Beaver Island ArchiveA primary-source archive & encyclopedia45°40′N 85°33′W · Lake Michigan
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Wildlife and game management

Also Game management · predator control · conservation officers

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

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Beaver Island archipelago

Summary

Beaver Island’s wildlife record includes an institutional side documented separately from species observation: a sequence of named conservation officers, a decades-long predator-control effort against coyotes and foxes, regulated deer seasons and poaching enforcement, fish stocking at Fox Lake and a Game Club bass refuge, and a regulated beaver-trapping season. The Beaver Island Game Club administered much of this from the 1950s into the 1980s before a differently framed Wildlife Club took shape in 1988 and again in 2024–25, and the state’s own management vocabulary shifted from bounty totals and herd-building toward forest diversity and carrying capacity. No held source proves these organizations are formally connected; each is treated on its own evidence.

Conservation officers and the Game Division

The clearest continuous thread in this record is a named person holding the resident conservation-officer post. Karl Kuebler served in that role from 1942 until his January 1959 retirement, after which the Beaver Beacon reported 35 years of Conservation Department work overall and said he planned to remain on the island; the Game Club held an oyster dinner in his honor that February. He died January 7, 1987, at 93, remembered for later sheriff’s work and for trail-building and tree planting on the island. Vernon Fitzpatrick, a 30-year-old graduate of the Michigan College of Mining and Technology with two years in the department’s forestry division, arrived as his replacement in April 1959. Fitzpatrick went on to announce the island’s 1961 bucks-only deer season, supply Fox Lake toxicity information, and co-plant brook trout there that December. Both men are episode-qualified records: the corpus gives neither a personnel file, exact service dates beyond what the Beacon reports, nor a full career history.

Coyotes, foxes, and predator control

Coyote and fox control ran on two tracks that the record keeps separate: the state’s own bounty and a parallel one paid by the Game Club. John Ozaga, a Conservation Department biologist, reported in September 1961 that the state had recorded 137 coyotes killed on the island since 1947 — 21 by deer hunters, 38 by coyote hunters, and 78 trapped. The Game Club ran its own bounty alongside this: $20 on four coyotes in 1956, a 14-coyote bounty in the 1959 financial report, and from 1976 a member-only arrangement that matched the state bounty, funded by a $5 fee that included a shoulder patch. Organized hunts supplemented individual effort. On December 14, 1957, Game Division biologist Ray Schofield sponsored an island fox-and-coyote hunt that drew outside hunters with hounds, and the Game Club posted a separate $50 reward for information on deer-herd game-law violations the same issue. Individual notices recur through the early 1960s — Karl Kuebler was credited with shooting two coyotes in February 1961, and Ozaga tagged nine coyotes over the summer of 1961, none of which turned up among nine coyotes taken that fall. Sightings continued afterward without renewed organized hunts in the held record: in February 1975, Mark LaFreniere was reported watching for coyotes crossing the ice from Garden Island, seeing some outside rifle range. A June 1960 notice records a Conservation Officer finding a dead bobcat on Garden Island, with no cause of death or population context given — the corpus’s only trace of that species on the archipelago.

Ozaga’s own 1960–61 fieldwork sits in tension with the bounty and hunt record that surrounds it. His January–March 1961 study logged an estimated 350 miles of tracking and eleven deer carcasses, two attributed to coyotes; a September retrospective revised the distance to 214 miles and attributed one deer kill, two rabbit kills, and one grouse kill to coyotes among a larger set of carcasses with uncertain cause. Ozaga concluded that coyote and fox numbers were then low and no longer a major threat to game, and his brood count found 233 grouse in 29 broods against three broods the year before. That conclusion, reached in the same year the Game Club began paying its own matched bounty fifteen years later, is preserved here without reconciling the two: they are different kinds of record — a field biologist’s population assessment and a club’s ongoing incentive program — and the sources do not say whether one changed the other.

