The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 325: In the Center of Your Mind with Ted Nugent

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Ted "Uncle Ted" Nugent, Ryan Callaghan, Clay Newcomb, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: Nostalgia for the Whiplash Bash; The Nuge shooting fiery arrows on stage; breaking the law; enter TRCP’s sweepstakes to win a turkey hunt with Steve and Jani; MeatEater's Land Access Initiative and the return of the House of Oddities Auction; the Bear Grease podcast episode with Jerry Clower; Ted railing on Cal's highschool teacher; slithering up on a covey of quail; Fred Bear as a major influence; poison pods on arrows; being pro-crossbow; regulations against lighted nocks and other technologies; Michigan's ban on hunting mourning doves and sandhill cranes; eating a CWD+ burger; the weight of the "what if?" scenario; Ted's call for ending USDA hunts; the foundation of high fence hunting; challenging the semantics of "whack 'em and stack 'em"; aliveness and uppityness; the deadliness of your tofu salad and your glass of wine; how hunting is politics; the man in charge of your tree climbing; Ted's call to participate in the political process by voting; outdoorsy and ballsy; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. So the atmosphere is good? You like it? Love it. Beautiful.

Couldn't be better. Should have had a fire going. We good? Phil, you got the machine on? Machine's on. It's amazing. Fires in Texas. Technology.

Oh, Phil records everything, too. Phil could make the worst. Phil could destroy careers. He could make the best of us seem like the worst, and the worst seem like the best. The worst seem like the best. But he won't. That's the beauty of it.

I'm playing the long game here we need that part about billy joel in that intro oh that was beautiful uh i'm dying to know about billy joel get a lot of hired guns the stars can really the lure to prick world is is is overwhelming once you get catered to and you have people serviced and you don't have to order your own room service and they know how much cream you want in your coffee, all of a sudden you go, hey, give me some of that.

I'll just sit back here and indulge and get bored and then end up getting high and then drooling and then dying or just becoming a prick. So there's an indulgence. There's a pathway to it. There's a self-inflicted indulgence curse in the world of celebrity. They should all bow hunt because the deer don't give a shit

how many platinum albums I got. It really boils down to that. That's awesome. As you can hear, ladies and gentlemen, we're joined today. We're in Texas, joined today by Mr. Ted Nugent, as we call in Michigan, Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted. This is not, we got to do a few things up top, but I want to just set the stage here.

This is not the first time, you would know this, this is not the first time you and I were in the same room together because, well, only because of this reason, because I am a two-time alum of the Whiplash Bash. Then no wonder you glow. The spirit emanates from your very skeleton. The most memorable Whiplash Bash I went to is memorable to me because you threw out into the crowd a bag of venison jerky. Meat. Venison jerky, yes.

My friend, my late friend, very close friend of mine that I graduated from high school with, Eric Kern, caught a piece of jerky. Awesome. He and I shared. A real Nugent fan, by the way. When you can catch jerky, that's a legitimate Nugent fan. Shared. You know what?

Maybe I'm making that up. He wound up with a chunk of the jerky. Whether he picked it off the floor or caught it. Or if you steal it from somebody else, that's awesome. No, no, no, no, no. No, he recovered the jerky. We split the jerky. And that, you might not remember this.

That night, you had the, your opening act for that Whiplash Bash was the band Jackal. I do remember, with the chainsaw. And they had that very popular Lumberjack song with the chainsaw solo. Had to be huge in Michigan. He came out. There was full frontal nudity on his part. He came out, did the chainsaw

solo. You shot your bow. Then, here's where this gets especially good. Interesting. It was either that year or the year before, but then you went on to get arrested in ohio for shooting your bow in city limits in a flaming arrow oh wow which i had done at that you got arrested but you got reprimanded oh i got arrested i was taken away in handcuffs it's a great story the details of this story are fascinating please tell us because i have to say this is public speaking 101. Did you get some of the jerky?

Know your audience. Yep. Know your crowd. Well, better than that, the audience should know your celebrity. Because now, I want you to tell the archery story just as a teaser. Like, just how you got in trouble in Ohio. But another, like, I can't. There was a few years when we were always, like, me or my brothers or someone was at the Whiplash Bash during the height of the Whiplash Bash days.

So this is like early 90s. Yep, phenomenal concerts. So they saw one time where you were shooting your bow on stage and went to shoot, I believe it was a white buffalo. Yep, giant white buffalo. Missed it. Could be. And then got on your knees and bowed to it.

