2014 Michigan Deer Hunting Harvest Down 15 Percent

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has issued a report on the 2014 hunting seasons. It says that roughly 615,000 hunters statewide harvested a total of approximately 329,000 deer. That's a drop of 15 percent from 2013.

Wildlife managers report that regional declines in deer harvest were greatest in the Upper Peninsula, where the overall harvest was down nearly 36 percent.

The DNR said several factors – including back-to-back years of severe winter weather that depleted the deer population in some parts of the state – contributed to the decline.

“In the Upper Peninsula, winter started early with more than 3 feet of snow on the ground in some areas before the Nov. 15 opening of firearm deer season,” said DNR wildlife biologist Brian Frawley. “Though not as severe as the previous season, this marked the third consecutive rough winter for the deer population in the U.P.”

Frawley said that much of the region’s drop in deer harvest can be explained by those conditions.

Across all hunting seasons, 84,099 people hunted deer in the U.P. in 2014, down about 19 percent from 2013.

DNR Director Keith Creagh said that like Michigan's deer population, the state’s deer harvest numbers have risen and fallen since the early 1960s.

"The number of deer harvested hit a low in the early 1970s at below 100,000 statewide," Creagh said. "With mild winters and changing forest conditions, deer populations then rose and hunter harvest climbed to more than 400,000 by the late 1980s."

After tough back-to-back winters in the mid-1990s, the harvest followed the population steeply downhill, but rebounded again to nearly 600,000 by the end of the decade. Since then, deer harvest has remained below 500,000 since the early 2000s.

DNR deer program biologist Ashley Autenrieth said U.P. deer-vehicle collisions tallied 2,961, down 22 percent from 2013. Crop damage permit kills were down to 1,664 in 2014 from 1,745 the previous year.

"These two factors indicate a drop in the overall deer population," Autenrieth said.

The winter severity index, crop damage permits and deer-vehicle accidents also were down in the northern Lower Peninsula.

Firearm deer hunters in the U.P. harvested 14,734 antlered bucks, with 41,415 taken in the northern Lower Peninsula and 49,110 in the southern Lower Peninsula.

Across all 2014 deer hunting seasons, nearly a fourth of hunters in the western U.P., and 14.6 percent in the eastern U.P., harvested at least one antlered buck. Statewide, the percentage was 26.9 percent.

Statewide, 41 percent of hunters harvested a deer in 2014, compared to 43 percent in 2013. Roughly 11 percent of deer hunters harvested two or more deer of any type. Less than 4 percent of hunters took two antlered bucks.

About 20 percent of deer hunters harvested an antlerless deer and 27 percent took an antlered buck.

The overall number of license buyers was down from 10 years ago, but an increased number of people younger than 14 years old and people older than 50 bought a hunting license last year. Overall, 12 percent of license buyers were younger than 17 years old.