For the first time in Michigan history, some deer hunters who are content to shoot yearling bucks are being discriminated against on a regional basis. Although the Upper Peninsula has the highest buck hunting success in the state and the highest proportion of 2 1/2-year-old and older bucks, the Natural Resources Commission recently enacted regulations penalizing U.P. hunters who tag bucks with less than three antler points on one side.

The new rules give Region 1 whitetail hunters two choices. They can buy individual archery or firearms deer licenses to shoot one buck with 3-inch antlers or better. A two-season hunter who buys an archery tag and shoots a buck before Nov. 15, obviously won't buy a firearms license, if he obeys the law, because it won't be valid.

The second option is buying a combination deer license with two buck tags, both of which are supposed to be restricted. One tag is for a buck with at least 3 points on one antler that are an inch or more in length. The other tag is for a buck with at least 4 points on one antler.

This only applies in the U.P., mind you. Deer hunters in the rest of the state can still buy combo deer licenses with which one buck having 3-inch spikes or better is legal (unrestricted). The second tag would be for a buck with at least 4 points on one antler (restricted).

And it's not as though more restrictive antler point regulations have not already been tried in Region 1. Seven years ago, bucks in four U.P. deer management units (DMUs) had to have at least 3 points on one side to be legal. After a five-year trial period, there was not enough support to continue the regulations in three of them. The 3-point rule remains in effect in one southern Dickinson County DMU (122).

The 3-point rule has been in effect in DMU 122 for seven years now. If the larger antler restriction was working as it is supposed to and it proved popular enough to continue after five years, you would expect higher hunter satisfaction there than elsewhere in the region, but that is not the case. Only 40 percent of the members of seven deer camps in DMU 122 that participated in a DNR survey considered their hunts good to excellent last fall. Sixty percent rated them fair to poor. Buck hunting success was 34 percent in that DMU.

DMU 022, which includes parts of Dickinson and Iron counties, had the highest buck success and satisfaction for 2007, according to the DNR's deer camp survey. Twenty camps from that unit, including 104 hunters, participated in the survey and they reported a 43 percent rate of success on bucks. Fifty-five percent of the camps rated their season good to excellent.

Even though bucks with 3-inch antlers were legal in DMU 022, the majority of hunters reported passing up spikes and forks voluntarily. There's obviously more satisfaction in letting small bucks go voluntarily rather than being forced to by mandatory regulations. That's part of the reason the U.P. already has a greater proportion of older age bucks in the herd than other regions of the state because many hunters already pass up young bucks by choice.