State Rep. Timmy Beson on Wednesday testified before a group of House committees on needed accountability for the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

A wide-ranging discussion included concerns shared by musician and Michigan outdoorsman Ted Nugent and local business owners who have been impacted by aggressive and burdensome DNR regulation involving small farms, wildlife rehabilitators, hunters, private landowners, and more.

“This hearing provided tremendous insight into the different ways that the DNR is hampering outdoor recreation and livelihoods in Michigan,” said Beson, of Bay City. “The state says it wants more people to hunt deer, but its regulations actively discourage people from getting into hunting or continuing to hunt. The state says it wants to increase jobs, but it is actively curtailing small business owners through the DNR. Our policies need to match our priorities, and that means less bureaucracy in the way.”

Prior to serving in the Legislature, Beson owned and operated a family meat market and grocery store in the Bay City area and offered deer processing for customers. He remains a licensed deer processor and spoke on his experiences with red tape.

“A lot of processors are out of business because of the regulations that the DNR imposes,” Beson said in testimony. “Every time there’s a problem, it’s the responsibility of the processor to be law enforcement. I have to let you know when you bring a deer in if you got it from the right area. I have to inform you if you got it from a (bovine tuberculosis) area. The processor or taxidermist has to inform you of all the rules that the DNR doesn’t, and the reason (the DNR) gave me at the time for that was that it was too expensive to reprint their books so they needed me as a business owner to handle it.

“At some point, this goes beyond the responsibility of a business owner. It’s on the state entity that wants to regulate all this stuff.”

Beson also criticized how deer reporting has created mountains of paperwork and data collection demands of processors.

“We’re double-entering (the data),” Beson said, referencing a recent requirement that hunters report their deer kills online within 72 hours. “The state thinks it’s extremely easy to have all this licensing and regulation, but doesn’t think about the impact it has. The problem is, when you make the laws and licenses so hard on the businesses, everybody goes underground. It makes costs high. It can make processing less safe in some circumstances. It creates a government mess, and that’s where we find ourselves right now.”

PHOTO INFORMATION: State Rep. Timmy Beson (right) testifies during a joint hearing of the House Natural Resources and Tourism Committee, Agriculture and Rural Development and Natural Resources Appropriatons Subcommittee, and the Weaponization of State Government Oversight Subcommittee on Wednesday, June 25 at the state Capitol in Lansing. Beson showed the committees reporting paperwork deer processors are responsible for, even when taken deer have been reported by hunters in many instances. Beson was joined by musician and Michigan outdoorsman Ted Nugent, who passionately spoke about the need for less regulation to uphold the state’s rich heritage of conservation and outdoor recreation.