- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to ""Michigan Out of Doors".

I'm Jenny Ciolek, and we are excited to bring you an all new show this week.

We're gonna kick it off out of the port of Frankfurt on our annual fishing trip aboard the My High Boat with Bob Garner, and this time, we brought along Mrs.

Garner, Mrs.

Gretzinger, and Mr.

Ciolek.

We had a blast out there, you won't wanna miss that story, and Jimmy and Jordan have a couple of other great things headed our way this week.

- Well, that's right, we do have a few more things on this week's show, we're gonna actually sit down with a deer specialist here in the state of Michigan for the Michigan DNR, and talk about all the new deer hunting regulations, things you should know if you're gonna be hitting the woods this fall for deer, and we're gonna stop in at a really cool event, getting kids into the outdoors.

Lots of good stuff on this week's episode, you stay tuned, I'm Jimmy Gretzinger, it's time for "Michigan Out of Doors."

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(gentle guitar music ending) (fire crackling) (tense music) (gentle music) (gunshot echoing) (upbeat rock music) (gentle guitar music) - Well, we are here once again with Brent Rudolph from the DNR, talking about deer, deer regulations, we're only a few days from the deer seasons kicking off, so I know there's lots of stuff that we can talk about, but let's just start off with what are some changes for this year's deer hunting here in Michigan?

- Yeah, we've got quite a few changes for '26, so we have changes on tagging and licensing options, with the new e-license and e-tagging option that's available for folks, anybody making the purchase through the Hunt Fish app, the only option we'll have is to get a digital tag.

It'll be on your phone.

You can validate it on your phone, don't even need to have cell access to validate or tag your deer, and so anyway, so that'll be new for folks, people can still get a physical tag either online, or through a retail agent, another big thing coming up later in the year, we won't be selling licenses online in November, 'cause those get mailed home, takes 10 to 15 days, we've had too many hunters that are buying, purchasing a license just a couple days before the firearm season opens, and then they're not gonna have a tag in hand.

So we'll talk more with hunters as that approaches, but e-tagging is a big change.

We have some equipment changes.

Hunters with a senior license in the Upper Peninsula will be allowed to use a crossbow in the late portion of the archery season.

Again, that's a long ways away, but it's a shift for folks to be aware of, and then of course, elimination of the limited firearms deer zone down here in Southern Michigan will become effective.

- Yeah, that seemed like that kind of came out of the blue.

Was anybody really pushing for that, or was that something that the NRC had talked about before?

- Yeah, we had, I think it was back in January or so, our Natural Resources Commission asked us about it, and said there was interest in eliminating that, so you would have uniformity.

You can use the same equipment anywhere in the state, you don't have all those considerations on those straight walled cartridge nuances that we've had for a few years.

The department didn't take a position on it, we looked at it, we don't think it's gonna be a big impact on deer harvest, law enforcement division looked at safety statistics and other things, and didn't see a strong concern about it, and so yeah, the commission went through that process, so that September 12th and 13th is when deer seasons kick up, both the early antlerless, and the liberty hunt for youth and hunters with disabilities would be September 12th and 13th, and that'd be the first opportunity with that change in effect.

- Okay.

And then I know a big one is the recreational feeding that is now, you can, kind of walk me through the legalities of that.

- Yeah, so the big thing again, and a lot of folks have talked about "Where's the department coming from with this?"

Well, let's make it clear, it was legislation, so the legislature passed a bill, was signed by the Governor, it is in effect, it limits people to putting no more than two gallons maximum of feed out for birds, deer, any other wildlife, but the key is it can now be accessible to deer.

It needs to be within 300 feet, or 100 yards of a residence.

So it's the idea is it's being placed where you live, so you're able to have a opportunity to see deer or other wildlife near your home.

So there are still restrictions, quantity, placement and other things, but that is in effect that the bill did recognize the commission still has authority, and it specifically references agreements with USDA, so we have a bovine tuberculosis MOU, Memorandum of Agreement, with the US Department of Agriculture and our state Department of Ag and Rural Development, so we'll have to work through with them to see if there's needs to put restrictions related to TB in place, but yeah, it is possible for folks now to be legally putting feed out in a way that's available to deer.

