In Our Opinion: Are Michigan Deer Hunters Satisfied Stewards or Coerced Conservationists?

There can be no doubt that hunters and anglers in the U.S. have played a major role in North American conservation efforts. They have contributed political leadership and support and engaged in habitat improvement projects. A significant contribution has been the financial base provided through license sales and excise taxes. The great North American Conservation Model partnership has traditionally justified hunting and trapping as effective tools and extolled hunters and trappers as conservationists, indispensable for wildlife management. The hunting community has unarguably been an enthusiastic steward of scarce game species and critical habitat. But that partnership is being tested in a new era of game species abundance. Every state with white-tailed deer has experienced the difficulty of getting hunter cooperation in achieving agency management goals for deer. The wildlife management community is increasingly examining whether or not consumptive wildlife use can serve as an effective management tool in the control of these abundant wildlife populations. This presentation focuses on Michigan deer hunters as partners in deer management. Certainly some deer hunters have become active stewards with concerns for social and ecological impacts of deer as well as deer hunting quality for hunters. Some hunting organizations remain staunch advocates of responsible deer management and support state agencies. However, considerable resistance to efforts to lower deer numbers have also surfaced in the state's hunting community for a plethora of reasons. Efforts to optimize deer management in the state cannot succeed if a substantial portion of deer hunters refuse to cooperate in harvest goals - or worse - present strong political opposition to those goals. The presentation draws on a decade of research as well as existing literature and theory. Specifically, we explore the influence that hunters' motivations, satisfaction, attitudes, and behaviors may exert on the potential role of hunters as stewards not only of deer, but of the social and ecological values impacted by deer.