Everything You Wanted to Know About Bucks but Were Afraid to Ask

When Field & Stream publishes an article titled "Sex Machine," discerning readers know that we're entering that joyous time of year known as "the rut."

The rut is the annual deer mating season, when randy bucks chase amorous does and hunters chase both sexes and Field & Stream's writers dig deep to come up with creative new ways to explain how lust-crazed male deer behave almost as idiotically as lust-crazed male humans.

"The classic impression of a big buck in rut is similar to that of a former president of the United States," the magazine proclaims in the introduction to this year's rut coverage. "For just about the entire year, the former is among the canniest of animals, with powers of evasion that border on the supernatural. Then mating season rolls around and he becomes a careless doe-crazed beast. The former chief exec in question -- a Georgetown grad, a Rhodes scholar, a governor of Arkansas, the Leader of the Free World -- was the perpetual Smartest Kid in Class until he met the fat girl in the blue dress."

And so on.

The folks at Field & Stream love the rut almost as much as the deer do, and the annual rut issue is always fun, even for people who never kill a deer unless it runs in front of their minivan.

Take, for instance, the aforementioned "Sex Machine" article, David E. Petzal's piece on how to identify a rutting buck. The piece features a lovely full-color drawing of a 10-point buck with its body parts numbered. No. 1 is the antlers, which are liable to be "stained by blood and tree sap" during the rut because the bucks are fighting over females. No. 7 is the stomach, which is shriveled because "bucks in rut eat less than they do at other times of the year because they're preoccupied with sex and violence."

And then there's No. 9, which is located between the buck's hind legs. "Do we have to paint you a picture?" Petzal asks. "This is, after all, a family magazine. Suffice it to say, rutting deer have no need for the products advertised with photos of hot-looking babes in our back pages."

But the rut issue isn't just an excuse for deer sex humor. There's also plenty of serious information for hunters, much of it advice on how a mere human can hope to outwit these amour-addled beasts. One way is to lure them by setting out a life-size plastic deer. Another way is to summon them with various deer-calling devices, including "the bleat" and "the grunt" and the "snort-wheeze," which is "also called the grunt-snort-wheeze."

Perfume helps, too: "The most effective scents are doe-in-estrus, buck musk and buck urine."

But maybe you'd rather attract bucks by staging a fake deer fight. That's easy enough. Just get a pair of old antlers and rattle them together while stomping your feet, thus simulating the sound of two bucks battling over a saucy doe.

"Rattling draws in some bucks that are bristling for a fight and others interested in the hot doe that caused the battle. Still more come because they're curious."

Sounds like closing time at a bar in Adams Morgan.