Reddit reviews Michigan Trees, Revised and Updated: A Guide to the Trees of the Great Lakes Region

Get yourself a good field guide and / or dichotomous key with twig and bark characteristics. Twig features such as leaf scar arrangements, vascular bundle scars, buds, and pith can be key for IDing deciduous species in winter. What region are you in?

Edit:
This is the guide we used when I used to TA dendrology in grad school.

This is my favorite tree ID book overall.

Bark is only one small part of the story for winter tree ID, such as the world of branch ID. Branching patterns, leaf scars, buds and bud scale characteristics, hell even the taste of certain twigs will give clues. It can be hard to go on just bark because a single species can have such variable bark patterns.

For example, a young and mature shagbark hickory.

I find it hard to ID trees solely based on their bark until I've been in a certain patch of woods for long enough where I pick up on the patterns of what each tree is. But when I first get into those woods, I kind of have to reteach myself what some of the bark patterns look like for whatever species are present.

And hey, since you're "close to Michigan," my favorite guide is Michigan Trees. Great illustrations and descriptions of things that I described in my first paragraph. Was my go-to when I was learning tree ID.