By Mac Arnold
MAHFS Editor

When Sunday rolls around, there will be a fall hunting tab inside The Macomb Daily.

And in that tab, yours truly has written a couple of previews -- one on the deer season and the other on turkeys.

I was really looking for something cutting edge kinda the way us deer hunters will look for an edge to land that trophy buck of a lifetime.

After a few trials at the keyboard I finally settled on trying to get a jump on the rut here in Michigan. This is where it's at for many of us. For most of the year, the biggest brutes are nocturnal beasts and unhuntable but around that magical time of the year -- usually from end of October to end of November -- their instincts to mate is too overpowering and they must roam the woods in search of a willing partner.

When this takes place it truly is awesome and nothing is more awesome than actually being on stand at precisely the right time when Mr. Jumbo strolls by.

In the preview, I base my predictions on a hunch and what a couple of game predictors say, mainly on the GPS device I use. What I have found is it basically tracks the lunar cycle. And there's plenty of debate on whether this accurate or not.

Even a Michigan DNR wildlife biologist debunks this theory and said, "I've not seen any evidence that shows the rut is affected by the lunar cycle."

She should know more on this than I do and told me she even did her master's work on deer behavior.

My thing is this: why do the dang deer show up over and over again right in the device's "best" times and "good" times?

In the end it's just another way to find an edge.

I had a friend, who's deceased now, but he once put his hunting clothes in the dryer with a deer leg trying to stay one step ahead of the whitetail's superior nose. His girlfriend at the time thought he was mad while his laundry clunked along through its cycle.

This same friend told me practically on his deathbed in 2006 that "it would be a good year for bucks." And as I recall, I saw a lot of bucks that season. Again, based on a hunch.

Anyway, what's this all mean?

It's about having fun during the deer season, and I came up with these predictions following this theme. It's for fun.

So don't be a writing me and saying, "Arnold, you're all dried up, those predictions were waaaaaaaaaay off and you suck."

It's not to be taken as gospel.

Or is it?

Time will only tell.

(For a peek online of a similar article I wrote for this fall, log on to www.macshuntingmag.com.)