Whitetail Hunting in the Mountains of Northern Michigan

Grayling, Michigan

This hunt was a hunt that young outdoorsmen dream of; a hunt where you travel to another part of the country in hopes of killing a trophy. We encountered lots of cold weather, deep snow and some northern whitetails.

November 22, 2012

We loaded up Jonathan’s truck last night so we could get on the road early this morning because it’s a fourteen hour drive to the property that we’re hunting in Michigan. We stopped 3 times for food and gas – there was nothing stopping us from getting there as soon as possible. The drive started in a moderately cold Alabama driveway and ended in a few feet of snow in Northern Michigan. We could feel the temperature dropping as we made our way across the country. We drove late into the afternoon on a highway through northern Michigan, missing our exit by about 30 miles due to an intense blizzard. 

Later we found out that this was due to the lake effect from the nearby Lake Huron. This was a blizzard beyond what I had ever seen and Jonathan was doing his best to keep the truck on the road. There were countless vehicles crashed into the snow banks that were accumulating on the sides of the highway. Backtracking to the right exit took us over an hour driving in 4-wheel drive and never getting over 40 mph. This was the nail in the coffin for our truck’s transmission. We barely made it to the right exit when the truck wouldn’t shift out of 1^st gear. Luckily, BP, the man we were hunting with, picked us up at the exit. We made it to the hunting camp very late that night. Tired and cold, we had dinner with BP and one of his buddies. BP is one of Jonathan’s great uncles and we were hunting at his camp. Needless to say, we slept well that night.

November 23, 2012

We woke up early, around 4:30 AM, in order to get some breakfast before our first morning hunt. We found out quickly that in order to stay warm in temperatures around 0°F requires consuming mass amounts of calories. After finishing off about 2 dozen eggs between the four of us, we headed to the snow blinds. The blinds had to be heated with propane so we wouldn’t freeze while we were hunting. It was a very cold morning and no one saw any deer. This gave us time to head back to town and get Jonathan’s truck put in the shop to have a new transmission installed.  

Needing some success out of this adventure we took back to the woods that afternoon. I ended up spotting two doe work in and begin feeding on the corn and doughnuts that we used as attractant. Yes – doughnuts, the deer loved eating the doughnuts and could smell them from miles away in the cold weather. Not knowing what type of deer management strategy they had for the property, I passed on the doe in hopes of a Michigan buck. Later I found out that BP wanted us to take as many doe off of the property as possible. That night we settled back into the cabin and prepared to ride out the cold night with the wood-burning stove. The cabin’s only heat source was a wood-burning stove in the center of the cabin. We had no electricity just a few light bulbs scattered throughout the cabin that were lit with propane. We had running water that came from an outside deep well. This meant using an outhouse for seven days and no showering. In order to take a shower, we had to pump the well with enough pressure to reach an outside shower head. Then, we had to get the shower running before the water froze in the pipe going to the shower head. Like I said - no showering for the week. Jonathan attempted a shower once and we ended up unfreezing the water hose on the wood stove. He got his shower and said it was all worth it.

November 24, 2012

The next morning provided the same results as the last: lots of food, cold weather, deep snow and no deer activity. By this time we realized that the deer were moving closer to dark in the afternoon and throughout the night because it was too cold for them to stay bedded. Later that afternoon, I had some success with the same doe that fed the evening before. I was able to take a mature doe that I had seen the previous afternoon. We packaged up the deer and waited until the next day to process it for the meat. This wasn’t a problem because the outside temperature was equivalent to a deep freeze. 

November 25, 2012

Instead of cleaning my deer at daylight we decided to hunt for a few hours and tackle the task of cleaning a deer in near sub-zero temperatures later that morning. This proved to be a good decision because Jonathan was able to take a mature 6-point at daylight. These deer were much different than the whitetail that we were custom to seeing in central Alabama. They had much thicker fur coats and the meat was full of fat. We also noticed that the deer had much shorter snouts, this was to help them burrow in the snow for the underlying food. We spent the rest of the day cleaning the two deer and scouting the property on four-wheelers. The rest of the trip provided no more deer activity but we definitely made some memories. Jonathan was able to get a new transmission installed and it took us all the way back to Alabama. We still joke about not showering for a week and all of the vehicle issues. We haven’t been back to Michigan as of today and no plans to go in the near future.