The state of Michigan could hardly do a better job of sowing mistrust among deer hunters than they've done with the newest bovine tuberculosis-eradication scheme.
The new program includes using spotlights to lure and target deer at night, killing bucks and does alike and giving farmers or their surrogates unlimited numbers of kill tags -- all with little or no public notice.
The totally legitimate aims of the program -- to prevent possible TB-infected deer from coming into contact with cattle -- have been overshadowed by the perception among hunters that it was being done in stealth and that the state Department of Natural Resources was taking orders from the state Farm Bureau.
There's just enough truth in both claims to keep suspicions high; the state's fumbling response hasn't helped.
Over the past 10 years the state issued disease control kill tags when farmers asked. In 2007, 235 tags were sent out and 57 deer killed. Farmers complained they could not get tags quickly enough.
Under a new program adopted in public but never publicized, from January to the end of March the count soared to 268 deer; the DNR has mailed about 3,400 tags to more than 600 farmers. The DNR has said it will ll dole out virtually unlimited numbers of kill tags in the TB zone, which is in north-central and northeast Lower Michigan.
DNR officials say the tags are being sent out in such large numbers strictly for biological reasons, not just to appease farmers.
Some hunters don't buy that. "For some reason or another, special interests have dictated to our natural resource managers," one said.
Hunters also wonder, rightly, why the DNR hasn't simply raised seasonal bag limits to reduce the herd.
Plenty of northern Lower Michigan hunters have groused they don't see nearly as many deer nowadays and the DNR's own numbers show they're right -- there are said to be about 482,000 deer in the region now, compared to 752,000 10 years ago.
Against that background state officials should have gone out of their way to explain to hunters why kill tags, which will further reduce the herd, are so critical to containing TB.
If the state is going to allow farmers to kill as many deer as it takes to protect their business -- all cattle in a herd must be destroyed if a single animal tests positive for TB -- it is incumbent on state officials to say why and to make as strong and public a case for the new policy as possible.
But they didn't, and by not doing so they again gave the impression that hunters -- despite the $20 million they pay in licenses each year -- don't count.
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