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

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

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.

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

damnit in the tub.

Lovely, isn't it? And it only gets better, building in a rapturous crescendo to the final stanza, which goes like this:

"Well, then lift up your arms,"

I whispered in his ear,

"and let's swab out those pits."

The Asner quartet is not the first set of celebrity-related poems that Barrelhouse has published. In its second issue -- the latest one is the third -- Barrelhouse published several poems about Patrick Swayze: Tousled forelock stirs / Sultry breeze, bare /chest glistens . . .

Of course, Barrelhouse also publishes poems about love and death and other old-fashioned stuff. But maybe that's a mistake. Maybe the editors should take this thing all the way and become a magazine devoted entirely to poems about celebrities. Isn't that what America needs?

Minority Whip

Aperture, the venerable photography magazine, has published a 12-page gallery of Washington lobbyists. Shot by Neil Selkirk, they are straightforward black-and-white portraits and, if truth be told, they're pretty dull -- pictures of people in business attire staring into the camera. But one photo is a tad different.

It's a portrait of Judy Guerin, lobbyist for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Federation, a group "dedicated to affirming sexual freedom." A handsome, middle-aged woman, Guerin is wearing a conservative wrap dress, fishnet stockings and knee-high leather boots as she poses in front of an impressive collection of whips and chains and strange leather goods that look as if they'd be very effective for disciplining naughty congressmen.

Are you listening, Bob Ney?