New Michigan Spear a Deer Hunt

The state Natural Resources Commission voted today, April 1, to impose $1 surcharges on hunting and fishing licenses to help an animal rights group develop nonlethal methods of reducing the state deer herd.
At a special meeting in this Upper Peninsula village, the NRC also voted to ban antlered deer hunting in the eastern UP and create a spears-only zone in Ann Arbor. The ban on antlered hunting was approved in an attempt to increase buck numbers. The spears-only zone was created to learn if the most primitive hunting method can reduce urban deer populations without upsetting vegetarians.

Dr. A. Loda Bool, chief of research for the Department of Natural Resources wildlife division, said the DNR expects that some hunters will be upset by the surcharge for research on nonlethal deer control. That experiment will be run by a coalition of lawyers who specialize in animal rights cases, Barristers Overseeing Zoological Organisms Sympathetically (BOZOS). Bool said hunters must understand that "they aren't the only people whose opinion counts in managing wildlife. Deer are the property of all the people in Michigan, hunters and non-hunters alike. And besides, the BOZOS said they'd sue us. We're already probably going to get sued over deer damage by the Farm Bureau and the car insurance companies, and we just can't afford another one."

BOZOS spokesman Ugadda B. Kidden said the group would use some of the money raised by the license surcharges to hire consultants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We took one look at what FEMA accomplished in New Orleans and thought, 'Wow! If you want to depopulate an area fast, these are the guys to do it,' " Kidden said.

Explaining the unanimous vote for the spears-only season, NRC chairman U.R. Gullible said, "We figured that even in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor, they couldn't object to hunting deer if we made it as hard as possible. The University of Michigan anthropology department will take part in the experiment and make the spears-only season part of a course on Native American hunting methods.

"Hey, if we can interest the people who make those TV reality shows, the DNR and U-M could both make a few bucks. Call the show something like 'Caveman Survivor Idol,' or 'Who Wants to Skewer Bambi?' "

Participants in the Ann Arbor experiment may use a spear with a maximum length of seven feet and a two-bladed spear head weighing less than six ounces. The spear can't be mechanically propelled, although hunters can use an atlatl, a spear-thrower stick that has been around since the Stone Age and extends the leverage of the hunter's arm to increase throwing force.

Many Upper Peninsula hunters have been asking for years for a one-buck limit during the deer season (regulations now allow two bucks per year). The NRC went a step farther and adopted a recommendation by the DNR to impose a no-buck rule for the next 10 years in all of the Upper Peninsula east of Alger County.

Rob Kook, chief of the DNR's Whitetail Expansion Issues Research Division (WEIRD), said, "Business owners and hunters in the UP are whining that we're killing too many bucks and that it has ruined their tourism. We decided to see if the buggers really mean it. If we sell only doe licenses there and don't allow anyone to kill antlered deer for the next decade, by 2016 there should be so many bucks running around that any business that survives that long will be overrun with hunters."

The NRC also approved an experimental three-day hand grenade season requested by a group called We Don't Give A Damn About Quality Deer, We Just Want to Kill Something. It will be limited to four abandoned quarries in Gogebic County from Nov. 16-18.

Gullible said the season would allow only hand-thrown grenades and will not permit the use of M-90 grenade launchers or rocket-propelled grenades.

I.M. Lyon, chair of the NRC's Newly Utilized Technology Service (NUTS), said, "Anybody should be able to toss a grenade within 30 feet of a deer. If you can't do that, then you're an April Fool."