Deer seasons, herd health, and enforcement

The Game Club article carries the island’s deer-stocking chronology from 1922 forward and is not restated here. What follows is the regulatory and enforcement layer around the herd it built. In 1957, more than 200 big-game hunters took 107 deer, including 64 antlered bucks, in a season Game Biologist Jerry Dunderdeck surveyed; a February 1958 follow-up gave a 40.8 percent kill rate from 262 hunters, called the best in the state. Fitzpatrick’s 1961 bucks-only order, meant to rebuild the herd before restoring an any-deer season, produced 22 deer taken by 230 hunters that December, with five illegal deer, two of which were salvaged for needy families. By April 1962 the herd’s health itself was in question: Fitzpatrick examined an underweight fawn, found at 60 pounds against an expected 100 to 110, interpreted its condition as starvation, and proposed either cutting the herd to about 500 animals annually or improving deer-yard range through cutting and controlled burning. Neither proposal’s implementation is recorded here. Enforcement recurs unevenly: an unsigned May 1981 letter alleged more than 150 deer and nearly 50 turkeys taken outside season, drawing a signed reply from Stanley Floyd questioning why the DNR had not been told and disputing that the practice was new; in December 1985, the Beacon reprinted a Petoskey News-Review report of a DNR arrest at the island boat dock for suspected illegal venison possession, made after a Report All Poaching tip, alongside a standing $500 reward from island businessmen and the Game Club. In October 1984, a campaign to fill a vacant DNR representative position explicitly tied the vacancy to fish and game regulation and poaching control, and led to a November meeting between islanders, DNR Deputy Director Jim Cleary, and state Senator Mitch Irwin. The carrying-capacity concern Fitzpatrick raised in 1962 reappears, in different form, in a 22 September 2025 DNR announcement proposing expanded 2026–2028 antlerless seasons and about 240 acres of forest-diversity work on state land, citing elevated deer density and its effect on sensitive vegetation and regeneration. A separate 2017 state management-plan record places deer on Beaver, Garden, and South Fox Islands at that time and records them as absent from High, Whiskey, Hog, and North Fox — a dated table entry, not a current survey.

Fish stocking and lake management

Fox Lake anchors the fishery-management record. A November 1961 report found that fourteen previously planted brook trout had died from residual toxicity in the lake; a larger planting went ahead once testing allowed it, and on December 6, 1961, Bud Knight of Oden Hatcheries and Vernon Fitzpatrick planted 2,000 brook trout there, totaling 450 pounds and averaging 8.5 inches, carried live aboard the ferry Emerald Isle with the loss of about two dozen fish in transit. A separate Game Club bass refuge, established the winter before, produced its first reported catch — by Maurice Tyler of Kalamazoo — in August 1960; the water body is not named in the source. A January 1968 notice explains a new state requirement that ice-fishing shanties carry the owner’s name and address in waterproof letters on all sides, intended to help conservation officers identify shelters left on the ice past safe use. Fox Lake reappears in the 1988 record, when the newly formed Wildlife Club reported DNR approval to stock it with walleye, and again in 2024, when the modern Wildlife Club circulated a 2023 fisheries-survey summary alongside a Lake Geneserath ice-fishing tournament.

Beaver, mink, and the regulated trapping season

The animal the island is named for has its own separate management record. Beaver-trapping season opened April 1 in 1958; the Beacon reported final catches of five pelts for Jack Connaghan and Archie LaFreniere, eight for Bill Pischner and Chuck Dudley (including the season’s largest, at 55¼ pounds), and 21 — the most of any pair — for Karl Kuebler and Rogers Carlisle. In May 1961, Rogers Carlisle and Walter Wogan trapped forty beaver plus an otter, Kuebler took eight pelts, and Tony McDonough seven; Wogan’s largest beaver weighed 57 pounds and Carlisle’s second-largest 54 pounds. These are informal newspaper totals rather than a state harvest register, but they are the corpus’s clearest direct evidence that beaver, and at least one otter, were present and regulated as furbearers on the island in this period — a mammal record independent of the toponym.