- And one of the questions we get, and people, I'm sure you are, as well, "If I can have bait down, or feed down 100 yards from my house, what if I'm at 120 yards from my house?

Can I hunt there?"

How does a CO judge on whether you're using it as bait or recreational feeding?

- Right, yeah.

And people can look through in the reg summary, there are the definitions of what baiting means.

So basically if someone is hunting and within their effective range of their hunting equipment, there is those food resources available, that would be bait.

So even if you said, "Well, the law says, I'm allowed to put it here, because it's feeding, and my home is here", well, if you're hunting in that vicinity, it would be baiting, and baiting has not been legalized.

Now, if you're half mile away, or the other side of the property, or other things, officers will be in a tough situation, we know with waterfowl and other things, there's always those questions about how you're still drawing animals in, but the key is you're not gonna be able to hunt over feed, because feeding is allowed, because if you're hunting over it, it is defined as bait, at that point.

- Okay.

So a little gray area there, but it would be kind of up to the conservation officer, where he kind of thinks if you're too close to it or not too far.

- Yeah, I wouldn't wanna speak for that.

You just give an example.

If you've tossed a handful of breadcrumbs, and bird seed, stuff on the ground, and you're on the other side of the property, you're probably not making a big impact on deer, right?

But if you've got consistently used locations, multiple homes and so forth, that's gonna be a bigger factor, and a bigger problem potentially, drawing deer near homes, that's the other thing we'll continue to remind people of is that just because you can do it doesn't mean there can't be conflicts, not only disease, but more and more habituated wildlife, and other things like that, so ... - Okay, and so I know, just so that we make sure everybody knows, the one buck rule is not in effect for 2026.

- Correct.

Correct.

It has been passed, it's for 2027, so we will in the Lower Peninsula have a one antler deer or one buck limit, we also will have a pilot program around earn a second buck.

So again, we don't wanna confuse folks too much.

It's important to let them know, this is a big change, but it's not until 2027, they can chat with us as they're interacting us through the deer season, but for 2026, no changes are in place, and importantly, no changes in the upper peninsula will come after that either with some tweaks made to that one buck restriction.

UP regs are gonna stay the same even on into '27, but lower peninsula hunters, if they wanna talk with us, and prepare for their '27 mindset, and other things, they can chat with us through the season.

- Okay.

Have you guys been getting a lot of positive or negative on the one buck?

Where does it -- - We got a lot of feedback on both sides, heading into the regulations changes, since it was implemented, I think like us, there's a lot of effort put into the explanation, and the presentations, and the questions, and it's kind of quieted down now.

I think a lot of people are getting their heads around "26 season is in front of me", and that's where their focus is now.

- Okay, Brent, I know this is not till next year, and we don't wanna get confused, we don't wanna confuse people at all, but talk to me a little bit about this earn a buck for next year.

It seems to me if your common sense would be, "Well, we're gonna a one buck tag for all lower Michigan.

Why on earth would we have a little section, where you can get a second buck tag?"

That just seems a little crazy, but -- - So even with the single buck limit, which the department did, some original recommendations, and changes, and other things evolved over time, but the bottom line is the department did recommend a single buck limit as an effort trying to get people to take more anterless deer.

So although it's protecting bucks, our goal is to try and get more hunters and more often we take as many or more antlerless deer as bucks.

The idea of the earn a second buck, several commissioners again asked us to kind of explore and look into this.

The idea is, is this gonna be another way to prioritize or motivate people to take antlerless deer, to have a chance to buy that second buck tag, you have to take and report, you're required to report all your deer harvesting of course, but once you take and report an antlerless deer from these pilot counties, you'll be eligible then to purchase that second buck tag.

- For just that county?

So if you're in, I don't even know which counties are in there, but you have to shoot a doe in that county to get a second buck tag for just that county?

