By Mac Arnold
MAHFS Editor

Here's a short anecdote that seems fitting for the way my fall hunting season is going:

There was some buzz recently in The Macomb Daily sports department about the latest Denzel Washington flick "Flight."

I butted in and said the movie seemed "repetitive" because the movie he just did two years ago "Unstoppable" mirrored a similar plot.

"He stopped a train in that one and now he's moved onto stopping a jet plane," I said cynically.

Both Chuck and Mandy chimed in.

"Kinda like Mac Arnold hunting stories where he goes into woods and then comes out empty handed over and over again."

 I laughed but I'm crying on the inside.

***

Of course, none of that changed today or this past weekend.

It was just another day of merely dragging my beaten down body out of the woods instead of a deer. (I'm nursing a sore back.)

Man, it was cold today (Tuesday, Nov. 6). I did a three-hour sit with a slight SSE wind and temperatures hovering at 30 degrees on the Sanilac County farm I've been blessed to hunt this season.

I did see a deer for the first time while on the stand in a week. Sadly, I dismissed a slight crack behind me because there had been a squirrel raising havoc behind me, in front of me, below me ...

Anyway, I decided to hit the grunt call and away she pranced, a doe, not a squirrel. Oops.

I'm hardly a prognosticator of  weather at the level of the Farmer's Almanac or The Weather Channel, but I'm going out on a leg and saying we will likely have snow by Michigan's Nov. 15 regular firearms opener.

Which reminds me of one of the last opening days I had at the old family property Arnold Airport in Croswell back in the late 1990s. I shared this great hunt with a buddy of mine, who also served in the Army about the same time I did.

It was his knowledge of survival skills that took me by surprise during that hunt. A hunt that turned snowy and in a hurry. If I remember right, we had 7 inches of snow on the ground by the time we packed up and headed home.

Where the hunt went backwoods was after I discovered my pal had forgot his hunting boots and was holding watch on the east side of the property in his high tops.

After not hearing from him in a couple of hours, I turned the corner only to see a wisp of smoke coming from the fenceline.

Puzzled, I went up to investigate only to find him leaning back on a log with his feet up against a fire and his high tops perched upside down on a makeshift drying rack.

No wonder I wasn't seeing anything.