Ron Hopkins has purchased a hunting license every year since he was 16. The only two times the 76-year-old Ionia County resident didn’t have one, he was fighting for his life in the Vietnam War.
The disabled war veteran has spent years helping with Michigan’s deer hunts, which are reserved for youth under 16 and people with disabilities. But this summer, he’s lost sleep because state game officials have stripped hunters of the ability to shoot deer during those brief opportunities before the regular hunting season begins.
“Have our disabled and 100 percent disabled veterans not done enough to have the opportunity to shoot an antlered deer on the special hunts made available to us?” Hopkins wrote in a letter expressing his disappointment. The letter was read to the state Natural Resources Commission when he faced the panel at a meeting in Detroit on August 8.
Hopkins is not alone.
The decision to allow the annual Freedom and Independence hunts to be restricted to hornless deer starting in 2025 has angered accessibility advocates who are all about ensuring hunters in wheelchairs or those who can’t hold a bow or rifle can get into the woods each fall. The backlash underscores the pitfalls wildlife managers face as they try to rein in an out-of-control deer population in the Lower Peninsula by pulling sometimes controversial levers in the state’s hunting rules.
Read more: Michigan game officials are changing deer hunting rules for 2024. What’s new?
“The way I see it is: It’s public land. It belongs to us, whether we have legs or not. There should be no discrimination between people from other walks of life and people without disabilities,” says Tom Jones, a disabled veteran who served two tours in Iraq and has since built dozens of accessible game stands in Michigan to give people with health problems a chance to get in touch with nature.
“Nothing says thank you for your service more than taking away your choice of hunting,” he added.
Jones says he has helped people get out into the outdoors who know it is their last deer hunting season due to worsening health conditions.
“They want the buck. They want to kill the buck. And sometimes they may just want to kill him with the camera,” he said.
In the Lower Peninsula, and especially in the densely populated southern areas, wildlife officials are trying to reverse the preference of many hunters for bucks.
This trend among Michigan hunters emerged at a time when deer were still rare in Michigan and protecting the does was the best way to increase the herd, says Tom Baird, chairman of the Natural Resources Commission, who voted for the new restrictions on specialty hunts.
Now the opposite is true, and the state’s solution must be to emphasize deer hunting and increase the annual deer harvest in the Lower Peninsula “many fold,” he said. The changes for the Liberty and Independence hunts should be a step in that direction that does not involve more burdensome changes to hunting licenses, Baird said.
Still, members of the Natural Resources Commission, which votes on deer hunting regulations, have received a lot of feedback from parents of young hunters and people with disabilities about the change, and the commission may reconsider it, he said.
Baird joined Commissioners John Walters, Pete Eardley and David Cozad in voting for the change in state deer hunting rules, one of many under consideration in July. Commissioners Robin Michigiizhigookwe Clark, David Nyberg and Dave Anthony voted against the measure.
“It was thought to be a bitter pill to swallow, but maybe the impacts and the negatives just outweigh the benefits and we really need to focus on the bigger picture and the numbers,” Baird said.
The changes to the Freedom and Independence Hunt are a concern for Ken Buchholtz, an Escanaba resident who coordinates the Wheelin’ Sportsmen, a volunteer group that provides custom-built trailers, accessible blinds and adaptive equipment for quadriplegics, including rifle mounts with joysticks and hands-free trigger mechanisms activated by a blast of air.
“When I found out, I was ecstatic,” he said, noting that specialty hunts only account for 2% of the annual deer hunt. “My thought is, why not take care of the other 98%? That would probably be a good start.”
Advocates say the new rules could discourage hunters with disabilities from participating in the early hunts. Then they could face colder temperatures during the regular deer hunting season and there could be fewer volunteers available to help with mobility limitations, Jones said.
“Suddenly, Mr. double amputee, you have to compete with the able-bodied public for your deer on November 15, and that’s just not realistic,” he said.
These concerns prompted Walters, the Natural Resources Commission member who introduced the policy change, to reconsider his position regarding hunters with disabilities.
“When I make decisions, I don’t think about the hunter. I think about the welfare of the herd,” he said, noting that he might make an exception to that approach in this case.
But he strongly believes the Liberty Youth Hunt should switch to antlerless deer only in 2025. According to state figures, Liberty and Independence Hunts combined harvested fewer than 8,000 deer, but last year 80% of those were bucks, Walters said.
“What are we saying to our children? It’s brutal,” he said. “I know this won’t solve the deer problem. It’s not. It’s the beginning and there’s a lot more to come. This is a first step, not the only one,” he said.
Baird has also repeatedly stressed that the game wardens’ work isn’t done when it comes to deer. Because the specialty hunting changes won’t take effect for another year, the Natural Resources Commission can still make adjustments when it revisits wildlife regulations and looks at future changes.
“There is plenty of time to rethink and change it,” he said.