- What it has changed to is it will actually be valid in any of those groups of second buck counties, but it's not, we originally proposed, felt it'd be a stronger draw for folks if they had a lot of flexibility with where that second tag was used, but with some public pushback on some of that, what the ultimate change was is it will be basically in a second buck county.

So in the future, if we had additional ones, that would even expand a little bit, but right out of the gate, there's five counties, and the goal is, again, we have more counties than that that we wanna see some extra antlerless harvest taken, but that's enough for us to have a pilot really trying to evaluate whether it's gonna be effective, where it's gonna be in place for several years, we'll go through the process by comparing the outcome there with other places, and then figure out if that earn a second buck package is a tool that we should make more widely available in the future.

- Okay, and just kind of wrap things up with the department's view on Proposal G. To me, the legislative folks being able to set policy is not really a good thing, it seems to fly in the face of Proposal G. Am I out in left field on that, or what's your thoughts?

- Well, I mean, it's a difficult situation.

Obviously, legislators have a responsibility, they're elected by the public, they're expected to serve their constituents in the state's interests and needs, so you have a hard time saying you should be stonewalling everything a legislative body wants to do, because of another related area of regulation.

Clearly, Proposal G. influences the NRC's authority and process, and we try to really embody that the regulations, recommendations we bring forward are in that spirit using the best available science, so all I can say is, we'll continue to do everything we can as a department, and as a commission with seeing that we're meeting those obligations, and the legislature has their source of authority, and their constituents that they're accountable to, so if people like what they're doing with those changes, or don't like what they're doing, then hopefully they're communicating about that with their legislator.

- It's tricky, because it seems like some of the stuff that or the NRC can just come up with whatever they kind of wanna do, as well, so ... - I mean, in general, the concept of having commissions, and departments, and both scientists and public input is the idea that some of these things require a lot more adaptiveness than a legislature can typically address, right?

They've got a lot of big important decisions they're making, and so things down in the details of the science on deer management, fur bears, and other things are best dealt with at kind of a different level.

But again, it doesn't mean that legislature now has no ability and no authority to do anything, so at times, you're gonna expect that they'll be intervening on issues here and there.

- And do you feel that the DNR and the NRC work well together?

Has that been a positive thing, or has that been more problematic?

- I mean, I think the DNR and NRC include the public, as well, right?

There's always some conflict, there's differences of opinion, but the point is that everybody's engaged in the same big picture.

We want what's best for the resource, primarily is that's that first protecting our wildlife and natural resources, second is providing to the extent we can the maximum recreational and economic benefit and other things, there's always gonna be some differences of opinions on where we fall out on those things, but as long as we keep having those discussions, and importantly, more of these instances, where we're trying to do things adaptively on a pilot basis with a more in-depth evaluation, we can't always evaluate things as much as we'd like to, but in some of these instances, we're getting more involved with our evaluation, and trying to be on this more multiple-year cycle, where we don't change everything every year, then we'll keep making improvements as we move forward.

- All right.

Well, thanks for your time, in the fall -- - Yeah, you bet.

- Good to see you.

- Thanks, Jimmy.

- Well, special thanks to Brent for sitting down with us, and kind of going over some of the new regulations, I know it can be a little tricky each year-to-year, trying to figure out what you can and cannot do, but make sure you get out and enjoy some time in the woods this fall.

What we're gonna do right now is shift gears, and head to the Northwest part of the Lower Peninsula, one of my favorite spots, the town of Frankfurt, to do a little fishing with a good friend of the show, Bob Garner.

(group chattering) (gentle guitar music) (footsteps echoing) (gentle guitar music) - Well, we are on our annual trip with Bob Garner and Captain Steve Martin, and we usually have a different mix of guests who are fishing, so today, we've got my husband, Matt, Bob's wife, Beth, and Jimmy, your wife, Missy.

So we've got our first mate, Kyle, and we've got the A team out here today.

So we're gonna be fishing in close to the piers, is what Captain Steve said, so it'll be a little bit different scenery this year, I hope, and he always gets us fish.

