What Is the Fine for Feeding Deer in Michigan?

The fine for feeding deer in Michigan is up to $150. That’s the maximum civil infraction penalty for violating the state’s feeding rules, whether by putting feed out at all in the Lower Peninsula or by exceeding the volume and location limits in the Upper Peninsula.¹ The number climbs sharply, though, if a conservation officer decides the food was placed to help you hunt rather than to watch wildlife from the kitchen window.

The $150 Civil Infraction

A feeding violation is a state civil infraction, not a criminal offense. There’s no jail time and no criminal record. The maximum fine is $150, and in that sense it functions a lot like a traffic ticket.¹

What triggers the fine depends on where you live. In the Lower Peninsula, both baiting and feeding are banned outright, year-round, with no exception for recreational viewing or winter weather. The only carve-out is for hunters with disabilities, who may use up to two gallons of bait at a hunting site under tight placement rules.² If you live below the Mackinac Bridge and you’re putting corn out for the deer in your yard, you are in violation. Period.

In the Upper Peninsula, recreational feeding is legal, but boxed in by rules that catch a lot of well-meaning residents:

No more than two gallons per residence per day, and no more than two gallons present at any one time.
Feed must sit within 100 yards of a residence on land you own or possess, and at least 100 yards from any area accessible to livestock or captive deer.
Feed must be scattered directly on the ground. Spin-cast feeders are allowed as long as they stay within the two-gallon volume cap.²

The two-gallon cap is where most citations originate. A five-gallon bucket of corn dumped by the tree line is more than double the limit, and that’s a common habit from before the rules tightened.

Supplemental winter feeding is a separate category in the Upper Peninsula, allowed only between January 1 and May 15. It has its own set of distance rules — at least a quarter mile from any paved public highway, and at least a mile from livestock, captive deer, wheat and potato fields, commercial orchards, nursery stock, and Christmas tree plantations — along with limits on what you can put down and how deep it can sit.² Violating any of those parameters is still the same civil infraction with the same $150 ceiling.

When the Fine Becomes a Misdemeanor

Michigan law separates feeding from baiting, and the penalties are not in the same universe. Bait is food placed to attract deer as a hunting aid. Feed is food placed for any other reason, like watching deer from your porch. The corn in the bag can be identical. The intent decides which rulebook applies.²

If a conservation officer concludes the food was placed to help take deer where baiting is prohibited, the charge is a misdemeanor. Conviction carries up to 90 days in jail, a mandatory fine between $200 and $1,000, and prosecution costs.¹ A pile of corn ten feet from your blind looks very different to an officer than the same pile under your kitchen window.

Restitution for an Illegally Taken Deer

If a baiting violation leads to a deer being killed, restitution gets added to the criminal penalties. The base restitution for a white-tailed deer is $1,000 per animal. Antlered bucks drive the number up fast: an 8- to 10-point buck adds $500 per point plus an extra $1,000, and a buck with 11 or more points adds $750 per point instead.³ A 12-point buck works out to $1,000 base, plus $1,000, plus $9,000 in per-point charges — $11,000 in restitution alone, before fines or costs.

Loss of Hunting Privileges

Wildlife convictions under Part 401 can also cost you your license. A first offense triggers an additional two-year revocation period on top of any other penalty.¹ For a regular hunter, losing two seasons often hurts more than the money.

What Actually Counts as Feeding

Not everything that attracts a deer is “feeding” under the statute. Michigan law carves out several activities that would otherwise make normal rural life impossible.⁴

Naturally occurring foods, standing agricultural crops, and food left on the ground through normal farming or logging are not bait or feed. Building or maintaining a food plot on public land to attract wildlife, however, is prohibited.²
Feeding wild birds and other small wildlife is allowed, but only if the setup is designed to keep deer from reaching the food. The exclusion has to be real: a low platform feeder that deer visit regularly doesn’t qualify just because you meant it for cardinals.
Storing or using feed for livestock is fine, provided the livestock are actually eating it or it’s stored in a way that keeps deer out.

Where people get caught is the bird feeder rule. The question isn’t what you intended. It’s whether deer can reach the food. If they can and they do, you’re feeding deer.

Why the Rules Exist

The reason Michigan takes feeding seriously, and the reason conservation officers do write these tickets, is Chronic Wasting Disease. CWD is a fatal neurological illness in deer, elk, and moose, spread through prions shed in saliva, urine, and feces. Any location where deer gather around a shared food source becomes a transmission site. There is no treatment and the disease is always fatal.

CWD has been confirmed in free-ranging white-tailed deer in multiple Michigan counties, including Allegan, Clinton, Eaton, and Genesee.⁵ That record is the reason the Lower Peninsula ban exists and the reason the DNR isn’t inclined to look the other way. The CDC says there is no strong evidence CWD infects people, but cautions that research is ongoing.⁶ Federal rules under 9 CFR Part 55 require carcasses of cervids destroyed through the CWD Indemnification Program to be incinerated or chemically digested rather than processed into food.⁷

How Violations Get Reported

Michigan runs a Report All Poaching line that handles tips about illegal feeding and baiting along with other wildlife violations. The number is 800-292-7800, available by call or text 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The DNR also takes non-urgent reports through an online complaint form, and callers can stay anonymous.⁸ Most feeding citations start with a neighbor’s call rather than an officer stumbling onto a pile of corn.

1
Michigan Legislature. MCL Section 324.40118
2
State of Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Baiting and Feeding
3
Michigan Legislature. MCL Section 324.40119
4
Michigan Legislature. MCL 451-1994-III-2-1 Wildlife Conservation 401
5
State of Michigan. County-level CWD Detection Information
6
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic Wasting Disease in Animals
7
eCFR. Part 55 – Control of Chronic Wasting Disease
8
State of Michigan. Report All Poaching