A deer stands in the snow at the top of North Kimberly Avenue near Brown Street in Iron Mountain. The past hunting season was the first with a no-bait rule within the Core Chronic Wasting Disease Surveillance Area in the Upper Peninsula, which included the southern half of Dickinson County. (Theresa Proudfit/Daily News photo)

ESCANABA — Residents generally have complied with a baiting ban in the Upper Peninsula’s Core Chronic Wasting Disease Surveillance Area, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officer said.

The year 2019 was the first deer hunting season in the Upper Peninsula under the new no-baiting rule in the surveillance area. Deer season began in the U.P. with archery season starting on Oct. 1 and concluded with late archery season Jan. 1.

The Core CWD Surveillance Area comprises some 660 square miles — defined by major roadways, with portions of Menominee, Delta and Dickinson counties — around the site where a doe tested positive for CWD in Dickinson County’s Waucedah Township in 2018.

Lt. Ryan Aho of the DNR’s Baraga office said that, although he has seen no official numbers on tickets issued within the no-feeding area, he thinks they were few, if any.

“Everyone I talked to had not given tickets for baiting,” he said. “There was a high level of compliancy in the core area.”

Last July, the Michigan Natural Resources Commission approved a series of deer hunting regulations aimed at slowing the spread of CWD. These included a ban on baiting in part of the central U.P. designated as the Core CWD Surveillance Area. Consistent with regulations in the Lower Peninsula, the baiting ban was lifted for disabled participants in the Liberty and Independence hunts.

CWD is a fatal disease of the brain and nervous system found in cervids, which include deer, elk and moose. Triggered by an aberrant protein, or prion, the disease attacks the brain of an infected animal and produces small lesions that result in death. CWD is always fatal to deer and has no known cure.

The Waucedah doe was the first to test CWD positive in the Upper Peninsula and no additional cases have since been confirmed in the region.

Aho explained the core surveillance area falls into DNR law enforcement districts one and two.

District One serves Baraga, Dickinson, Gogebic, Houghton, Iron, Keweenaw, Marquette, Menominee and Ontonagon counties.

District Two includes Alger, Chippewa, Delta, Mackinac, Luce and Schoolcraft counties.

He clarified he isn’t completely sure if no tickets were written, as he had not heard back from every officer. He added he had requested data on baiting violations in the core surveillance area from Lansing but has not yet received a response.

He did note that many of the conservation officers noticed hunters relocating. “Activity was way down on public land in the core area,” he said.

Hunters who previously used the public land within the core CWD surveillance area moved to hunt public land not within the area.

“There was more activity where they could bait,” he said, adding it made sense for people who wanted to continue to bait to move a couple miles to public land outside of the restricted area.

There was also a slight hiccup when it came to patrolling for baiting violations — a plane the DNR planned to use for flying over the area ended up breaking down at the start of hunting season, Aho said.

Clarissa Kell can be reached at 906-786-2021 or ckell@dailypress.net.