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The buddy trip is way back, dude. Way.

Unlike the short-lived “mancation,” an idea created by marketing people a few years back to exploit the emergence of the metrosexual, the unambiguous buddy trip seems more in line with the return of hirsute men in popular culture. Straight-shootin' cowboys are back in movies such as 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And on the TV, we have the hard-drinking cads of Mad Men, the fearless loners of Survivorman and Man vs. Wild, and the gun-loving host of Discovery Channel's Future Weapons, a former U.S. Navy SEAL by the name of – wait for it – Dick Machowicz.

Like the manly men of those films and shows, the buddy trip – duderlude? heholiday? sabrotical? – doesn't always need a refined approach. Maybe the best way to describe a men's vacation might be to just mumble: “I'm gonna spend some time with my buddies and, you know, do stuff.”

So when one has had enough candle shopping, enough bed and breakfasts and enough gallery tours of Nolita, the buddy trip, without wives or girlfriends, where nobody questions the legitimacy of meatballs as a breakfast food, where two-hour-long arguments about whether or not it's fair to call Dan Marino a “loser” are encouraged, and where beer (and none of that blueberry-flavoured microbrew stuff, pal) is poured liberally over each moment of the getaway, lives on.

Hunting/fishing

Perhaps the best way to start manning up may be getting right to the business of huntin' ‘n' fishin'. Even if these activities seem a little beyond your ken (but you have to admit they're really the only acceptable hobbies to see on the back of a hockey card – I mean, nobody wants to hear that Dougie Gilmore's hobby is wine collecting), the atmosphere of the hunting lodge may be the most reliable place to shake off some of the don't-forget-to-put-your cup-on-the-coaster sacrifices of daily life.

The Fairmont Kenauk at Le Château Montebello, halfway between Montreal and Ottawa, is one of the oldest hunting and fishing resorts in North America. Here, within a 65,000-acre reserve, guests stay in fully equipped lodges in the heart of the Gatineaus.

While, for the purposes of the buddy trip, you may want to refrain from the temptation to write nature poetry about the spectacular Canadian scenery, you can get started on pursuing the many ways of hunting and fishing, in addition to all the important macho, outdoorsy things like drinking beer.

Speaking of beer, what better place to enjoy a cold one than on a cold one – lake, that is. Ice fishing offers everything the neo-Neolithic man needs and wants: the chance to stalk your slippery prey from above, a dark, cave-like hut, and plenty of primal conversation – “Mmm, good jerky.”

Countless lodges across Canada offer ice-fishing weekends. Lake Simcoe, just north of Toronto, has traditionally been a popular destination, but the ice has been unreliable of late – a climatic change that truly baffles the beef-eating, SUV-driving male. Better to head for northern Manitoba, where the 30-pound pike will rip your arm off. Ah, good times.

Food

A good trip with your buddies is through the stomach because what one does on a guys' trip could really only be encumbered by what's called “thinking.” Steak dinners are a certainty, but if you're looking for a daringly manly meal on your men's vacation, maybe the best place to go is the University Chicken Sports Pub, with locations in Santa Clara, San Jose and Fresno, Calif.

It's a great place in and of itself, but you really want to go there to take the pub's legendary “911 Challenge.” The challenge dares you to polish off a dozen of their incendiary “911” wings in 10 minutes, even forcing you to sign a waiver that clearly states, “You are an

IDIOT for attempting the 911 Challenge.” And the prize for being one of the few to survive this inferno of poultry? A nice T-shirt. Not sold in stores anywhere. I don't want to hyperbolize this achievement, but if you have one of these T-shirts, you are clearly one of the greatest men who ever lived.

I've often thought that a proper dude's retreat is based on adherence to the two Bs: barbecue and beer. To those who understand the manly benefits of a diet based foremost on pit-cooked swine, the ultimate destination is Memphis, Tenn., barbecue capital of the world. Every May, Memphis hosts a huge and hotly contested barbecue contest, and the city has a handful of the best rib shacks and pork huts imaginable (Leonard's, Charles Vergo's Rendezvous and Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Que). These hefty-helping stops are great ways to supplement your usual Memphis itinerary (Graceland, Beale Street) and will, I believe, be a good start on your manly duty to persistently correct people's pronunciation of “eat” to “et.”

Culture

After loading up in Memphis, one could hop over to Nashville and see the Gibson guitar factory or simply drink it up at Tootsies Orchid Lounge.

But to stand in the aura of true masculine greatness, one should take a quick excursion to small Adamsville and the Buford Pusser Home and Museum. The true story of the wrestler-turned-lawman (immortalized in the Walking Tall movies) who got medieval on small-town pimps and survived an assassination attempt makes Agamemnon seem like a girly-man. In Buford Pusser's converted home, you can sit where Buford Pusser sat, peruse the literature Buford Pusser perused and, at the smart little gift shop, buy the one souvenir every man should have: a replica of Buford Pusser's famous “whoop-ass stick.” It even comes with a nice ink embossing of Pusser's signature and the museum logo. The whoop-ass stick itself is like a baseball bat, but it has more trouble at the other end. This should not deter any man from trying whoop-ass stick baseball, best played in a motel lobby – while drinking beer.

