Hundreds of thousands of grant dollars coming to northern Michigan to spur park improvements. Stabilized traffic at local outdoor recreation attractions, after two years of record-breaking numbers. Concerning trends of decline in the world of deer hunting. These are a few of the key takeaways from 2022 for outdoor recreation in northern Michigan. The Ticker touched base with District 4 of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) – which services Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Benzie, Lake, Manistee, Mason, Mecosta, Newaygo, Oceana, Osceola, and Wexford counties – to get a 2022 report card for up-north parks, wildlife, and more.

First, some good news: The Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund Board announced grant recommendations this week for 45 recreation development projects and land acquisitions throughout the state, including a few in northern Michigan. Established in 1976, the Natural Resources Trust Fund each year “recommends funding to state agencies and local governments for development projects and land acquisitions that will further access to public outdoor recreation.” This year, there are two Grand Traverse County projects on the recommendation list – one an acquisition grant, the other a development grant.

On the acquisition side, the Natural Resources Trust Fund Board recommended that the legislature approve a $650,000 grant to the Michigan DNR’s Forest Resources Division for a project dubbed “Jaxon Creek Headwaters.” Jaxon Creek is a state-designated river in Grand Traverse County, located near the Kingsley/Mayfield area. The DNR website includes few specific details about the project, and the Forest Resources Division could not be reached for comment on short notice, but the size of the grant and the fact that it is an acquisition project suggests that the DNR intends to acquire more land around Jaxon Creek for parks and recreation purposes. Notably, the DNR ranked this project at the very top of its list of acquisition grant applicants for 2023.  

On the development side, the City of Traverse City is tentatively set to receive $200,500 for new public restrooms at two local beaches. The Ticker reported in March on that project, which will replace the West End Beach bathhouse with a new ADA-compliant facility and build brand-new public restrooms near the volleyball courts. The project is expected to cost $401,000 total, with the City of Traverse City covering half and the Natural Resources Trust Fund grant paying for the other half.

The Natural Resources Trust Fund money comes to northern Michigan in the wake of perhaps the busiest period ever seen for local outdoor recreation. Across the board, area parks, beaches, trails, nature preserves, and other outdoor attractions saw huge upticks in traffic in 2020 and 2021, as the pandemic spurred event cancellations and minimized indoor activities. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, for instance, set a record for visitor numbers in 2020 and then broke that record in 2021 – meaning that pandemic traffic even exceeded the year when Good Morning America dubbed Sleeping Bear the “most beautiful place in America.”

Local parks officials say the pandemic surge largely tapered off in 2022, with traffic holding strong but not breaking records. At Sleeping Bear Dunes, Park Superintendent Scott Tucker is calling the year a “reset” after last year’s record tally of 1.72 million visitors. He estimates the National Lakeshore will end 2022 with “just over 1.5 million visitors,” which is more in line with typical traffic numbers from the back half of the 2010s than it is with the past few years. Similarly, Stephanie Rosinski – park supervisor for the Keith J. Charters Traverse City State Park – told The Ticker in September that the park was “very busy” this past summer, but that “numbers were down just a little bit” from a record year in 2021. Those declines, Rosinski said, have played out all across the state.

For his part, Tucker isn’t concerned about the dip in outdoor recreation activity: “If you're talking the difference between 1.5 million and the record 1.72 million, that is a noticeable decrease,” he noted to the Leelanau Ticker last month. “But I don't think anybody in the park felt like there was a dramatic decrease this year. It was probably easier to find a parking spot at our beaches, but our trailheads were busy, our campgrounds were busy, the weather was spectacular, and everybody had a great summer.”

A more concerning decline for natural resource workers is the ongoing dip in interest for deer hunting. According to Steve Griffith, a Michigan DNR wildlife biologist based at the DNR’s Traverse City Customer Service Center, deer harvest numbers for the 2022 hunting season are likely to be down significantly from a year ago. As of December 1, the total number of deer harvests registered on the DNR website was “just under 253,000,” per Griffith. “The estimated harvest for last year is 395,000 deer,” he notes. “I don’t know off hand on average how many deer are taken in December, but I suspect it will be less than 142,000, which is what would need to be taken to approximate last year’s total.”

As of press time for this article, the number of Michigan deer harvests for the 2022 season was up to 278,752 – still more than 100,000 shy of last year. 2021's 395,000 deer harvest was already down from the previous year’s number of 410,639.

The declining deer harvest is tied to a corresponding dip in the number of deer hunters, which in turn seems to be the product of demographic shifts. DNR data shows that there were 463,178 deer hunters taking part in regular firearm season in Michigan in 2021, compared to nearly 800,000 back in 1998. Per last year’s DNR hunting season report, hunters are predominantly male and the largest concentration of them is between the ages of 50 and 70. In 2011, the largest group of hunters was men aged 40 to 60, which suggests that the hunting economy in Michigan is still dependent on most of the same people as it was a decade ago – and that younger people aren’t taking up the sport in particularly large numbers.

Meanwhile, as hunter numbers in Michigan decline, deer populations are growing. According to the DNR, approximately two million deer called Michigan home in 2022, compared to 1.7 million in the early 2010s. Those climbing numbers mean at least one big thing for Michiganders: more dangerous roads. The state has tracked 50,000 or more vehicle-deer crashes in each of the last five years. In 2021, there were 52,218 vehicle-deer collisions in the state, leading to over 1,400 injuries and 10 deaths. 642 of those collisions occured in Grand Traverse County.

Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources