man pages are under a format that can be read by groff. you could get the ascii text of a man page by doing this:

open(MAN, "groff -Tascii $manpath/$manfilename |") 
    or die"ERROR:$!\n";
@manpage = <MAN>;
[download]

where $manpath is the path to your man pages ('/usr/local/man/' on my system).

$manfilename is the particular man page you are trying to get.

Look around the directory, you will understand how the files are stored.

Hope that helps,
Guillaume