Michigan’s Natural Resources Commission voted Wednesday to limit hunters in the Lower Peninsula to taking one antlered deer starting next year, down from the current allowance of two. The vote capped a meeting that lasted more than nine hours, including months of public debate, commissioner discussion of how deer management should be handled and hours of testimony from hunters and other members of the public.
Supporters of the so-called “one buck rule,” a policy that some officials and hunters said has circulated as a conservation tool since the 1990s, argued the regulation could help balance the sex ratio of Michigan’s deer herd. Opponents, including some hunters who said they rely on the ability to harvest more than one antlered deer each season, urged the commission to keep the current approach.
The commission’s decision came after Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources had recommended a more restrictive “one buck” framework than what ultimately passed. The proposal the DNR had put forward was less restrictive than a statewide rule some hunters and officials described as an “one buck rule” for the entire state, but it still would have removed the ability to take an antlered deer with a single deer license in the Lower Peninsula.
Elliot Hubbard, a hunter who promoted the rule, criticized the broader process before the vote, saying the proposal had faced resistance. “It was a collaboration between hunters and the department to bring a sound biological regulation forward. It fell on deaf ears,” Hubbard said. Dan Stewart, a Lower Peninsula resident and hunter who said he opposed the one buck rule, told the commission that if the rule passed, his season could end as early as the first week of November with the ability to harvest only one “nice buck,” and he said he would consider hunting elsewhere.
During testimony, public commenters spoke for more than four hours about whether the commission should preserve the chance to kill two antlered deer while pursuing deer herd management goals. Some speakers said they wanted to keep the opportunity to harvest two, while other hunters and officials argued that limiting antlered harvest could address the sex-ratio balance. The state’s doe-to-buck ratio is described as unknown, but the DNR data cited in the discussion showed that hunters in Michigan prefer to kill antlered deer.
The commission also weighed arguments tied to the impacts of deer populations. DNR deer scientists said killing does could help reduce the deer population in areas where deer-vehicle collisions are common, where deer eat crops and where disease risks are present. Critics of the one-buck approach said the record of how hunting has been conducted over the past decade showed that only about 4% to 7% of deer hunted by one hunter involved a second antlered deer, and some argued the DNR’s recommended approach was designed to encourage antlerless harvest without guaranteeing it would happen.
The commission’s debate sharpened around licensing mechanics. NRC Chairperson Becky Humphries said she could not support the DNR’s recommended one-buck policy because the recommended licensing structure would effectively require legislative action. “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,” she explained before the vote began, adding that the Legislature—not the NRC—has authority to raise license fees.
Ultimately, commissioners passed a policy introduced by Commissioner David Nyberg, who said the proposal was conceived as a compromise that would preserve the current combination license in the Upper Peninsula. Nyberg said the Upper Peninsula and parts of it are different from the Lower Peninsula in factors such as habitat, food sources, deer density, winter severity and predators, and he said he understood concerns raised by hunters about a statewide one-buck rule. George Lindquist, vice chair of the DNR’s West UP Citizens Advisory Council, said he was “pretty darn happy” with the passed proposal, describing it as a way to keep rules in the Upper Peninsula the way they currently are, and saying the region lacked the numbers to support more antlerless take.
The commission also discussed whether the new Lower Peninsula limit could encourage hunters to travel to the Upper Peninsula to harvest additional antlered deer. Lindquist said he was not concerned, saying hunters who wanted to harvest a second antlered deer would struggle to find legally shootable bucks with big enough antlers.
Nyberg’s amendment and several other amendments were presented at the meeting, but wording for those changes was not made public in the days leading up to the session, according to the reporting distributed by the Associated Press. Some pro–one buck hunters said they felt blindsided when Nyberg’s amendment was introduced, and one public commenter compared commissioners’ behavior to contestants on the TV show “Survivor.”
The meeting also featured discussion of a pilot program tied to potentially earning a second buck. The reporting says advocates for one buck were particularly surprised when the “earn a second buck” pilot program was presented, and it quotes Nyberg saying he chose not to comment during the meeting because he did not want to be seen as argumentative. Nyberg told Bridge Michigan after the vote that testimony from many hunters suggested a perception that the NRC planned to implement a second buck in Lower Michigan, which he said was not the case.
Nyberg’s approved amendment included a request for the DNR to develop “a framework” for the “earn a second buck” pilot project to be presented at the NRC’s July meeting. Commissioner John Walters expressed concerns about “ghost does,” with the possibility that hunters might claim they killed an antlerless deer when they had not. DNR officials said they did not yet know how they would police the program and that enforcement would depend on how much money the department is budgeted by the Legislature.
Beyond the one-buck and pilot framework discussion, the commission passed a resolution demanding measurable scientific goals for deer policies recommended by the DNR, along with other regulations. Those included eliminating certain firearm restrictions in the southern Lower Peninsula and removing an extended late antlerless deer season that had occurred after Jan. 1. According to the report, other than the resolution, commissioners approved new rules as amendments to Wildlife Conservation Order Amendment No. 6 of 2026, though the final version of the amended order was not available online as of Wednesday evening.