My quest for hunting land began during the kids Easter break 1990. A great time of the year to see places in Michigan normally choked with people in July. We camped on the Shore of lake Superior west of Brimley and were the only people there. We stopped at a little café for lunch and I was looking at the rack of tourist information and ran across a flyer for 10 Acres on lake Superior. I took the flyer back to the table and started talking to the wife about how it would be a great place to retire.
She said if we were going to be on a lake it would half to be one we could swim in starting in late May. After 8 months we found a perfect spot on Big Bay De Noc, 1/2 mile of frontage and 37 acres backed up to about 6000 acres of Federal land near Rapid River Michigan closed the deal Nov 3d 1991..
It is 6 1/2 hours from home, can swim in the bay as it is shallow for a long ways out during Memorial week end. Boat launch for my 19 footer is a paved affair just a mile and a half down the road. By Nov 1992 I had bought a small travel trailer to use there. I would take it up for Memorial week end and bring it home after the Nov fire arm deer season ended . No one ever bothered it or the shed I built there later In 1994 I was doing some work on the travel trailer on the tail gate of my truck and this old guy came up and said excuse me, scared the crap out of me as I never see any one while there. He asked permission to hunt a spot and after that he watched over our place for us. In 2000 red squirrels got in the trailer and made a mess out of it so we built a pole barn with a loft we use as a cabin now.

How we did it

Sat down with wife and came up with a list of what each of us wanted. Near by hospitals, shopping and things to do other than hunt and fish.

Chose the area to begin out search and made contact with all the bigger realtors in the area. Some were helpful giving us a call when a property got listed and even placed directions & details of/to the property in their mail box for us to pick up after business hours on Saturday afternoon. Some wouldn't call us only mail things to us (no e mal or internet back then many times the property would already have offers by the time we were able to make the trip.

Be open to driving the roads in the area to find realtor signs from down state listing property. We found one I likes that way but they refused to have is surveyed Yet they had built the cabin 15 feet across the property lines 5 years before. They were sure where that line was how ever.

We found our property driving a back road and seeing a 4'x8' sign for sale by owner.
Took two weeks to make contact.

This is a early morning Picture from my favorite deer blind Nov 2003



Al