And I did follow up with the heart shot but but then you yeah it was shortly after that we were appalled to hear that you then traveled out of your home state into ohio where they didn't have the same uh reverence for the stage antics and you got busted for shooting your bow like discharging a weapon yeah within city limits it was an open flame thing which i'm surprised which i'm surprised he didn't arrest my road manager he was an open flame um the the stories behind each one of these incidents are fascinating because i would shoot my bow and arrow on stage typically a flaming arrow at various targets all the way back with the amboy dukes

in the 1960s and as much as the mystical flight of the arrow mystifies in the environment of outrageous cacophony and sonic bombast and screaming and tall, skinny guys with loincloths, I mean, the environment is so centrally overwhelming. And then this guy that's just saying, Wang Dang, sweet Boon Tang, comes out with a flaming arrow and shoots a skull off the amps. I mean, if you want an archery demonstration that imprints, I'm your daddy. But in this series of events, I would shoot a flaming arrow on stage at a giant buffalo

silhouette or various 3D targets. And in the Kalamazoo event, well, let's go to the northern Michigan one where I missed the buffalo. So I'm up on stage. You guys can only imagine the energy level and the excitement within me because I love this music. And you can't casually play my music. And you can't casually ride a buffalo. And you can't casually shoot flaming arrows on stage in front of 20,000 people. It's all dangerously intense. And I have to manage my psyche. Like when you're about to touch off a shot,

the breathing, sight acquisition, the halfway exhale, and then boom, that's a calming moment in an otherwise excitable endeavor. Magnify that to a dangerous life-threatening level and that's what I go through every night on stage because I love bow and arrow I do have target panic but when I was up there in northern Michigan at the at the castle I think it was called up near Charlevoix where I missed the buffalo I got a stage bow that comes back at about 40 pounds because I'm only 20 feet from the target, and I got to come back without too much stress. Well, my assistant had dry-fired my stage bow, and it came apart. So he handed me my hunting bow, and I'm shooting 34-inch arrows because they're on fire. And all of a sudden, he hands me a bow and

it's not the right bow so my mind's going holy mother of god I've got to be a good archer because it's the whack master oh mr ted news mr and we got some variables here yes so all of a sudden my psyche goes it's the wrong bow um but I said well I'll improvise adapt and overcome so I drew it back and of course that bow's not sighted in for a 20 yard 20 foot shot at a silhouette and i shot right over him but i did grab a second arrow and i shot him through the heart and i then i thought i think i grabbed a third arrow and shot my assistant through the heart um but the flaming arrow in in cincinnati was fascinating because i had shot a flaming arrow there dozens of times over the years. No problem.

No open flame ordinance. But the back story is celebratory. So the new fire chief, a Democrat liberal guy, an animal rights guy, brings in his guys and arrests me, handcuffs me for shooting that flaming arrow. Totally under control. We have wet towels. We have fire extinguishers. Believe me, I'm prepared for everything, especially dangerous possibilities. So they take me to jail.

Handcuffed behind my back. Did they do it after the show? Yeah, right after. They let us finish because you know what happens. So it wasn't like the Blues. It was like the Blues Brothers where the cops are standing off to the side of the stage. It actually is. It was very much like the Orange Whips.

They get a free show out of it. Yep, and they actually looked like those guys. Because the cops were pissed off, they didn't want to arrest me, but they had to follow because there was an open flame ordinance I was virtually unaware of because of my history of shooting flaming arrows in this facility. I'm pleading ignorance. No, whatever.

So they took me to jail. Well, I go before the judge, and he's another prick, and he sentences me to jail. And I got a concert the next night. I play every night. I do concerts every night. Sentences you to jail. Without bond, put me in a cage. Wow.

So here's the beauty of Ted Nugent. This is why I love Ted Nugent. If you could speak on his behalf. If I could speak on his behalf, which I do on an hourly basis, by the way, intimately and knowledgeably. The sheriff came to that cell and forced that jailkeeper to let me out, and he said, over my dead body, will I have Ted Nugent spend a minute in my jail

for all you do for clean and sober promotion and law and order promotion? And whenever a cop gets injured in the line of duty, I'm always there to raise money for their families. I have this history going back to when I was a late teenager. I've always been a law and order guy. So he said, over my dead body, will Ted Nugent spend any time in jail? And he cut me loose.

And then the attorneys went into it and they examined all the evidence and the charges were thrown out. My record was quashed. But that was a great experience where you get a guy that doesn't like flaming arrows or the guy that shoots flaming arrows, especially if he carries a gun and kills innocent animals, you know, that mindlessness, he in a political position can abuse that power. He did. And a guy who knew good over evil and right over wrong, regardless of some statute. I'll give you an offshoot here.

