All four of us went to our stands on the morning of Nov. 15 with high expectations. Bill Westerbrink from Grand Rapids shot a 2 1/2-year-old 7-pointer at about 10 a.m. I left my stand overlooking a number of scrapes about 10:30 to photograph Bill with his buck, and when I returned at 12:30 p.m., there were fresh buck tracks in two of those scrapes. Then at 2:30 p.m., Dave Menominee from Lac La Belle filled his tag with a yearling buck that had long spikes after missing the same deer 2 1/2 hours earlier.

It started snowing soon after it became dark, and by daylight on Nov. 16, more than a foot of fresh snow was on the ground. The snowstorm reduced hunting pressure dramatically across the U.P. and also curtailed deer activity, but some of the hunters who hunted that day saw action. Dave saw another yearling buck on the morning of Nov. 16, but this one had antlers that were barely visible.

By Nov. 17, the snow had stopped, the temperature dropped and deer responded by becoming extremely active again. I switched to snow-tracking deer from stand-hunting for them by the third day of the season, and I began following the prints of a buck and doe that were together. In about an hour, I jumped the pair and got a running shot at the 8- or 10-pointer, but missed.

Even though I continued after the pair for several more hours, I never saw them again. I got back to my vehicle in time to spend the last hour of the day stand-hunting over bait. Before dark, a yearling 3-pointer showed up that I could have shot, but I passed on him. That was one of the most satisfying days of deer hunting I've ever spent. If I would have shot that 3-pointer or I hadn't missed the bigger buck I tracked, three out of four members of our camp would have gotten bucks, which is excellent anywhere in Michigan, and much less in Keweenaw County.

I spoke to a lot of hunters who were successful in the U.P. during the 2005 season, yet media reports indicated the kill was expected to be down significantly from 2004. Now that final estimates are in, it's clear that there wasn't much difference in the deer harvest in the U.P. during gun season between 2004 and 2005. Just over 1,000 fewer whitetails were taken last fall (33,243) compared with the year before (34,352), a decline of only 3.2 percent.

The buck kill in Region 1 was actually slightly higher in 2005 (24,134) than 2004 (24,108), increasing by 26 animals. Hunters in western U.P. counties took slightly fewer bucks than the year before (19,147 versus 19,287), but that was offset by an increase in eastern counties (4,987 compared to 4,821). A reduction in the number of antlerless deer tagged was responsible for the lower harvest. There were an estimated 10,244 does and fawns bagged in the U.P. during 2004 compared with 9,109 last fall.

The U.P. experienced the lowest reduction in gun season harvest than the rest of the state, according to final DNR estimates. The harvest was down an estimated 8.8 percent in Region 3's southern counties and 12.2 percent in Region 2. Almost 13,000 fewer bucks and does were tagged in Region 3 (132,935 versus 145,720), and the drop was just over 10,000 in Region 2 (74,419 compared with 84,749).