From Game Club to Wildlife Club

The Game Club ran the bounty, hunt, and stocking programs described above through the 1950s to the 1980s and was recognized nationally for its stocking work in 1951. Its own later record shows the club’s stated concerns widening: in October 1984 it joined the Civic Association, Boat Company, and Volunteer Fire Department in petitioning the state after the DNR representative vacancy, and in 2006 its president testified to a legislative committee on cormorant management and the Lake Geneserath walleye fishery — a move from hunting and habitat work toward fisheries policy. A separate organization appears in July 1988: the Beacon reports a Wildlife Club forming as a committee of the Chamber of Commerce, with a stated conservation-and-education purpose, a DNR liaison relationship, and DNR approval to stock Fox Lake with walleye. Nothing in the held record ties that 1988 club to either the Game Club or to the Beaver Island Wildlife Club active in 2024–25, which describes itself as a 501(c)(3), reports a 2023 fisheries survey and a Lake Geneserath ice-fishing tournament, and received a $5,656 township payment toward an ADA-compliant fishing dock at Lake Geneserath. A shared name and a shared conservation vocabulary across 1951, 1988, and 2024 are not evidence of one continuous institution; each is recorded here as what the sources actually establish. The 2025 DNR forest and deer proposal shows the same shift in the state’s own management language, from bounty totals and herd-building toward forest-diversity acreage and carrying capacity. The parallel modern layer of township-level ecological stewardship, including terrestrial invasive-species governance, belongs to Invasive species and ecological stewardship and is not repeated here; the species, habitat, and bird-survey record that runs alongside this institutional one belongs to Wildlife and bird life.

Open questions

  • Is the 1988 Wildlife Club the same organization as either the Game Club or the 2024–25 Beaver Island Wildlife Club, or three distinct bodies that happen to share a name and a conservation mission? No held source settles this.
  • What formal state agency name and personnel records correspond to the “Conservation Department” of 1957–1968, and how does it relate to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources named in the 2017–2025 record?
  • Where are the underlying state coyote-kill, deer-harvest, and fish-planting registers behind the newspaper totals reported here?
  • Did either of Fitzpatrick’s 1962 range-management proposals — herd reduction or deer-yard improvement — go forward, and how does that compare with the DNR’s 2025 forest-diversity proposal?
  • What explains the gap between decades of organized coyote hunts and bounties and Ozaga’s 1961 finding that predator numbers were then low? The sources do not say whether the bounty program caused that result, continued out of habit, or targeted a different population than the one he surveyed.

