Unusual deer, older 9-point buck taken in PI County on opening day
From information gathered at the Department of Natural Resources deer check stations located throughout the region, hunters were seeing more deer and finding success. Dan Duncan, who had worked at the Onaway deer check station on the grounds of the Onaway Road Commission garage, said the hunters he talked to seemed happy on the firearm opener. They reported seeing multiple deer. There also have been a handful of deer that have avoided being spotted in a hunter?s scope for many, many years. According to the DNR, oldest deer brought into a check station from Presque Isle County was an 11-year-old doe. The oldest buck from the county was seven years old with a nine-point rack. A four-year-old 10-pointer, which was taken near Tomahawk Flooding in Allis Township, was brought into the Atlanta check station on opening day.
THE MOST unusual animal to be taken during the first week was in Section 22 of Belknap Township, as Calvin Brege of Rogers City shot a 205-pound wild boar. Earlier this month, Officials from the Michigan Departments of Agriculture and DNR encouraged hunters with a valid hunting license of any type to shoot feral swine (free-ranging wild pigs) in 23 Michigan counties. Brege never thought he would see one when the animal crossed his shooting lane while he was in his deer blind Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ?I thought it was a bear at first,? he said. The one shot did not take it down at first, as it ran another 30 yards and then fell. Brege took it into the Posen deer check station. ?They never expected to get one in.? Brege said the DNR was going to be contacting him the next day.
WILDLIFE BIOLOGIST Glen Matthews from the DNR regional headquarters in Gaylord said 436 deer from Presque Isle County have been brought into check stations. As of Sunday, 179 deer had been checked in Onaway, while Posen workers saw 164 deer. Several Presque Isle County deer were brought into check stations Sunday in Curran, Grayling, and Mio, as some hunters headed to their downstate homes. One animal had a 43-millimeter beam diameter. Most yearling bucks average around 17- to 18-millimeters. Duncan said the rut was ?hitting at the right time.? It usually starts 28 days after the first frost. The most interesting animal checked in at the Onaway station was a piebald deer, said Duncan. Piebald deer are colored white and brown similar to a pinto pony. Sometimes they appear almost entirely white. The one Duncan looked at was 30 percent white. The anomaly appears once in 1,000
ACCORDING TO Keith Kintigh, wildlife biologist from Atlanta, said the general impression is that the number of hunters is down, while the bucks have been impressive. The deer with the most points was taken on the second day of the season in Montmorency County. It was a 13-point buck. Matthews said the check stations and buck poles in the region ?were fairly active? on the first day. He thought the weather conditions, which included fog, drizzle, and less snow, would have deterred some hunters, but it did not.
The deer have looked healthy and there had been no bovine tuberculosis suspects in Presque Isle County. The same cannot be said at the Mio check station, said Matthews. There was a suspect deer found, but it did not come from Presque Isle County.