use deer bait again after the House passed a bill earlier this month to end the state’s ban.
“We’ve continued to see an exponential growth of deer, in particular in southern Michigan,” said Michigan Rep. Jennifer Wortz, the sponsor of the bill and a Republican who represents Hillsdale and Branch counties. “This would just repeal that ban and allow for baiting to happen again.”
Wortz’s House Bill 4445 would lift the ban on deer bait — piles of food to attract deer — and roll back other deer and elk feeding restrictions. The state’s Natural Resources Commission banned the use of deer bait in 2019 to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease. But Wortz argues the rule does little to prevent disease while increasing the deer population in the state, which leads to more collisions with cars and crop damage. The measure would need to pass Michigan’s Democrat-controlled Senate.
“Drive around, you’ll see deer congregate everywhere,” Wortz told The Collegian. “They’re a herd type animal, so they live in groups, and you see them all the time feasting together in fields and drinking along streams together. And so there just really was no logic behind this decision.”
Michigan’s deer population has grown to about 2 million, up from 1.7 million in 2012, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
“This is to try to help increase and incentivize hunters, especially maybe those weekend hunters or tourist-type hunters who come out for a weekend,” Wortz said. “They can be guaranteed to take some deer. Also, the youth, trying to get them back into hunting.”
But state regulators and lobbyists say they would rather the administrative agency change its rules than for the legislature to change the law.
“The Natural Resources Commission is charged with using sound scientific management when they’re creating regulations,” Ridderbusch said earlier this month, according to Bridge Michigan. “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 lobbyist with the Concerned Sportsmen of Michigan, made a similar point.
“There’s a reason we delegate natural resources policy to the experts, which is the department and the Natural Resources Commission,” Sweeney said, according to Bridge Michigan. “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.”
Deer overpopulation can lead to more car crashes and crop damage. In 2024, more than 58,000 vehicle-deer crashes occurred across Michigan, according to state data. Wortz also said some farmers lose up to 10% of their crop every year to damage by deer.
“It’s estimated that, even just to help maintain the current herd in Michigan, we need to be killing 40% of our deer population every hunting season,” Wortz said, citing estimates from a state environmental agency. “And that’s not happening.”
