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The elk hunting season got off to a tough start last year, and state officials say heat is at least partly to blame.
Michigan’s elk season begins in late August, with the early hunt spread out over 12 days, ending in September.
It’s not unusual for that hunt to be tough. For one, thick foliage in the late summer and early fall makes it harder to spot the elk. Then there’s the weather: When it’s warmer, elk tend to move around less during the day, which means they're harder to find. And the season has been trending hotter.
“Last couple hunts in the fall, [we] have been dealing with some really warm, hot temperature and rain, heavy winds,” said Michael Mshar, a sergeant with the law enforcement division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
The DNR said daily highs during the early hunt of 2024 were consistently above 70 degrees.
Michigan’s native elk population disappeared around 1875, after years of overhunting and habitat loss. In the century and a half that followed, they were reintroduced and the state eventually opened up hunting once more.
Now, elk hunting is popular, as tens of thousands of people enter a lottery each year, vying for just a few hundred tags (with the state’s system giving past applicants an advantage). The elk hunt is meant to target animals outside of the protected elk management area, which is mainly in the Pigeon River Country State Forest near Gaylord.
But the early hunt’s harvest rate in 2024 was the lowest documented, the department said, likely due to warmer weather. In the early fall, 59% of hunters who went out managed to get an elk, far below the average rate for the first hunting period of 74%.
Mshar thinks the season's hot weather has also affected participation, as some would-be elk hunters were deterred from going out because of concerns like meat spoiling.
“We see a lot of people who draw tags who don't even come up and hunt, just because they don't want to try to harvest an animal in 80, 90 degree weather,” he said.
The late hunt in December was better, with cold, snowy conditions that helped visibility. When the season closed, the final harvest of 180 elk was in line with expectations.
“Snowfall during the December hunt provided much-needed assistance to hunters, allowing for improved tracking conditions and a successful conclusion to the season,” said a statement from Angela Kujawa, a wildlife biologist with the DNR.
Overall, the average for the early hunt harvest has trended down slightly over the last few years, while the later hunt’s average has remained about the same, Mshar said; moving forward, the wildlife division may look to make some changes, like pushing back the start from late August to early October.
Editor's note: The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is a sponsor of WCMU. We report on them as we do with any other organization.
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