So a deer is caught in a fence and a coyote has already eaten half of his ass and he's struggling and traumatized and suffering. I'm going to call somebody? I'm not going to call somebody. It's illegal for me to shoot that deer. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to shoot that deer. I break the law. I break immoral laws. If it's an immoral law and an unjust law, especially as a cop, if it's an oath violatingviolating law, I'm not obeying it. So in these instances, there is a higher level of right over wrong. I happen to have mucho confidence that I know what that level is and that sheriff did.

For example, when I kill Sandhill Cranes in Michigan, I eat them. Dispatching a deer. Suffering. A suffering deer is a certain moral plane, and firing flaming arrows on stage is a different moral plane. After 20 years of doing so, yep. I think there is a parallel there. And I'm going to take you on a journey to exciting parallels. To the center of your mind.

Yeah. I wrote it and I meant it. Come along if you can. What a great song. I was 18. Listen, we were reviewing that song last night. Were you? That's a great song.

That guitar part. Because I was giving Corinne a crash course in all things Nugent. Not all things, believe me. I was inviting her to reconcile your lifelong advocacy for abstemiousness. Yep, 100%. Juxtaposed with the lyrics of Come Along If You Can to the Center of Your Mind, which one might think was a call to do hallucinogenics. What a great story.

You want the story? It's a phenomenal... There's no intro here. And it is a juxtaposition, and I can latch the two in a seamless joint. I still want to ask you how he makes fiery arrows. My next question is how do you make a flaming arrow? I have always been, how

could Nugent be abstemious if he's inviting people to go to the center of their mind there was a movie called journey to the center of the earth and when you're a songwriter especially when you're a teenager you kind of grasp on colloquialisms and terms and maybe movie statements or other song titles or shit nugent says and when you're a bow hunter, your radar is more expansive than the average hippie you collaborate with. So when Steve Farmer, which was a collaborative hippie I was collaborating with, he was stoned. I had no idea because when I was growing up, it was bows and arrows, stalking the Rouge River, learning Chuck Berry music, and girls.

I had no idea why the Cheshire Cat was grinning in Alice in Wonderland and that that was a bong. Have I lost anybody yet? Yeah, no, I'm through with all that. Okay, thanks. Good. We're in a good arena here. I had no idea.

I didn't know what marijuana was. I performed at U of D and Catholic Central, Pool Parties and Sock Hops and the Beatniks. It was pre-hippies with the beret, almost Dobie Gillis kind of stuff. And I had no idea what dope was. So when Steve Farmer wrote Journey to the Center of the Mind, I went, that's a great play on words of that movie title.

And I think a person probably should sit back once in a while, like I do every deer season, and examine where he's going in life and review his mindset and his dreams and his goals yeah doesn't surprise anybody here i suspect or anybody else that has a brain uh so i went along come along if you care come along if you dare take a a ride to the journey. Lay inside your mind. Yeah. Made perfect sense. I had no idea there was a chemical warfare component to that until I caught Steve drooling and eventually throwing up and stumbling, which solidified my hatred for chemical warfare upon oneself. I hate it.

I hate people that intentionally destroy their level of awareness and intentionally slither into the liability column instead of the asset column. That's what drugs and alcohol do to you. Case closed. Keith Richards notwithstanding, great guy. So I developed a hatred for that, witnessing my fellow musicians, who I so revered and so pursued a united dream of musical adventure and creativity, until they started puking and dying. And again, it goes back to my bow hunting. Nobody, drunk or stoned, kills a deer with a bow and arrow virtually impossible well i know one guy named rick he must he must hunt south texas because they're really dumb deer down there um the point is is that i had no idea when they when they showed me the cover of journey the

center of the mind i saw this i thought it blown glass. You know how you make vases and little trinkets on a bone? A bone? Yeah, I had no idea what they were. Have you been asked this question before? Thousands of times. Okay. I had no idea what they were because I was so into my organic cravings for guitar, music, bow hunting, and girls.

What do they call that down in Louisiana? The trifecta? The trinity for the food? Yes, that's the trinity for my American dream. What is it again? The holy trinity. It's celery, onions, and peppers. The bell pepper, and then the Pope's hat is the garlic.

So with, yeah, that's a foursome. That would be the, I do have a foursome. She's upstairs. So yeah, that was my goal. I'm so happy that I never understood or pursued the puke lifestyle. I just, it's ruined everybody's lives i read recently that you have i think you had said this somewhere that you have taken to having a little red wine now and i do i absolutely since i met shemaine um and i wine after a modicum of research, it's good for you.

