It probably seemed simple and logical when first considered and prescribed: Chronic wasting disease (CWD) found in deer anywhere in one of Michigan's peninsulas would bring a ban on baiting and feeding in that peninsula.

The state was mapping a plan in advance, so that time wouldn't be wasted reacting to discovery of the disease that was felling deer in many states.

It would have been hard then to imagine just one single case popping up, a single case in a captive herd. If there was one, there'd probably be at least a cluster, and a vigorous reaction would be appropriate.

Researchers weren't sure how the disease spread, but they suspected that deer crowding into a small area, as they do at bait and feed piles, would be at higher risk of contracting and/or spreading it. Banning feeding and baiting would likely reduce that risk, they reasoned.

And while the process of crafting the action plan was well-publicized by the DNR (or DNRE -- I don't remember which name was in use then), and public comments were solicited, I don't remember much hubbub. People pretty much left it up to the biologists.

And then along came a doe in a pen in Kent County with what was confirmed as CWD, and it was the equivalent of giving a sled a push at the top of a hill.

Baiting and feeding were immediately banned throughout the Lower Peninsula, as the plan required.

And we who didn't have much to say about the action plan as it was being crafted, were suddenly swept up in it.

For at least three years, ruled the Natural Resources Commission (which oversees DNR policies and programs), LP baiting and feeding would be illegal; it would be reviewed after that period of time.

Some hunters were glad to see baiting and feeding banned, whatever the reason. They just don't think it has a place in fair-chase deer hunting.

Others hated to give up the piles beneath their tree stands and outside their blinds, arguing that a single diseased deer wasn't reason enough for such a big change. Bait boosted their odds of seeing deer, and fattened deer might well have an edge going into the slim rations of winter.

Either argument seems worthy to me.

Some people just don't trust the DNR; I tire of their conspiracy theories. DNR people like critters and hunters.

Some argued that we shouldn't take away profits from gas stations, sport shops and grocery stores that stocked and sold mountains of beets, carrots and corn every fall.

But whatever sympathy I had for those vendors vanished when they continued selling the stuff after the ban took effect. No law said they couldn't, especially since limited baiting was still legal in the UP. But they weren't selling bait and feed to UP hunters. They were selling it to LP cheaters. And I think hunters and retailers both lost their right to complain, or at least much of the legitimate power behind their arguments, when they exempted themselves from ethics and law.

The problem is, if you add up all of us who snuck in a bit of bait, it amounts to most of us.

The baiting ban became deer hunting's Prohibition. The merits of the ban, or lack of them, were lost in civil disobedience. Enforcement wasn't swift, strict or severe enough to make us go cold turkey.

Three years of the ban have now gone by, and the DNRE has begun a series of public discussions on the Lower Peninsula deer baiting and feeding ban, the first of them to have been part of the Natural Resources Commission's regular monthly meeting in Lansing this past Thursday.

The commission, said its chair Tim Nichols of Fowlerville in a news release, could continue, lift, or modify the baiting and feeding ban. A decision will be reached before publication of this year's fall hunting guide, officials say.

You can have a say. If you can't get to a meeting, schedules for which are expected soon, you can send written comments in an email to

I'm betting on limited-but-legal use of certain baits, provided they're well spread. But I don't have inside information.

And I can't help wondering: What could we, should we, or will we do, if CWD is discovered here again?

Email Midland freelance outdoors writer Steve Griffin at