Not to jinx it, no pressure, but we'll be catching some.

- Fabulous, really.

Probably hasn't been this good, probably 10, 15 years, honestly.

- Oh, wow.

- Yeah.

Lots of kings are out.

- Okay.

- Lots of two- and three-year-olds.

Lots of, some cohos showing up last few days, so some cohos mixed in, and just lots of good fishing out of Frankfurt this year.

- Do you have to go far out or is it pretty close now?

- Well, we have been fishing a bank a lot, but today the water's been flipping around, so we're gonna fish, I think we're gonna fish pretty close to the piers.

- Okay.

- And that's our plan.

We'll see what happens.

- What do you say, Jenny?

- This fish is on one color of lead, but it feels like he's been fighting for a long time.

He's made a couple of runs, feels good to be back out here, beautiful view, beautiful people.

- Nice.

- About to get our first fish in the boat.

(group chattering) (water splashing) - Get it.

(water splashing) - You got him?

- Yeah.

(group chattering) (water splashing) - Oh wow.

- Oh, my God.

(group chattering) (fish rustling) (group chattering) - Heck, yeah.

(group chattering) - Woo-hoo.

Good job, Jenny.

- Thanks, guys.

- [Jimmy] Well, it took us a bit to find the fish, but Captain Steve did find him, and we started to pick away at some nice fish.

- What do you think?

- I don't know.

He's not fighting too hard.

Yet.

- Yet.

(fishing pole whirring) (water splashing) - [Jimmy] Today, we stayed in close to the pier heads.

The salmon are staging for their run up the river, so the main issue today was really just trying to manage the boat traffic.

- Mostly pugs, we've had a couple bites on silver streak mags, but mostly silverhead plugs right now.

The number fours and number fives been best so far.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

Little boat traffic out here.

- Little boat traffic, always in front of the piers.

Pretty tight, pretty tight piers in Frankfurt, so it's pretty congested normally.

- [Jimmy] And then stage for a while now here over the next couple weeks?

- Yeah.

Yeah, every time the wind blows out of the North, and water's cold here, they'll be fishing at the piers here.

- [Jimmy] This is always a fun trip with Bob and with Captain Steve, and as many of you know, Bob hosted "Michigan Out of Doors" for years.

He's about the best guy to have on a fishing trip.

The stories, well, they just keep coming.

- [Bob] Steve is 61 now, I think, and I've been fishing with him since he was 28.

- Really?

- Yeah.

So we've been -- It all started down on Lake Erie, fishing Walleyes down there, and he's probably not had 10 days in the last 30 years, where he hasn't limited out down with the walleyes.

Then we come up here, and just have a great time.

Frankfurt's a great port to fish out of, anyway.

Of course, any place you can go out, and you're catching fish is always a great place to be, but it's just really kind of easygoing here.

Four nights this year I've been out, and this is the most waves I've seen, and this is nothing.

So ... - You had the grandkids out too?

- I have the grandkids.

The grandkids want for Christmas every year a trip, so they can take their buddies out, with Steve up here at Frankfurt.

And so consequently, the grandkids come up here, they love doing this fishing trip, and I am happy to buy them a Christmas present anytime that includes fishing.

- Jimmy, that's a Jimmy-sized fish.

(group laughing) You can make a sandwich out of that.

- That's a good eater right there.

(group laughing) - It's an eater, like the small ones.

(group laughing) - So bad.

(group laughing) Yeah.

- What's it like living with Bob Garner?

- Oh man.

There is never a dull moment living with Bob Garner.

He's on the phone, he's always making some sort of ... He's got a great idea, just like our kid.

"Hey, I got a great idea."

So it's never, ever dull.

He just sometimes forgets to let me know of things that I'm supposed to be involved with too, so ... - Like fishing?

- Like fishing.

(group laughing) But this has been a wonderful evening out, afternoon, evening out with friends, and it's a beautiful, beautiful night.

Hope that there are a few more fish we can bring into the boat.

(gentle guitar music) - We had a great time today.