It's actually good for you. And my sons, my brother, my sister, my friends, my band, my crew, they drink beers and they have a sundowner and they have a whatever, Sammy Hager's got his, whatever that stuff is. Tequila.

Yeah, and as long as we can communicate and the drool and the stumbling doesn't occur, you can do whatever you want to do. I have friends that smoke dope, and I've got friends that I got to stop smoking dope. Eddie Van Halen, his first call after rehab was to me to thank me. No shit. For constantly pounding on him that you're ruining your life, you've got this gift, you're ruining it, you're ruining the people around you.

And I'm hardcore. I don't know if you noticed that about me but i've helped people get clean and sober by showing them that you want fun you want crazy i'm the bar i've set the bar for fun and crazy without outside stimuli it's inside of me god gave us whatever we need to do whatever we want every day and it doesn't come in a bottle. It comes from the guts. It comes from the spirit. And I've always promoted that. So if you go to my Facebook and witness the number of people that I've impacted to become clean and sober

and to pursue sobriety, I'm very, very proud of that. Okay. Clay, flaming arrows. Go ahead. And then I got to do the stuff I got to do. Flaming arrows. And then we're going to come back in hard with Deadly Ted. We're going way back into our conversation,

but I have a real functional question. I can go there. About how do you shoot? What do you use to make a flaming arrow? Well, I had to pursue that with the people at Easton Arrows because I was hired one time to shoot the opening arrow like the Olympic archer did for the International Olympics one time to shoot the opening arrow like the Olympic archer did for the International Olympics one time remember that yeah

yep awesome you actually shot the Olympic arrow I did in the Michigan Olympics okay yeah and they they hired me so I didn't because when I shot my flaming arrows on stage I'd get a full length back then it was cedar arrows and I'd have to get full length that sounds That sounds dangerous. Oriford, yeah. But we'd wrap it in cotton and Brillo pads and soak it in lighter fluid. Really? And I'd hold the bow and the arrow,

and my brother John, God rest his soul, God, we had some stories I could tell you. It's just, I've had so much fun, I'm almost guilty. And they'd light this flaming arrow, and I shot a vulture one time from my Yamaha with my.44 Magnum. I shot the vulture, and the taxidermist mounted it. It's all illegal so far.

I hope there's statutes of limitations on this podcast. And we had that vulture mounted with wings spread out. We'd put a backlight on. You don't know how cool that would look with some smoke on stage. How rock and roll is that? And my brother would set up those styrofoam heads that ladies put their wigs on overnight. And we'd put like a skeleton look to it, and he would put lighter fluid inside it. And we'd get some kind of feathers in various methods and stick them out of the skull. So it was really graphic. And that's that kind of rock and roll imagery that like the heavy metal guys use.

And I'd draw that arrow back, but I'd have to shoot it fast. This was all with recurves and longbows. And I'd shoot that skull off the amp, and the vulture would fall. And people didn't know whether to shit or go blind. This guy's got a bow and arrow on stage. It was awesome. So the flame wouldn't go out. No, but eventually when I did it and I prowled the stage more

in an extent more than a moment or two, that had to keep going. And I think I might have some of those arrows here, but Easton made me some 40-inchers that they put a little cone on to reduce the air flowing onto the flame so it would last longer. That's how they did the—they made the Olympic arrow for the International Olympics, and they made me a bunch of those. And so it would have a little cone to protect the flame from the wind drift. And again, we'd wrap it with Brillo pads and cotton and dowsing. It's so graphic. I talk mystical flight of the arrow, which is why I've always used big feathers, white feathers, and I always used white arrows like Ben

Pearson, Howard Hill, Fred Bear. They always shot white arrows. Because the archery is the arch, and you should witness the arch. In instinctive shooting, you have to imprint those arches. The part of the white arrow is visual. Yes, and so with the flaming arrow, it's so graphic. So you're speaking to Cal, because Cal still uses old-timey bows. Yeah, I do too. It's so powerful.

You use old-timey bows? Yeah, I shoot too. It's so powerful. You use old-timey bows? Yeah, I shoot traditional archery. Not what I've been hunting with you. Yeah, I mean, I come in and out of it, but I've done a lot of traditional archery. Cal's thick and thin. The more you shoot instinctive, I won't call them traditional, because it doesn't matter what kind of bow is in my hand. I'm purely traditional.