See also

Sources

  1. A participant objected to a reportedly displayed buck head at Harbor View. This records a local reaction to hunting-related display and public sensibility, not evidence of the animal's harvest, legality, property location, or broader community opinion.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 16 · t016889
  2. A participant alleged that a family dog had been struck and left in the road, and later asked whether anyone had identified the driver; replies offered sympathy but no corroboration. This is an unresolved community report, not an animal-control, police, veterinary, or wildlife record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 17 · t017211
  3. A participant objected to early-morning cormorant hunting at Lake Geneserath; the thread records a local dispute and does not establish whether the activity complied with hunting regulations.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 07 · t007385
  4. A participant said the wildlife club had corn for residents with turkey flocks and emphasized that feeding would need to continue through winter. This is a participant notice about a club-related resource, not an official wildlife-management policy, population survey, or feeding-outcome record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 11 · t011163
  5. A participant sought ten pounds of venison for stew. This is a private food-supply request, not evidence of harvest, hunting pressure, meat-processing availability, or wildlife abundance.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012178
  6. A participant sought donated deer tails for tanning and fly-tying materials. This documents one resident's use of locally obtained deer material, not a harvest count, hunting-pressure measure, or wildlife-abundance indicator.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 14 · t014853
  7. A participant linked a New York Times report about wild turkeys in an urban setting. The referral is comparative commentary, not a Beaver Island turkey observation, census, or management record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012562
  8. A participant said no known deer processor was currently available on Beaver Island and gave a recommended Charlevoix contact. This is a local information lead, not a complete service inventory, business endorsement, or confirmation of availability.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012556
  9. A participant said he might visit his new ten-acre West Side Road property during muzzleloading deer season and described how he would appear to neighbors. This is self-reported intent, not evidence of hunting, harvest, property ownership, or a wildlife count.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012501
  10. A participant asked whether Beaver Island had too many nuisance turkeys. This records a perception and question, not a population estimate, damage assessment, or management decision.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012481
  11. A participant asked winter residents with turkey flocks to contact Mark LaFreniere about feeding them and said corn was available for turkeys only. This is a local provisioning notice, not a wildlife census, feeding-policy statement, or evidence of turkey abundance.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012612
  12. A participant thanked Pam and Jacque for work keeping Beaver Island natural, beautiful, and accessible. This is community recognition of stewardship as perceived by one participant, not a roster of projects, a performance assessment, or an official conservation report.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012709
  13. A first-party-style retail notice said butterworms and wax worms were available at the hardware store. This is a dated bait-availability notice, not evidence of fishing effort, catch, wildlife abundance, or a management policy.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 12 · t012657
  14. A participant announced that beets, carrots, apples, and corn were in stock at Powers Do It Best Hardware. The post is a retail availability notice, not evidence of deer abundance, baiting practice, harvest, or wildlife-management policy.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 13 · t013688
  15. A user asked for Beaver Island deer-season results; a reply supplied the Michigan DNR season-calendar link, and the questioner clarified that island-specific results were wanted. No island results appear in the thread. This documents an information gap, not harvest data or a population estimate.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 18 · t018358
  16. A resident reported a tree stand on private property along McCauley’s Road and asked its owner to remove it. This is a found-property notice and a limited place reference, not evidence of a particular hunter, harvest, installation date, or legal status.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 17 · t017790
  17. A user offered a red-dot sight and said one model fit a pellet pistol. The listing may be relevant to sporting equipment, but it does not establish hunting activity, firearms use, legality, or a completed sale.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 17 · t017829
  18. A seller offered a “10 point” Beaver buck trophy and antlers from previous years for $200. The post is a seller-supplied object listing; it does not establish the harvest date, hunter, scoring method, legality, or a population/harvest statistic.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 17 · t017688
  19. A participant described attending the inaugural Michigan Conservation Congress and connected its access/accountability concerns to Beaver Island disputes over cormorants, a 2002 chronic-wasting-disease feeding rule, and MDNR responsiveness. A later reply linked support for HB 4610 and a state representative's response. This is local advocacy and participant framing, not a DNR finding, fishery assessment, or legal interpretation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001604
  20. Participants reported blue herons and Canada geese, corrected an initial identification of sandhill cranes, and later described blue herons and loons at Fox Lake. These are dated community observations, useful as sightings and research leads but not a population survey, nesting inventory, or species-monitoring record.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 01 · t001539
