Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Michigan Deer Camp Report

Now that the Mighigan Firearms regular season is over I have some musings...The weather was really mild and deer sightings were very difficult. Activity picked up some at the end of the two weeks but still a very quiet season. I am part of a camp in the Northern part of the Lower Peninsula...pressure is normally heavy. My family has hunted here since 1938 and now I'm one of the last. We did have some success....

Hard to believe we are the "kids". I'm the slender fella on the left....lol.

Now that I figured the picture program out...I'll add some more like my hero Dave...... My humble cabin.....

some shots of the inside...
Twins....


Watchfull eyes....

Anyway....It's not the greatest hunting spot on earth....but Grandma took me hunting there when I was 2 months old...and I've only missed one year (illness) since. I couldn't imagine any other place to be the last 2 weeks of November. We bagged the 4 deer shown out of 13 hunters that passed thru this year. By talking to others in the area we were the lucky ones. Sounds like results are down some all across the state. Hope everyone had a great season wherever you are and made great memories. I know I did....:)
Scott

Great pictures of a great deer camp and excellent family tradition. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Nice pics and story! It was slow as hell for us too, we will normally kill about 6 bucks on the first 2 days and had 2 on the opener and 1 on the 16th. We all saw bucks just nothing big enough to shoot except for the 2. All the corn kicked our azz but shsould make for good ML hunting.

I'm going to steal from northern_dave here.... I like the fuzzy wind chime.

What a great camp you have. Looks like you had some success anyway. Nice going.

NICE old north woods deer camp you've got there!

Full meat pole, some beefy boys and some brews...keep the traditions alive!!


Ingwe

that guy in the middle has GOT to be Youper! If he's not, surly he's misplaced. no offence intended.

Tom....what would make you think that...???

Ingwe

A true Yooper would have a beer in each hand......

Super sweet camp and buck pole - the stuff of summer dreams. Bet it's easy to fall asleep in front of that beautiful fireplace.

-

Nice pair of hooters!

Great looking camp too.

Thanks for all the nice comments guys, I sure do try to keep the fire burning. We've seen a lot of highs and lows. I started hunting when it was a one buck only season and success ran one in eight and all hunting was done in the north. Now on the farm we are surrounded by deer but I still leave to go to camp and hunt midgets....I guess its just what we do. Most people hunt all their lives without realizing its not the deer they are after. I was lucky and figured that out early. The guy in the pic...he's only half yooper...lol. He figured out yrs ago that camp life wasn't so bad so he moved from the city to about 6 miles down the road, but still comes out to stay with his dad and hunt a few days. The Hooters were courtesy of great grandpa. He was an immigrant who came to the copper mining country of the UP in 1887. He was a mining camp hunter...foraged for food for the miners. I used his knife this year for the first time to dress my buck, tho I've posessed it since a child. A special feeling for sure. Lots of spirits around there, you are never really alone...even when you are...:)

This year I took a bit of a turn in weapon of choice. I've used a Ruger #1 A in 7X57 for the last 15 yrs or so as my primary cenerfire and just adore it but I decided it was time to use some of the various projects while I can so this year it was a .350 Rem Mag On a 673 Guide Rifle that I've been tinkering with for a couple of years now. A 200gr boolit at 2730 sure numbs a deer and makes them leak. A bit of overkill I think but its definately got Bear printed all over it

Nice looking camp, thanks for sharing.

Great looking deer camp and glad you had some success this year. My deer camp (240 miles from home and its a camper set up on our lease property) is not as good as yours but its still enjoyable to get together and hunt. Good eating, shoot the bull after the hunt and enjoy the outdoors. Each year we gather during the first week of muzzleloader season and all of us are there at camp. We have a great time, but after that week its very seldom that all of us are there at the same time. Often I hunt alone since the 2 other guys have jobs. I have a job but generally I take the whole month of November off. Last year I spent 20 days there at deer camp and enojoyed every minute of it. Yea my wife almost didn't know me after I went home with a long growth of beard. This year I have traveled back and forth a few times and I did take a 8 point whitetail with the muzzleloader. I will be going back in about a week and its going to be meat time if I can locate some does.

Great pics and stories. Knee surgery back in October is keeping me out of the woods this year so posts like yours are giving me my deer hunting 'fix'.

Thanks,

Dale

You guys got some nice deer this year. To say it was slow for us would be quite an understatement. The eight point I took at 4 p.m. on opening day was the first and only deer I saw until the day after Thanksgiving, which was my tenth day of hunting. Normally we might see up to a half dozen in the morning and evening. I had three antlerless tags the I could have filled, but choose not to in view of the paucity of deer sightings. The others I hunted with and at neighboring camps had the same experience. Some got bucks, but only one I know of shot does.

Youper, We took much the same approach. We had a very poor fawn crop last spring and deer sightings were down so much that does went off the menu right away. We tend not to harvest many anyway....the adjoining public land hunters do a good job of that as a rule. We did finish off a button buck cripple that wandered thru. Our place (240 acres) lies in a section thats about 1.5 X 3.5 miles...call it 2400 acres more or less and I try to keep track of whats going on around the neighborhood. I know of 2 other bucks and 3 does taken in that block and everyone sang the same song...few deer sighted.