Wind, sun, spirit, stealth, higher level of technical, tactical awareness. But the more you shoot an old-fashioned bow, instinctive, the next time you shoot your compound, you'll be the best shot you've ever been with a compound. Because there's something about that muscle memory and under a full tension without the reduction and getting that string to roll off those fingers right about here there's no joe biden right about here it's true is it true you're saying you're clear in your mind yes as you pull back your your irritation is about to dissipate. Believe me, when I head towards my bow rack, the irritations are gone.

By the way, the ultimate use of the term irritation is that my spirit irritates their demons. Skull. Really quick, we're getting some beard rub. I bet you are. That's cool. That's like organic. There you go. It's true, yeah.

Beard rub. Boy, I could tell you some stories about that. Can I jump to my high school when we were talking about the sobriety? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Can you do that real quick? No, that's great. Okay, so. Here's the plan.

Here's the plan. You do that. You do that. I'm going to do some things I need to do. We're going to come back in. Steve, we're not getting to the agenda. So, Phil, are you editing this mess? I am, yeah.

I can't wait. Nothing so far needs to be edited. We're going to come back in. I wouldn't edit out anything. And I'm going to refer to what I took to be, in a previous conversation, a crossbow gesture you made. Yes, I did. And hold it.

We're going to come back. Could be sure. But Cal has another near miss. Yeah. Almost got you. High school, like, pep rally, okay? And somebody had selected a Ted Nugent song. Wisely so.

And I look over at a teacher of mine. She's kind of shaking her head and we listen to probably like the height of the era in the high school locker room uh weightlifting room and all that stuff football right and i was like, don't like Ted Nugent? And she's like, one time he came and spoke here. So apparently you had a hunt in Montana and somebody wrote you into speaking at our high school. With the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in Missoula. Yeah. So Hellgate High School, Missoula, Montana. And the whole speech was like thousands I've done.

I do it all the time. Being clean and sober, being the best that you can be, God, family, country, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Ten Commandments, Golden Rule, Law and Order, putting your heart and soul into being the best that you can be. That mantra actually pisses off horrible people. So you were looking at a horrible person. No, no, no, that's not what made the person mad.

It sounds like he came in a little hot and delivered the Ten Commandments, God, country, freedom, with a lot of cussing too. I might have said the word shit. And if God knows, by the way, when I said the word shit, I think 11 children died that day how about this her priorities are askew i made i was voted the number one dare officer in the united states of america drug is resistance education and you gotta know your crowd

too not no you have to be honest i don't really give a damn about my crowd. I'm going to be honest. If my crowd has a problem with it, they're bad people. How's that? There's a generous... I swear. So if she had a problem... If you have a problem... Listen to this, Doug.

If you have a problem with something, Ted says you're a bad person. Let me make sure you understand that. But so the presentation was about being clean and sober, and she focused on the word shit, which connected me closer to those children that she is incapable of. She could not have saved a child's life to get off substance abuse. I did. You have a problem with Ted Nugent says,

you're a bad person. Your priorities are askew and you're not accomplishing anything meaningful. Eat shit and die. How's that? Oh, to a coward teacher. She's a nice lady. A lot of teachers deserve that.

She also ran the key club in which I was an officer. So you may want to let her slide a little bit. By the way, that last statement I made is part of how I let things slide. But that's my point. Was that the punchline of your story? No. Is that she was upset with him for cussing or is there more? I said the word shit.

Which was really interesting to me was that was like the first time that somebody, she then had to explain to me because I was like, truthfully, I was like, bullshit. This guy, Wango Tango's a clean, sober, living guy. I'm like, bullshit. Wango Tango, clean, sober. And so she had to explain to me the abstinence side, better Ted than dead, all of that. I told Corinne about better Ted than dead. And I i told corinne about better ted than dead and i just stuff i couldn't yeah i was like it was so the thought of that probably 17 okay the thought of

that being associated with rock and roll in any sort of way it was just like two ships passing in the night like not not the same thing so that that was a pretty eyeopening experience. If I'm anything, I'm an eye opener because I don't play status quo games. In fact, I stomp it every day of my life. If anything status quo is not good for you, especially in the world of what we've seen our education plummet to, and she is an indication of that. She's a manifestation of that cultural deprivation where their priorities are askew. Instead of trying to save children from the peer pressure lie,

she's cautious about her presentation, which means the children don't believe her. And if she was involved with something positive, I salute all her positive moves. But when it comes to the street dangers of substance abuse running amok, you better have a hardcore son of a bitch deliver that message. Because if it's somebody adjusting a tie and being cautious about what they say, the kids will laugh in their face and probably smoke more dope.