  21. Described in this archive: Karl Kuebler retires from Beaver Island Conservation Department service, 1959.
    Reports Karl Kuebler’s retirement after 16 years of local Conservation Department service and 35 years in Conservation work, and a Game Club testimonial dinner. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1959-01_Beaver-Beacon
  22. Described in this archive: Karl Kuebler, former Beaver Island conservation officer, dies, 1987.
    Obituary and reprinted profile giving Kuebler’s 1942–1959 Conservation Department service, later sheriff’s work, and trail-building and tree planting. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1987-02_Beaver-Beacon
  23. Described in this archive: Vernon Fitzpatrick arrives as Beaver Island’s new Conservation Officer, 1959.
    Introduces Vernon Fitzpatrick, age 30, a Michigan College of Mining and Technology graduate with two years in the Conservation Department’s forestry division, as the island’s new Conservation Officer. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1959-04_Beaver-Beacon
  24. Described in this archive: Beaver Island bucks-only deer season announced for 1961.
    Fitzpatrick announces a bucks-only 1961 season to build up the herd; the December follow-up reports 22 deer, 230 hunters, and five illegal deer, two salvaged for needy families.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-09_Beaver-Beacon
  25. Described in this archive: John Ozaga studies predators on Beaver Island, 1960.
    Identifies John Ozaga as a Michigan State student and Game Division student conservation aide studying predators on Beaver Island.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1960-08_Beaver-Beacon
  26. Described in this archive: John Ozaga predator study on Beaver Island, 1961.
    Reports Ozaga’s January–March 1961 field study, coyote-kill totals since 1947 (21 by deer hunters, 38 by coyote hunters, 78 trapped, totaling 137), his conclusion that predator numbers were then low, and a grouse-brood count of 233 birds in 29 broods against three broods the year before.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-09_Beaver-Beacon
  27. Reports that Ozaga tagged nine coyotes the previous summer and that none of nine coyotes taken that fall carried one of his tags; names Karl Kuebler among the three-day coyote hunt’s participants.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1962-01_Beaver-Beacon
  28. Described in this archive: Game Club announces a winter fox-and-coyote hunt and a game-law reward, 1957.
    Reports a December 14, 1957 fox-and-coyote hunt sponsored by Game Division biologist Ray Schofield, with outside hunters bringing hounds, and a $50 Game Club Committee reward for information on deer-herd game-law violations. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1957-12_Beaver-Beacon
  29. The 1956 Game Club fund report lists a $20 bounty on four coyotes; the 1959 report (published February 1960) lists a 14-coyote bounty among its disbursements. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1957-04_Beaver-Beacon
  30. Reports the Game Club matching the state coyote bounty for members only, funded by a $5 fee that included a shoulder patch. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1976-10_Beaver-Beacon
  31. Described in this archive: Karl Kuebler reports shooting two coyotes, 1961.
    Reports Karl Kuebler shooting two coyotes during the preceding week.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-02_Beaver-Beacon
  32. Described in this archive: Mark LaFreniere watches for coyotes crossing from Garden Island, 1975.
    Reports Mark LaFreniere watching for coyotes crossing from Garden Island and seeing some, though not within rifle range. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1975-02_Beaver-Beacon
  33. Described in this archive: Dead bobcat found on Garden Island, 1960.
    Reports a Conservation Officer finding a dead bobcat on Garden Island, with no cause of death or population context given.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1960-06_Beaver-Beacon
  34. Described in this archive: Conservation Department reports 107 deer legally killed during the 1957 Beaver Island season, 1957.
    Reports more than 200 big-game hunters, 107 legally killed deer (64 antlered bucks), one coyote, and one fox in the 1957 season, with Game Biologist Jerry Dunderdeck conducting the survey; the February follow-up gives a 40.8 percent kill rate from 262 hunters, called the best percentage in the state. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1957-12_Beaver-Beacon
  35. Described in this archive: Vernon Fitzpatrick reports a starvation-affected deer fawn and range-management proposals, 1962.
    Reports Fitzpatrick’s April 12, 1962 examination of an underweight, fence-impaled fawn, his interpretation of starvation, and his two proposals: reducing the herd to about 500 annually, or improving deer-yard range through tree cutting and controlled burning.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1962-05_Beaver-Beacon
  36. Described in this archive: The Beaver Beacon prints a debate over deer and turkey hunting, 1981.
    Prints an unsigned allegation of more than 150 deer and nearly 50 turkeys taken, and a signed reply asking why the DNR was not notified and disputing that the conduct was new. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1981-05_Beaver-Beacon
  37. Described in this archive: DNR arrests a man for suspected deer poaching after a Beaver Island tip, 1985.
    Reports a DNR arrest at the Beaver Island boat dock for suspected illegal venison possession after a Report All Poaching tip, and a standing $500 reward from island businessmen and the Game Club. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1985-12_Beaver-Beacon
  38. Described in this archive: Beaver Island campaigns for a resident DNR representative, 1984.
    Campaign to fill the DNR representative position after Bill Wagner’s retirement, tying the vacancy to fish and game regulation and poaching control, and reporting a November 21 meeting with DNR Deputy Director Jim Cleary and state Senator Mitch Irwin. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1984-10_Beaver-Beacon
  39. Described in this archive: Brook-trout stocking at Fox Lake, 1961.