Games

Whether it's tossing playing cards into a waste basket in a Brownsville, Tex., motel, going to a handgun range in Las Vegas or splurging on golf at St. Andrews in Scotland, your trip will involve sports. There can be no other way. The more meaningful conversations are rejected in favour of discussions such as “Who's the best knuckleballer?”, the more you will become a man.

If there's one kind of event that has long typified the men's getaway, it is the football tailgate party. Tailgates, essentially a party localized around the back of your truck's tailgate (and its bounty of corn chips, NERF footballs and beer) in the parking lot before the game, bring it all together. I recommend you tailgate for a week solid before the game and seriously recommend you do it at Wisconsin's Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers.

“The frozen tundra” of Lambeau Field is the most legendary playing surface in football and the Packers its most storied franchise. Tickets can be found through a variety of package tour sites, which usually provide only end-zone seats as well as accommodations and a free round at some pub. If the end zone's not good enough, well, one shouldn't have to tell a man how to get tickets for an event that is otherwise “sold out.”

After a solid few days of grilling bratwursts, tossing footballs and watching a TV plugged into a generator, you and your group of fellow men will finally get to Lambeau Field and see the statue there of god-like coach Vince Lombardi. Then one of you will quote the “winning is the only thing” line often attributed to Lombardi. Then there will be beer.

But tailgating isn't just a football ritual. NASCAR's combination of tailgating and talking about cars makes it one of the ultimate destinations for a guys' trip. The Charlotte racetrack is home to one of NASCAR's premier races, and the area is replete with insider info, including a tour of Dale Earnhardt's hometown (the so-called “Dale Trail”), a NASCAR art gallery (the Picasso of the pit stop, the Rembrandt of the racetrack, the Fragonard of the 500, etc.) and a school where one can learn the lightning quick art of a NASCAR pit crew. At “Pit Crew U,” one can take a simple tour of the training facility and participate in some of the essential pit stop activities (tire changing) as the more legitimate trainees (you know, younger guys who do not groan and say “oh, lordy” when they stand up) show you how it's really done.

Beer (more beer)

So many things to do. The only thing that could really top off any of these activities, clearly, is a cold beer. Of all industrial tours, the one that would most likely bring a tear to a man's eyes is the Budweiser factory tour in St. Louis. The tour takes about an hour and ends, mercifully, in a little sampling room of Anheuser-Busch products. No pumpkinbrau, just good beer bottled or put into cans that are easily smashed against one's head. Good times. In the tasting room, you can further the important issues that dominate your time – like, how come there's never chicken on a breakfast menu, when chicken has pretty much made it into every other culinary item, including pizza?

If you experience something that could be described as a “feeling,” you might want to check out the samples again. Don't worry if you mumble when you talk or if you get quickly distracted by the far-off sight of somebody kicking a ball. Just remember to constantly ridicule your buddies. Because that's what men do.

Special to The Globe and Mail

WHERE THE BOYS PLAY

FISHING AND HUNTING Fairmont Kenauk at Le

Château Montebello

1000 chemin Kenauk,

Montebello, Que. 819-423-5573; www.fairmont.com/kenauk.

Ice fishing To locate lodges and guides by province, visit www.lodgesresorts.com/canada-ice-fishing.html.

FOOD

University Chicken Sports Pub 2565 The Alameda, Santa Clara, Calif., 408-241-2582, www.universitychicken.com.

Leonard's Pit Barbecue

5465 Fox Plaza Dr., Memphis, Tenn., 901-360-1963, www.

leonardsbarbecue.com.

Charles Vergo's Rendezvous 52 S. Second St., Memphis, Tenn., 901-523-2736, www.hogsfly.com.

Jim Neely's Stateside Bar-B-Que 5700 Mt. Moriah, Memphis, Tenn., 901-795-4177, www.neelysbbq.com/home.htm.

Tootsies Orchard Lounge 422 Broadway, Nashville, www.tootsies.net.

CULTURE

Buford Pusser Home and Museum: 342 Pusser St., Adamsville, Tenn., 731-632-4080, www.bufordpussermuseum.com.

The Dale Trail 3003 Dale Earnhardt Blvd., Kannapolis, N.C., 1-800-848-3740; www.daletrail.com.

Pit Crew UPIT Instruction & Training 156 Byers Creek Rd., Mooresville, N.C., 704-799-3869, www.5off5on.com.

BEER

Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tours 12th & Lynch Streets; St. Louis, Mo., 314-577-2626, www.budweisertours.com. Tours also available at breweries in Fairfield, Calif., Fort Collins, Colo., Jacksonville, Fla., and Merrimack, N.H.