Hear that, Cal? Yeah. The TRCP sweepstakes. Do you feel the love? Here we go. This year's TRCP sweepstakes. Here we go. This year's TRCP sweepstakes has already started. Now, here's the deal. The entry period

runs through April 27. We've done this a bunch of times now. The grand prize is a turkey hunt trip with me and Giannis in Michigan. That's not there. Come on, Clay. That's not true. People are doing Clay. Because you said... Come on.

That's not true. People are going to... They're like doing something. That is not true. I'm sorry. They're at work. They're going to pay attention for one second. They're going to be... I heard that...

Yeah, come on. So, three-night, two-day hunt. You and a buddy in southwestern Michigan. Go to www.trcp.org slash sweepstakes by April 27th at midnight. All donations will support TRCP's mission to guarantee all Americans quality places to hunt and fish.

See official rules for details on how to enter without making a donation. That's always like a little legal thing. If I was going to become an attorney, and I used to think maybe I would, I would focus on raffle and sweepstakes law there is that is the most percent of that is the most bullshit ridden world so yes like when you're a little kid and you like have to buy like the like cap and crunch to enter to win like a send in your box top yeah and then you read or

or you don't need to buy Captain Crunch you can just write a letter it's sweepstakes laws horrible regardless of donations okay so so go there if you if you want to learn how to enter to win the hunt without

actually doing anything to support the organization there's a way around this all go to the official rules uh regardless of donation status there is a limit of 500 entries per person for the entire entry period per person now i'd like to get into here's the thing there's two things i'm at a i'm torn here because i would like to talk about how much we raise through this annual event but that would make people feel like they had a low chance of winning so i'm not going to talk about it but it's important i know there's like four or five people that enter every year four or five people enter every year in fact on may we're doing last year's winners are meeting me and

yanni on the farm to hunt turkeys on may I'm flying there on May 10 for last year's winners. But we're talking about the next group of winners. Oh, also, another announcement. Billings live show is May 3rd. Alberta Bear Theater, Billings, Montana, Meat Eater Live, Alberta Bear, B-A-I-R. Go to their website to get tickets tickets are live now disclaimer not in alberta not in alberta billings montana yeah michael hunter the chef up in canada said

he got excited when he saw that but then he read more carefully and realized it wasn't in canada i've had a lot of alberta good olberta boys and girls right alberule Edge. Alberta Bear Theater, Billings, Montana, May 3rd event. Cal will be there. Get your tickets now. The Land Access Initiative. When are we running the Auction House of Oddities? It's going to be middle of April, so right around April 15th. Okay, so we're doing two things right now. We're soliciting submissions for the land access initiative.

More hunting and fishing for America. Yeah. So if you know the perfect spot for a boat launch, I keep throwing that example out. Yeah, an easement from through private to public. Yep. Anything that provides more access to hunting and fishing for America, if you have good ideas where we could implement this, go to TheMeatEater.com. Underneath conservation, there's our land access initiative and you can submit a project

or a property. This can be individuals, this can be state and federal agencies. If it provides more access, we're going to take a hard look at it, hopefully raise a bunch of money. We're going to throw in a bunch of money of our own. Last year, we raised over $70,000, or I'm sorry, two years ago, over $70,000 for our first project, which was Shiloh Pond, which was a public use area that was threatened of going away forever and now it belongs to the township of kingsfield maine and is open to public access in perpetuity you can fish it hunt it wow good for you that's a beautiful spot so sure there's a lot of that out there uh another quick point i think

we're gonna bump some stuff corinne but i'm gonna raise this point clay if you listen to clay's show bear grease you've heard his the jerry like i think i told you about jerry clower you you need to prove to me that you knew about jerry clower before i told you about jerry cl. You need to prove to me that you knew about Jerry Clower before I told you about Jerry Clower. Listen, when you said that to me, a little context. Clay did an episode. Let me back up.

Then we're going to get back to our guest. People heard from me at the Grand Ole Opry. Between acts at the Grand Ole Opry, there's a guy, Jerry Clower. He used to get up and tell like coon hunting stories at the Grand Ole Opry, there's a guy, Jerry Clower. He used to get up and tell like coon hunting stories. Yeah. At the Grand Ole Opry.

Yeah. That's what made it grand. I grew up listening to Jerry Clower. Yeah. And I think I told, I think I said, if you like coon hunting, you ought to listen to Jerry Clower.