The ladies brought in most of the fish, and of course, Bob waited till the last fish, but he too brought in a dandy king.

Having all the spouses out today was a special trip for sure.

Beth, Matt, and Missy all deal with our crazy schedule working on the television show, but without their patience and understanding, well, we wouldn't be able to do what we do to bring a new show each and every week.

And if you haven't been out on Lake Michigan yet this year, well, now is your time.

The fish are here.

Thanks to Steve and the crew for a night to remember here in "Michigan's Out of Doors."

(gentle guitar music) Well, we're pretty fortunate here in the state of Michigan to have so many great events that are geared towards getting kids into the outdoors, something very important.

So what we're gonna do right now is go to one of the best ones that I've ever seen, and that's gonna be happening this weekend in the town of Muskegon.

- [Exhibitor] This is Sportsman for Youth.

Happens every year, the Saturday after Labor Day, this is the 31st year.

- [Exhibitor] It's been a long time, and we've grown an awful lot.

We started off with 800 kids our first year, and now we're close to 2,000 to 2,500.

We, once again, had the hog trough here this year, rock climbing wall, reptiles, you name it.

There's 74 different exhibitors here for kids to learn about the great outdoors.

- And of course, our most popular thing is the trout pond, where they actually catch fish, this year, we have 14 inch trout in the trout pond, and we have 1,000 of them in there, so kids get to go, and fish, and try to catch a fish.

- It's exciting to see this many kids come through an outing like this.

There's anywhere from 2,000 to 2,500 people, so you get the message of conservation, and the stuff that the DNR does, and all the other people here.

We're really excited about that.

- We love getting kids outside.

We think it's so important for their health and wellbeing to experience nature on a regular basis.

- We're excited just to be able to see a lot of kids in Muskegon County, and I hope that kids are able to learn something new that they can get involved in.

- To see all the kids and get a chance to show them some of the old time things, and throw tomahawks, and just have a great day.

We always do.

- We're all about taking care of our youth, getting them into hunting and fishing, and so we try to do what we can to get kids shoot a gun for the first time, or get them involved into hunting, and we've been doing this since it started way back in the beginning, and we've got young people that started when they were kids are now working with us, so we love coming out here, and enjoy teaching kids about turkey hunting.

- I think it's important, I think it's a really great opportunity to see all the things that Muskegon County has to offer, just to have a look, to see things that they don't necessarily see on a day-to-day, this is just a really good opportunity for everything to be all in one spot.

- It's more about educating kids about the outdoors, and that was one of the assignments that everybody had to teach the kids something.

- It was just seeing the smiles on the kids' faces, that's what this is all about.

This is what we do this for, just watching them have fun, once again, loving being outdoors.

- It's a time to get a different look at life, other than sitting in their bedroom, playing, you know, video games, and stuff like that.

This is real life action stuff, it being in the woods, and hearing all the tons of birds and animals, and I think it changes kids' lives, you know, for the better.

- Our board alone could not do all this work without all our helpers.

We appreciate that.

Every year, we just try to do it bigger and better, and try to get more people involved, and the more people we get involved, the better we get at this.

- 2026, we are planning already, we're gonna get ready for next year, we hope to see you Saturday after Labor Day 2026.

See you then.

(upbeat rock music fading) - Thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors", make sure you come back in upcoming weeks, lots of great things headed your way, we will head up to Gladwin, Michigan to Paradise Trophy Ranch with the Path Foundation, to check out some very special hunts that happened up there just recently, and as we get ready for deer seasons that are kicking off, we'll also bring you a little bit more late summer, early fall fishing.

If you'd like to see where we are on a daily basis, or maybe interact with us, you can always do that online.

- Well, that's right.

Instagram and Facebook are probably the two best ways to see what we're up to on a day-to-day basis, and it's also a way for you to let us know what you're up to and whether there's something we should be covering for "Michigan Out of Doors" television.

Make sure you are joining us over the next few weeks, and if we don't see you in the woods or on the water, hopefully we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

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(gentle country music) ♪ When I wanna fire away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that (gentle music ending)