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

Even the advertisers get in on the fun of the rut issue. An ad for the Nissan Titan shows the pickup truck parked in a forest with all four doors left wide open beneath a big orange headline that reads: "Because Four Guys Wearing Deer Scent Need to Get Away From Each Other Real Fast."

Field & Stream's readership is overwhelmingly male, of course, but women hunt and fish, too. This issue features a two-page picture of one fisherwoman -- or at least her amazing pink fingernails -- as she clutches a six-pound rainbow trout.

"Professional angler Keli Van Cleave is known for her nails -- and her matching pink fly rod and vest," the caption reads. "Before each event, she takes the flies she plans to use to her nail technician, who copies the patterns (as closely as her polish colors allow) onto her ring and index fingers."

Amazing! If you live long enough, you see everything. Even the phrase "her nail technician" printed in Field & Stream.

For the Love of Lou

Barrelhouse -- a literary magazine born a couple of years ago over beers at the Big Hunt, a Dupont Circle bar -- has published the best four poems about Ed Asner that I've ever read.

They're also the only four poems about Ed Asner that I've ever read. But they're so good that I don't expect to come across four better poems about Ed Asner anytime soon.

Perhaps you don't think of the pudgy "Lou Grant" star as a muse for America's bards, but he certainly inspired Greg Ames to wax lyrical. Here is the stirring first stanza of the first poem, "Bathing Ed Asner":

I snatched the rubber duck

from his hairy, wet fist

and in a cruel voice

instructed him to quit

fooling and to sit down