And then Clay did a whole episode on Jerry Clower. And didn't give Steve any credit. In which he neglected, not only to. Steve is really upset about this. I don't think he even brings up the fact that I grew up listening to Jerry Clower or that you should have interviewed me because I could quote any Jerry Clower

story. I think Phil edited that part out. No, listen. It's bad content. You did mention Jerry Clower to me, but that wouldn't have been the claim that that was the first you were the person that introduced me to Jerry Clower would me but that wouldn't have been the claim that that was the first you were the person that introduced me to Jerry Clower would be inaccurate okay so but but now that you say that I do remember you mentioning that one time to me you did mention Jerry Clower and and

the Jerry Clower episode which will have already come out now yeah so people would have heard it on Bear Grease it It came on super quick, and so, Steve, I just didn't have time. I actually thought about texting you to see if you even knew who he was. But he literally didn't have time for a text. Already. So fast.

Yeah. When you hear the episode, you'll hear me make some assumptions about people who know who Jerry Clower is, and you would not fit into that assumption. Is it Clout or Clower? Clower. C-L-O-W-E-R.

He was a Southern comedian. Awesome. Coon hunter. Yeah. And his thing was he wouldn't tell a story that he wouldn't stand up in front of his church to tell. So he would have got arrested in Cincinnati. Him and Nugent would have clashed because Jerry Clower,

he would use no profanity as a comedian, but would tell these wonderful coon hunting stories. Now, here's how I know him. My mom was from the suburbs of Chicago, which is now a suburb, but was then farm country. She was a WGN, the radio station WGN.

She had a country music radio station? No, talk radio. and they covered the sports so they covered the shoes cubs cubs right she would like when she moved up to michigan you know she'd be out there wrapping aluminum foil around the antenna and shit to try to be able to listen to wgn clower used to now and then go on wgn to tell a story oh wow so that's my whole connection to clower yeah yeah respect the hughes himself one last thing that we're back to our guests this is a burning question i was questioning why when you put a radio collar on a mountain lion or whatever

why you have it pull its location every 13 hours. And I said, that's weird. Why would you not, like, it seems like most people be like, I'm going to have to do it every 12 hours. What's the magic of every 13 hours? Heffelfinger and a bunch of other people wrote in to explain. Jim Heffelfinger says, the reason radio collars are set to record a location every 13 hours is so they are collecting locations every clock hour in the 24-hour cycle.

I'll go on. I'm not following. If you set it for noon and midnight only, if you set it for noon and midnight, so on a 24-hour cycle, you only know where they are at noon or midnight, and you probably only find out where they like to bed down. If you set it for 13 hours you get a location at 1 p.m one day then 2 a.m then 3 p.m then 4 a.m okay after a month you

have locations for every hour on the clock then you take all those data points and analyze what you're doing at any time during the 24-hour cycle you're interested in with turkeys we often collect every hour during daylight hours and then pull one point at 11 59 p.m to get the nightly roost location now on to fred bear nope now i understand i actually i've got i've got a quick before we get too far away from public education and Ted Nugent, I've got a public education and Ted Nugent story. Which is one and the same, by the way.

Oh, you have one. I do, yeah. Oh, I've got some Ted stories too. Ted, Phil rarely, rarely speaks up. Listen, I wasn't going to bring this up. Well, my music is stimulating. It's true. I wasn't even going to bring this up,

and I'm afraid to now that I heard you obliterate Cal's teacher. No, I didn't. So I went to, she was a bad person. All she did was dedicate her life to public education. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, I went to Evergreen high school in Vancouver, Washington. Uh, my first week of high school, this teacher, I'll mention his name in a sec rolls in. You sure you want to do that? I think I do. Uh, he rolls in, you know, he goes to AV room, rolls in an old TV and a VCR,

starts telling a story about how he used to be a songwriter in Los Angeles. His name was Randy Kate. Does that name ring any bells? It does. And he sticks in a VHS tape. I think it was probably my second day of high school. And we watched the video for a song called Tied Up in Love. Ah, yes. Which he says he co-wrote. Could be could be okay i don't know if i attribute that name to that song but if he says so i'll give him the benefit of the doubt okay he was really proud of it so you don't just give it to him yeah a great piece of music uh with brian how god rest his soul who i hired for that album penetrator in the uh 80s 84 and uh And Brian just passed away here a couple years ago, just a great, great British singer

who ended up singing lead for Bad Company for two years and wrote some of their biggest songs. But that song was on the Penetrator album, and it's a well-known song, and it's a killer song. But he did it on keyboards, which I don't care for, and I do it on guitar, which don't care for and i do it on guitar which i really care for yeah yeah good stuff anyways i wanted to say that yeah it's forever good stuff yeah who who doesn't have a ted nugent story the vhs come on i've been around

