Corn growers around northern Michigan are getting a really good look at how this year's crop is shaping up before harvest, but one of them in Benzie County is getting to see a lot more than that.
The Benzie County farmer is seeing damage to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars and it's not the first time.
"I started farming in high school in the early 70s as a 4h FFA project,” said Ron Gillison, Benzie County farmer. “I grew up on a fruit farm. So, I've lived on a farm my whole life."
And to this day he still does.
"We're farming about 1,100, a little over 1,100 acres of corn and a couple hundred acres of small grains," Gillison said.
At least that's the goal here at his Benzie County farm, but over the past several years he hasn't been alone.
"We have a problem with the bears," said Gillison.
It's not a problem so much with seeing them, but rather it's seeing what they are doing to his crops.
"Normally a bear will move into an area and he just lays down and paws and brings stalks to him," Gillison said.
Leaving scars of bear damage across the acreage
"Might be as big as an office, 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, but we get them 30 to 60 feet square,” said Gillison.” It's not uncommon to have them the full width of the corn head, for you know 30 or 40 feet going forward where there's not a stalk left standing."
While deer tend to nibble on the edge corn before it gets over their heads, Gillison’s bears seem to find the best irrigated, best growing corn in the middle and go to work until harvest.
"They will move in this time of year and they won't leave until they either get forced out of the cornfield or something, you know, whether we take the corn away or they take it away," Gillison said.
It’s frustrating for Gillison partly because growing food is in his blood.
"Farming is not an occupation,” said Gillison. “It's a way of life."
It’s also frustrating because with thin margins, when a bear takes a bite out of his crop, it's taking a bite out of his bottom line.
"Close to $40,000 in a minimum," Gillison said.
Tens of thousands of dollars lost, after spending a lot of money to plant, fertilize and water. Deer have always been a lesser challenge, the bears are more of a recent development.
"When the bears started moving further south into the lower peninsula, our damage has gotten bigger and is costing us a lot more money," Gillison said.
He has worked hand in hand with the DNR biologists in the past to try and limit this, they allowed him to set up a live trap to relocate the bears elsewhere...
"I harvested seven bears in 14 days and never moved the trap left the trap in one spot and harvested seven bears," said Gillison.
This year, he said his request for a trap was denied.
"They won't allow us to do that anymore because the bear hunters complain that we're taking the bears away before their season,” Gillison said. “The problem is we get all our damage between now and the season.”
Bear crop damage hunting permits exist, but he said they don't provide relief when it's needed.
"They have what they call a agricultural damage permit and all that allows us to do if you drew a permit on the point system you could come to me and say, ‘Ron I want to hunt on your farm’ and we could allow you to do that before season and after season but they won't allow you to use bait you can't use dogs," Gillison said.
Gillison believes it's time the state's NRC, the organization with exclusive authority to regulate the taking of game in Michigan, takes a look at breaking up the widely popular with hunters, Baldwin District.
"The Baldwin District runs from Fox Island Down to south of Muskegon and all the way over to U.S. 131,” said Gillison. “That’s one zone; the UP is seven zones."
He says the zone is just too big, too habitat diverse and bear density too high to have one set of rules work and that the current license limits don't take enough bears out of the mix where they are needed the most.
"I mean a lot of these guys wait damn near a lifetime to get a tag, but you know only 37 percent of the hunters are successful," said Gillison.
He hopes that with more hunters harvesting bears, he can harvest a few more rows of corn because when this time of year comes around and he sees this, he can't help but worry about the future.
"It's tough to raise a crop and then lose it to the quantity that we lose to the bears, and the bears are getting worse and worse and worse," said Gillison.
Gillison continues to be in contact with the DNR and reaches out to law and policy makers, hoping that the situation can be addressed quickly but also realizes that past requests haven't seemed to make much of a difference.
Source - https://upnorthlive.com
