It’s good to see Michigan’s wildlife managers — in this case the Natural Resources Commission — making common-sense decisions based on science. After all, it’s what we mandated back in 1996.

But I’m wondering how their latest decision to combine most private land in southern Michigan into a single Deer Management Unit is going to affect the DNR’s bottom line. From a management standpoint, it makes sense. Virtually all of southern Michigan has too many deer, and this will give hunters a lot of flexibility to fix that.

But at what cost?

In a typical October 1-January 1 deer season, I’m hunting at least three southern Michigan counties: Lenawee and Barry are sure things, and last year I also had to good fortune to hunt Calhoun.

I believe in keeping my options open, so I typically start each archery season with an antlerless tag for each county I plan to hunt, plus the normal combo license that allows me to shoot bucks as well. Each one of those antlerless tags cost me $10 that I was happy to pay.

Most of my hunting buddies do the same. One has a prime lease that’s a couple hours away, and we all hunt it. We also each have something closer to home, and we have the tags to show for it.

Now, under DMU 486, I don’t need those three antlerless tags I bought last year. Just one will cover all the areas I plan to hunt this fall. I won’t buy a second doe tag until I’ve already put a doe on the ground. And I’ve never shot two does in a single season.

By my count, that saves me $20. And don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of shoveling money into a bloated bureaucracy. But I’ve never had a quarrel with buying tags to do what I love. And it’s hard to imagine the DNR is bloated, with campgrounds closing, fish hatcheries on the brink and an already skinny team of COs patrolling the outdoors.

Maybe they’re hoping an increase in license sales from new crossbow users will cover the loss. But with state going broke, it sure seems like an odd time for them to look at all those 10-spots and say, “No, keep it.”

Everyone knows about the rut, right? Starts ramping up around the time we gather our bows and hit the woods. Reaches full swing around the first of November in the northernly parts. Deer go nuts, bucks trail does, show up at odd hours in places you don’t otherwise see them, all that.

It’s a fall thing.

Or at least we thought so. Maybe the deer in Ohio haven’t heard. Seems a state deer biologist was out turkey hunting last week — this is May, remember — when he saw a doe mosey past. Nothing unusual there.

Moments later, here comes a buck. A spring buck. A 3-inches-of-stubby-velvet buck.

And he’s bird-dogging that doe like nobody’s business.

“He had his nose to the ground, tail straight back, just like you’d see in the peak of the rut,” said Mike Tonkovich, Ohio’s head deer honcho.

Now it’s important to note that the witness to this was Jim Hill, also an Ohio deer biologist. A DEER biologist. In other words, this guy knows when he’s looking at a rutty buck. He’s just not used to seeing them when he’s calling turkeys.

The behavior was so unseasonal that Tonkovich put a call in to John Ozoga, the retired Michigan DNR deer specialist who’s a leading authority on the animals’ behavior.

His reply: Are you sure? And the answer is yes. Tonkovich said obviously that doe’s estrous is seriously out of whack, and the buck was just doing what bucks do when they catch that scent.

“When you’ve got a million deer, you’re gonna find one that doesn’t follow the rules,” he added.

OK, so if you go out fishing or hunting and come back empty-handed, writing about the outing is pretty dicey business. After all, who wants to read that you didn’t catch anything? I get that. You can sit on the couch with your hand in your waistband and not catch anything. Big deal. So rather than talk about what I didn’t do in a day and a half on Michigan’s Pere Marquette River, here’s what I did do:

– I listened to the all-day drumming of a lovesick ruffed grouse. Spring rules!

– I hooked four steelhead, two of which went airborne multiple times before throwing my hook. By far my best-ever day of steelhead fishing, even without bringing one to the net.

– I watched a small flock of turkeys roost right above my head, in a tree across the river, then returned in the morning to watch them fly down and resume their turkey business. Did I mention that spring rules?

– I decided that Berkley PowerBait steelhead egg clusters are every bit as enticing to steelhead as real spawn, without the oil slick or stinky fingers. Furthermore, they hang inches off the bottom, which a spawn sack won’t do if it has too many floats in it, and they stay on your hook without tying an egg loop. The only reason I would switch from the PowerBait would be a total switch away from bait and into fly fishing.

– I got up early so I could beat the four old guys staying across the river to the water. I had the prime gravel to myself and had two fish hooked before they even showed.

– I heard the cannon-shots of a pileated woodpecker pounding away at a dead tree. Man, those birds are impressive.

– When two driftboats arrived and anglers spread out across the gravel, I quietly took my leave - and fished a sweet spot upstream where the fish reconvened after all that commotion scattered them. Two more hook-ups.

– Discovered some submerged gravel that gets passed over and passed over by the driftboat crowd but consistently produces fish. I learned the details of that hole later from my buddy Jeff, who knows that stream as well as anybody.

Don’t count me as one of those guys who stridently oppose crossbow hunting. I’ve always enjoyed the solitude of bow season, but since I mainly hunt on private land, I don’t expect to be overrun with slavering gun hunters storming the woods for their first taste of the rut.

