This reporting is made possible by the Northern Michigan Journalism Project, led by Bridge Michigan and Interlochen Public Radio, and funded by Press Forward Northern Michigan.
This time of year, Jim Sweeney's food plot in Leelanau County doesn't look like much. It's a small field with some sparse grasses and a deer blind off to the side.
But, come fall, it'll be a different story.
"(It's) like a lush lawn," Sweeney said.
Sweeney mostly plants clover, beets and turnips these days. And in places where the soil's a little better than in northwest Michigan, people plant corn.
"Then they'll run the tractor through it and knock it down a little bit, and the deer will just feed off it all fall, which is not a heck of a lot different than just dumping some corn," Sweeney said.
Baiting — putting out piles of food, like corn, to attract deer for hunting — has been illegal in the Lower Peninsula since 2018 to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease, a fatal, contagious brain disease.
Past efforts to lift the baiting ban have failed: A baiting bill in 2019 was vetoed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer amid opposition from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
But some think pro-baiting lawmakers have a shiny new bargaining chip: The DNR needs money.
Since last December, the DNR has asked the state Legislature to increase license fees for things like hunting, fishing and boating.
That fee hike is unpopular, particularly in the state House. But lawmakers like state Rep. Parker Fairbairn, R-Harbor Springs, think it might spur negotiations on baiting.
"There's a lot left to be determined, but I think that would be a leverage point there," Fairbairn said.
Fairbairn signed onto a state House bill introduced earlier this month that would lift the Lower Peninsula's baiting ban. Another bill, introduced earlier this year in the state Senate, would allow baiting but require a $15 license.
Fairbairn argues baiting will help boost dwindling hunter participation. Other proponents say more baiting equals more deer being hunted — lowering overabundant deer populations in order to limit the spread of disease.
The DNR declined to comment on the legislation. But in March, the department confirmed to The Detroit News that it's open to negotiating on baiting penalties.
'It's a bad idea'
Russ Mason agrees those bills could have more traction than in past years.
But that worries him.
"It's a bad idea, and it's a bad idea in exchange for another bad idea. It's a lose-lose strategy," said Mason, a former Michigan DNR wildlife chief who is now a lobbyist and consultant on wildlife issues.
Mason thinks a quid pro quo for baiting bills and license fees could have dire consequences: Chronic wasting disease is always fatal and has no known cure.
The risk of chronic wasting disease jumping to humans is unlikely but possible, according to research from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
"Once you establish (the disease), there is only one trajectory: up," Mason said. "The question is whether it goes up fast or it goes up slow."
More deer means more disease spread
Sonja Christensen studies wildlife disease at Michigan State University. She says disease transmission in a population hinges on one big thing: density.
"When you have things that are closer together and contacting each other more, those pathogens can more readily transmit," she said.
In other words: More deer in closer contact increases the risk of disease transmission.
Christensen, along with other scientists from MSU and the DNR, recently published a study looking at the different types of contact deer have at bait sites, in food plots and on the natural landscape.
"Short-term concentration is all you really need for a transmission event," Christensen said. "Food plots do bring in deer, too, for sure. But in food plots, we don't typically see the concentration of animals in a single place in time like we do in bait sites."
Scientists think chronic wasting disease is transmitted through direct contact with another infected deer or indirectly, with infected feces or urine. The misfolded proteins that cause the disease, called prions, can also linger on things like plants and soil.
The recent study found all those types of contact, direct or indirect, were higher at bait sites than at food plots or natural landscapes. In some cases, much higher.
Those in favor of baiting limitations sometimes point to Wisconsin as a cautionary tale. That state has had chronic wasting disease for longer and prevalence rates are much higher — so high, in some places, that deer dying from the disease and from natural causes outpace population growth, and the deer population is declining.
"That's what we're seeing now in the southwestern part of Wisconsin, where 20% to 40% of the adult deer are infected with chronic wasting disease," said Tim Van Deelen, professor of wildlife ecology at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
At that point, Van Deelen says, something else starts to happen: an "ick factor" creeps in.
"The enthusiasm for hunting kind of dries up," he said. "A lot of those hunters are still going to buy a hunting license, and they're going to go hunting the way that they historically have. But, rather than shoot a doe, which helps us get population control, they're going to just wait around for big, branch-antlered buck. So the opportunity for hunting to become a control mechanism in areas where deer are overabundant begins drying up."
Michigan's not at that point yet.
And baiting proponents point to a number of policy contradictions.
Jim Sweeney, the hunter in Leelanau County, sees those contradictions on his own land.
"Those same apples the deer can eat under those trees," he said, pointing to a few old apple trees on his property, "if I picked them up and moved them, because there's a (deer) blind here, that would be illegal."
Sweeney wants baiting allowed in counties where chronic wasting disease hasn't been detected. He supported past baiting bans but says that support dimmed when he saw other regulations go into effect, like antler point restrictions. Those restrictions prevent hunters from taking young male deer to promote age diversity and antler growth. But adult male deer are thought to have the highest prevalence rates of chronic wasting disease.
Other pro-baiting hunters point to the UP, where baiting is allowed despite the detection of chronic wasting disease in one county, or to baiting exceptions for hunts for youth and disabled hunters in the Lower Peninsula.
Still, scientists like Van Deelen say limiting baiting can help prevent chronic wasting disease spread.
"My advice to Michigan is that the costs (of baiting) outweigh the benefits. You don't get large-scale improvements in deer harvest: you make it a little easier, but essentially, the early hunters get a few more deer and the late hunters get a few fewer, but it evens out. But what you do is you buy time," he said.
Time for scientists and managers to figure out a way to deal with chronic wasting disease. And trading that time in to make higher license fees more palatable, he said, could mean sacrificing a long-term benefit for short-term gain.
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