Porch Notes
The White-Tailed Deer
Outdoors
No state symbol shapes the Michigan calendar like this one. The white-tailed deer became the official state game mammal in 1997 — pushed through, fittingly, by a group of Zeeland fourth-graders — but its real status is written into how the state stops each November.
Every year, Michigan’s firearm deer season opens on November 15 and runs through the 30th. For two weeks, much of the state changes gears: schools in the north close, blaze orange appears on every rack at the hardware store, and hundreds of thousands of hunters — long upwards of half a million, once as many as 750,000 — head “up north” or out to the back forty. The tradition of “deer camp,” a cabin full of family and friends, old stories, and the same photo albums year after year, took hold in the 1930s and boomed after World War II, and it remains as much about belonging as about venison.
Found in all 83 counties and now numbering perhaps two million statewide, the white-tailed deer is both a beloved animal and a serious management job for the state.
Where to see it
Honestly, almost anywhere in Michigan, at dawn or dusk along any field edge. State game areas and the northern forests are the heart of deer country.