Leelanau County Deer Hunting

GLEN ARBOR, Mich. — Squirrels were chattering in the nearby pines and hardwoods, their din on the level of a playground filled with school kids. The background noise was almost comical as winds began to whistle late on opening day of Michigan’s firearms whitetail deer season.

A half-mile away lay the great inland beauty, Glen Lake, which is walled off from Lake Michigan by sand dunes that over thousands of years turned one body of water into two.

Just to the north, beneath a mid-November sky that on this day was an alternating parade of blue and gray ceilings, sat South Manitou Island, whose lighthouse yet stands as a monument to ships that for more than a century made it to harbor, and to many that did not in a volatile area known for its wrecks.

This stretch of Leelanau Peninsula shoreline, one of the world’s most blessed convergences of fresh water and landscape, is part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It also is home to a small but robust herd of Michigan whitetails.

It is seductive stuff for anyone with a weakness for hunting’s allure and for nature’s grand ways. And it explained why a man with a taste for both venison and scenery was hunting once again near Glen Lake.