Michigan and Pennsylvania have both added crossbows to their deer arsenals for the coming fall. The game managers say it’s a way to get more people out there whacking at overgrown herds, and I get that. What I don’t get, especially in Michigan’s case, is how blind the Natural Resources Commission seems to be about the state’s two-buck rule.

They want a smaller herd? Easy. Give us one buck, all weapons, all seasons, just like they do in Ohio. Now, I understand it’s not very Michiganian to look up to Ohio. I mean, check the map. But in this case the Ohio game managers have it right, and Michigan needs to look at why that is.

Ohio’s deer hunters get to kill one buck per year. Period. If that happens on Day 1 of the archery season, so be it. You’re done.

Now, rest assured that Michigan’s deer hunters, by and large, are NOT out there whacking two bucks every year. But allowing for a second buck causes a couple secondary effects that have huge ramifications on the deer herd:

– First, it allows a hunter to shoot any dink he sees, knowing that if a big boy ever shows he still has that extra tag in his pocket. That means fewer little bucks grow up, and hunters who want a chance at a truly mature buck look beyond the border to Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin or Iowa.

– Second, it cuts down on the antlerless harvest because let’s face it, once there’s a deer in the freezer a lot of guys get a lot less interested in bagging a doe for the meat.

I had the good fortune of hunting Ohio during last fall’s gun season. I missed opening morning because of a family obligation, but when I arrived that afternoon, my hosts proudly showed off the four - yes, four - does they killed before lunch.

Mind you, these are young guys who kill big bucks. Just go to the Ohio DNR’s web site and check out Weston Dunn and Tyler Dunn with the huge bucks they killed in 2006 and 2007.

Those big bucks got big because they walked past hunters when they were small. Hunters let them walk because they’re willing to wait for something bigger. Their patience is often rewarded, and they have no qualms about putting does in the freezer while they wait for big horns. I shot a doe that day, and you’d have thought I dropped a Booner the way they carried on about it. Next time, I just might.

And that’s why the two-buck rule makes this Michigan hunter look up to Ohio.

The folks at PETA have outdone even themselves this time. They want fish to be reclassified as “sea kittens,” on the grounds that fish have feelings too, just like your pets do, and pulling a fish out of the water with a hook is exactly the same thing as putting a hook through a kitten’s jaw and dragging it around with your car.

To support their argument, they declare that fish are even known to rub each other affectionately. Um, yeah. That’s more accurately known as “passing on DNA.” But hey, I haven’t ruled out the possibility that fish sometimes hold hands and sing songs around little fishy campfires. I hear a grouper is about to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton and then set up a free health clinic in an underdeveloped section of the Indian Ocean!

But rather than ridicule PETA, maybe we should thank them for this one. It’s just so doggone dumb. It elevates them from misguided and annoying to wildly stupid, exposing as true silliness their anthropomorphic insistence on seeing things as they aren’t. Behold:

PETA’s view: Bambi, a naïve but lovable orphan (thanks to a mean old hunter) befriends all the forest’s creatures and falls in love with a doe-eyed beauty before settling into happily-ever-after.

Real world: Wolf drags down deer and gnaws through its hamstring so it can’t run, then spends a couple days dining on its flanks while it’s still alive.

Pretty? Not at all? Real? You bet. I’ve seen the video. There is an order of things on this planet. Meat nourishes. Why else would creatures driven by instinct alone pursue it constantly? And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not a moral judgment. It’s fact.

Thank goodness for the 12-year-old girls of the world who are wise enough to know things but young enough to be unsullied by grown-up filters. Chastity Haskins of Alaska shared her view with KUCB radio:

“I don’t see fish as sea kittens; I see them as food,” said the 12-year-old sage.

Closer to home, my own daughter Natalie, also 12, expressed her point of view over a delicious plate of freshly caught crappie:

“Pass the sea kittens, please.”

Go, girls. That was her second helping.

The meat-is-food view, by the way, has helped nourish humans for, oh, a few million years. I don’t know about you, but my ancestors did not evolve with long necks and extra stomachs for reaching and digesting plants.

No, my people developed opposable thumbs so they could grasp tools. Like spears, for instance, which are useful for stabbing animals and other meat-based food items.

In the spirit of PETA’s fictional view of the world, let’s extend the sea kitten naming convention to a few more misunderstood critters.

Earth worms can be mud lambs, for instance. Snakes can be ground babies. Rats? Trash bunnies! Ha ha! Isn’t this fun? Centipedes can be basement puppies. Scorpions? Pokemuffins!

I’m sure the PETA folks think they’re helping someone. But fish are not kittens. Nor are they puppies or fawns or lambs. We are hard-wired to protect our own big-headed, wide-eyed little babies, whose cuteness inspires our love and protective instincts. That affection often extends to other baby critters because they’re just so dang cute. Like kittens.

Fish? Not so much. They are nutrient-rich protein slabs. They’re cold and slimy, but darned good eatin’. They don’t blink. Your hands stink after you touch them.

If that happens with a kitten, you’re petting the wrong place.