At a meeting that lasted more than nine hours, Michigan’s Natural Resources Commission voted Wednesday to limit hunters in the Lower Peninsula to killing one antlered deer starting next year. Currently, hunters can kill up to two.
The policy is less restrictive than what the Michigan Department of Natural Resources had recommended to the commission, which regulates hunting and fishing in the state.
Officials and some vocal hunters favored limiting sportsmen and sportswomen statewide to one antlered deer, a policy commonly known as the “one buck rule.” Some thought the rule, which gained traction in the 1990s as a conservation tool, might finally pass.
Wednesday’s vote “just solidifies this was a waste of time,” said Elliot Hubbard, one of the hunters who had promoted the one buck rule. “It was a collaboration between hunters and the department to bring a sound biological regulation forward. It fell on deaf ears.”
Prior to the vote, Dan Stewart, a Lower Peninsula resident and hunter, said he was opposed to the one buck rule, sometimes abbreviated as “OBR.”
“While I take a doe when populations allow, that isn’t what drives me into the woods. If OBR passes, my season could be over by the first week of November with one nice buck. Like many others, I would pack up and head out of the state to hunt somewhere else with my money,” he said.
Public commenters spoke collectively for more than four hours at the day-long meeting. Some said that they wanted to hold onto the opportunity to kill two bucks while hunters like Hubbard lobbied for one buck to help balance the sex ratio of Michigan’s herd.
The state’s doe-to-buck ratio is unknown, but DNR data shows hunters in the state prefer killing antlered deer. Some hunters say that impacts the size of the bucks left to hunt in the state because hunters kill off the bigger bucks.
DNR deer scientists say killing does could help reduce the deer population in parts of the state where they are involved in a high number of vehicle collisions, eat farmers’ crops and spread disease.
But critics of the one buck policy were quick to point out that only a limited number of deer hunted over the past decade — roughly 4% to 7% — represented a second antlered deer killed by one hunter. Some opponents also argued the DNR’s recommended policy was crafted to encourage hunters to kill more antlerless deer without guaranteeing that would happen.
In the Lower Peninsula, the DNR’s recommended policy would have eliminated a hunter’s ability to take an antlered deer with a single deer license. If a hunter wanted to kill an antlered deer, they would have needed to buy a combination license with which they would have been able to take an antlered deer or an antlerless deer in combination with a second antlerless deer.
“By coupling some of the licenses in the combo license, we could effectively be doubling the price of a buck license and stepping into the arena that is legislative authority,” NRC Chairperson Becky Humphries explained to the crowd before voting began.
Ultimately, she said that was why she could not support the recommended one buck policy, because the Legislature, not the NRC, has the authority to raise license fees.
The policy that passed was introduced by Commissioner David Nyberg, who said it was conceived as a compromise with other commissioners, but he wanted to protect the current combination license in the Upper Peninsula, where he lives and hunts.
“The Upper Peninsula, and even portions within the Upper Peninsula, are very different from each other, from the Lower Peninsula, in terms of habitat, food source, deer density, winter severity, predators,” he said. “And so I understand a lot of the concern that I heard from hunters about the proposed statewide one buck rule.”
George Lindquist, the vice chair of the DNR’s West UP Citizens Advisory Council, said he was “pretty darn happy” Nyberg’s proposal passed. He didn’t like how the DNR’s recommended policy would have swapped out an antlered deer for an antlerless deer in the UP’s combination license.
“The groups and the people I’m involved with are happy that we’re keeping these rules the way they are up in the UP,” said Lindquist. “We just don’t have the numbers to allow for an increased antlerless take.”
One commissioner was concerned the new regulations would entice hunters who normally kill two antlered deer in the Lower Peninsula to head to the UP so they could kill a second antlered deer, potentially adding additional strain onto a fragile herd. But Lindquist said he wasn’t worried because those hunters would have a hard time finding bucks with big enough antlers to legally shoot.
Wording for Nyberg’s amendment, and several other amendments commissioners voted on, were not made public in the days leading up to the meeting. Many pro one buck hunters felt blindsided when Nyberg’s amendment was presented. One public commenter suggested commissioners were like contestants on the TV show “Survivor,” saying one thing to constituents’ faces while planning to vote a different way.
Advocates for one buck seemed particularly surprised when a pilot program to “earn a second buck,” allowing hunters to kill an antlerless deer in the southern Lower Peninsula in order to kill a second antlered deer, was presented.
“I was tempted to make a comment on this during the meeting, but I didn’t, I chose not to, because I didn’t want it to be perceived as argumentative,” Nyberg told Bridge Michigan after the vote. “What we heard from testimony today from a lot of hunters was, I think, a perception that the NRC today planned to implement a second buck in lower Michigan. That was not the case.”
Nyberg’s approved amendment included a request for the DNR to put forth “a framework” for the “earn a second buck” pilot project to be presented at the NRC’s July meeting.
Commissioner John Walters expressed concerns that there would be issues with “ghost does,” hunters saying they killed an antlerless deer when they hadn’t, in order to kill a second buck.
DNR officials said they did not yet know how they would police that program and their ability to do so would depend on how much money the department is budgeted by the Legislature.
Nyberg told Bridge the public would be able to weigh in on the earn-a-second-buck pilot before the commission voted on it in the coming months.
The NRC also passed a resolution demanding measurable scientific goals for deer policies recommended by the DNR, plus a handful of other regulations, including getting rid of certain firearm restrictions in the southern Lower Peninsula and eliminating the extended late antlerless deer season that had taken place after Jan. 1.
Other than the resolution, the commission passed these new rules as amendments to Wildlife Conservation Order Amendment No. 6 of 2026, which included several other regulations recommended by the DNR. The final version of the amended order was not available online as of Wednesday evening.
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