    Reports a November toxicity-related loss of fourteen planted brook trout at Fox Lake, and a December 6 planting of 2,000 brook trout (450 pounds, averaging 8.5 inches) by Bud Knight of Oden Hatcheries and Vernon Fitzpatrick, transported live aboard the *Emerald Isle*.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-12_Beaver-Beacon
  40. Described in this archive: Maurice Tyler reports the first catch from Beaver Island bass refuge, 1960.
    Reports Maurice Tyler of Kalamazoo making the first catch at a Game Club bass refuge established the previous winter; the water body is not named.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1960-08_Beaver-Beacon
  41. Described in this archive: Michigan requires ice shanty identification on all sides, 1968.
    Explains 1967 legislation requiring waterproof owner identification on all sides of ice-fishing shelters, intended to help conservation officers identify owners of shelters left on the ice.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1968-01_Beaver-Beacon
  42. Described in this archive: Beaver Beacon reports the opening Beaver trapping season, 1958.
    Reports the April 1 opening of beaver-trapping season and final reported catches: Jack Connaghan and Archie LaFreniere, 5; Bill Pischner and Chuck Dudley, 8, including the largest at 55¼ pounds; Karl Kuebler and Rogers Carlisle, 21, the most of any pair. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1958-04_Beaver-Beacon
  43. Described in this archive: Beaver Island trappers report a spring beaver harvest, 1961.
    Reports Rogers Carlisle and Walter Wogan trapping forty beaver plus an otter, Karl Kuebler taking eight pelts, and Tony McDonough seven; Wogan’s largest beaver weighed 57 pounds and Carlisle’s second-largest 54 pounds.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1961-05_Beaver-Beacon
  44. Charlevoix County Herald, 9 November 1951, “Beaver Island To Be Honored”; project article organization/beaver-island-game-club-1951.
    Described in this archive: Beaver Island Game Club.
    Held article for the Beaver Island Game Club’s 1922–2006 record, including the 1951 National Conservation Award, the 1984 DNR advocacy, and the 2006 legislative testimony on cormorants and the Lake Geneserath walleye fishery; cited here rather than restated. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · organizations · beaver-island-game-club-1951
  45. Described in this archive: Beaver Island Wildlife Club forms as a Chamber committee and plans Fox Lake stocking, 1988.
    Reports the Wildlife Club forming as a Chamber of Commerce committee with a stated conservation-and-education purpose, DNR liaison, permission to stock Fox Lake with walleye, and a $2,500 fundraising goal. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-07_Beaver-Beacon
  46. Beaver Island Wildlife Club News, Northern Islander, February and April 2024; Peaine Township Board minutes, 17 June 2025.
    Described in this archive: Beaver Island Wildlife Club.
    Held article for the 2024–25 Beaver Island Wildlife Club, self-described as a 501(c)(3), including a Lake Geneserath ice-fishing tournament, a 2023 fisheries-survey summary, and a $5,656 township payment toward an ADA-compliant fishing dock; cited here rather than restated. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    kb · articles · organizations · beaver-island-wildlife-club
  47. Described in this archive: DNR proposes deer-season and forest-diversity measures on Beaver Island, 2025.
    Announces proposed 2026–2028 antlerless firearm seasons and approximately 240 acres of forest-diversity projects, citing elevated deer density and impacts on sensitive vegetation and regeneration identified in the 2022 Beaver Island Implementation Plan.
  48. Project-generated Beaver Island Archipelago wildlife and bird species evidence index, 2017–2024, citing Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Management Plan for State-owned Lands on Northern Lake Michigan Islands (2017), pp. 15–17 and Appendix B.
    Described in this archive: Beaver Island Archipelago wildlife and bird species evidence index, 2017–2024.
    Preserves the 2017 plan’s statement that deer were then present on Beaver, Garden, and South Fox Islands and absent from High, Whiskey, Hog, and North Fox — a dated management-plan statement, not a current survey. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    research · wildlife · indices · archipelago_wildlife_bird_evidence_2017_2024
  49. A forum post linked a Petoskey News-Review story about Paul Johnson and quality-deer-management work, stating that Beaver Island’s leadership role was discussed. The linked newspaper is the stronger source for the claim; the forum preserves the referral.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 04 · t004901
  50. A notice announced a Beaver Island Wildlife Club meeting at Peaine Township Hall. It documents an organization meeting notice, not its membership, decisions, or subsequent activity.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 04 · t004494
  51. A Wildlife Club notice announced a September meeting, discussing wildlife habitat in Great Lakes Energy rights-of-way, turkey season, licenses, and winter feeding. It documents reported club agenda and advocacy, not completed habitat work or wildlife population data.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 04 · t004065
  52. Participants praised Jeff Powers, Andy Kohls, and professional help for island pets. This is community testimony about animal care, not a complete provider history or service audit.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 04 · t004053
  53. A participant discussed deer baiting/feeding policy in the Lower Peninsula. It is comparative wildlife-management discussion, not Beaver Island regulation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 03 · t003194
  54. A participant relayed Groundhog Day seasonal material. It documents calendar folklore, not wildlife observation.
    forum · www.beaverislandforum.com · 03 · t003158

Added 4 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “Wildlife and game management”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/themes/wildlife-and-game-management/, accessed [date], citing hermit, "buck head," Beaver Island Forum, November 19, 2021, topic 16889. (and 53 further sources listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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