GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — The state of Michigan produces a lot of quality hunters, and right now, one of the most recognizable faces of the hunting world is a West Michigan native.
Steve Rinella is an author, TV and podcast host, outdoorsman, conservationist, founder of the outdoor lifestyle company MeatEater, and he grew up in Twin Lake in Muskegon County.
He knows his stuff because he walks the walk and talks the talk, building his career outdoors. I recently had the chance to get his thoughts on deer hunting here in his home state, talking with him from his MeatEater office in Bozeman, MT.
“I’ve been lucky through my work and career to travel all around the country," Rinella told me. "And I'm telling you, when it comes to kind of like a hunting and fishing paradise, that West Michigan country is hard to beat.”
I reached out to him because, as we’ve reported, some see the Lower Peninsula deer herd as overpopulated, resulting in crop damage, car accidents, and the possibility of disease growth. But Steve told me he thinks it’s important to ask overpopulated to whom?
RELATED: What the numbers show after Michigan's first extended antlerless hunting season
"You also have to realize, and hunters need to weigh this as well when they're having these conversations, is sometimes we're talking about, we're speaking at a very granular level on a landscape," Rinella told me. "Meaning you could have people in a suburb somewhere who are having a lot of landscaping damage, and they're telling you that deer are overpopulated, but it happens to be an area where there's not a lot of public appetite for hunting or and I see this happen. I see this happen all the time. You'll have a farmer who is upset about the amount of deer on his farm doing crop damage, then you might say, well, how many guys are you letting come in to hunt? Like, how open is your place to hunting?"
That word hunt is key. Deer are a public resource, and hunting, according to the Department of Natural Resources, is the main way to keep the population healthy and managed.
“If guys are hunting on places where the land owners or they're hunting on public land, or wildlife managers who are in the know and educated on the subject, are asking to harvest deer, take some time to harvest deer," said Rinella.
And the Department of Natural Resources agrees. There are a lot of factors at play with the increasing deer population, like recent mild winters, but the DNR says the numbers show a lot of hunters have been holding out for only big bucks in recent years. Leading the department to implement several changes to increase antlerless harvest, including an extended late antlerless season, with some success. But as hunters, it’s our responsibility to be active in deer management, depending on the habitat.
"I grew up in Michigan. I have a very good friend, and I hunt turkeys on his place every year, who lives across Lake Michigan, over in Wisconsin. Now here's a guy where they have, I mean, by almost any metric, he lives in an area where there's overpopulation of deer, measured by disease prevalence and disease transmission. They're in a real peak right now, and a lot of deer managers want to bring numbers down. And this guy's a farmer. He lets every year he has over 20 people. He gives over 20 people permission to hunt on his place. And he hosts doe hunts. "
Being an active member in the food chain is what Rinella has built his career on, and the kind of advice you can sink your teeth into.
“There is a time-tested, proven way to lower deer numbers on your property, and that is by letting in deer hunters.”
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