for seven i don't think corinne has a ted nugent story oh she does now if we're doing this i got i got it i got to i got to tell one it'll be Ted, I grew up, you know, I'm in the 90s was kind of my peak time of intaking outdoor media. My dad was a big bow hunter. So, we watched all the Ted Nugent. Arkansas. Arkansas. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And so, my dad's really good friend, John Mesko, they loved you guys. John had a zebra-striped Jeep. Oh, yeah. Ted Nugent-style zebra-striped Jeep. There's a lot of them. I made one of those. And he also had, this is my dad's best friend, and kind of like a second dad to me.

And he also had the Oneida Eagle. Yep. Whackmaster. Whackmaster Bull, yeah. Zebra-striped. Yep. So, I mean, we were big into all that whack them and stack them and there really is a lot of stories i've been around a long time i got a big mouth

i celebrate my life i celebrate the american dream i celebrate all the good stuff and condemn all the bad stuff i'm i'm what the founding fathers wanted all americans to be you can laugh all you want engage engaged they wanted us to. I'm not engaged. They wanted us to be engaged. I'm engaged. And I'm considered radical because I'm engaged. I'm considered radical because I spotlight cockroaches who abuse power. Well, you should mind your own business. America's my business.

Freedom is my business. So everybody's got a story. And if you follow me around anywhere, whether it's Whole Foods and the Pierce Nipple guys come out and want to talk about venison and 10 millimeters or the Starbucks where you wouldn't think it was Ted Nugent country in Mill Valley, California, the purple haired gal wants to know what kind of gun she should buy her grandma. My confidence level is dangerous, but I'm humbled by deer. So everybody does have a Ted N newton story because unless you've

been living under a rock you had to have witnessed me raise hell or have fun or be a smart ass or just live a fire-breathing freedom lifestyle so it it is i think a universal truism that I've left a vapor trail because I'm engaged I'm I'm hardcore engaged you know they call them chemtrails these days yeah except mine are not toxic um so when uh um for like okay I grew up in Michigan and i graduated high school in 1992. okay and it's like and why and wanting to come talk to you one of the primary the reasons you've had a relevance to me my whole life is uh what you meant to guys like me at that juncture like at that time in our life particularly when it came to sort of a crescendo in the fred bear era yeah where it was like we liked um we all my friends i would grow up hunting um and then all of a sudden here was this person from our area who celebrated that area and just really, in a popular way, really spoke to a thing that we cared a lot about.

And it was like findingated culture that culture in that era is i remember one day i was driving and i was driving out for the opening day archery season and i was hunting this i was hunting the area of manistee national forest which you know well it was a little place on the white river and it was probably an hour before daylight listening to fm radio fred bear came on and the guy's like hey man like i know what's going on right now with a lot of you out there and here's something for you and in sort of the pre-morning darkness and it hit as i was going down a two-track through mancy national forest he's like you'll know what it means and would roll fred bear i'm talking like mainstream fm radio itch and he picked the he picked his moment with like he knew you know it was just like it was and if it wasn't

for me he wouldn't have known probably yeah probably in that case in that case he was like a rock and roll like a disc jockey yeah that was back when like fm radio like had like live people sitting there making selections but it was um it was like it was deeply impactful at that time deeply impactful i want but what i want to do is how like talk about how you got tangled up in archery and what the connection to fred bear like who fred bear was and what was going on in bow hunting at that time you mentioned earlier that uh you know the first archery season 1949 and you mentioned the first guy to legally kill the deer of the bow in wisconsin george yeah like how did you like how did you get tangled up in that world and how did you become into fred bear well first of

all and why did he take you seriously you know let me uh maximize the spotlight on your anecdote of hearing the fred bear song on a rock and roll radio station celebrating your very pulse at that moment and how i've heard is it tens of thousands of those stories probably yeah yep and i have trained the otherwise anti-hunting media rock and roll dopers to celebrate conservation because of that song which was as organic and spontaneous and uncontrollable when that song happened as anything in life. I was born in Detroit in 1948 along the Rouge River in Detroit, which was a wildlife paradise, the pheasants and quail. It's just unbelievable.

Oh, no, can they have quail then? Oh, my God. My essence was learning to slither onto a covey of quail like a pointing dog. And how that happened, my dad was already a follower of Fred Bear when I was born in 48. He already had a bow. I got his bow in the other room there. And we would go north every October, including October of 1949 when I was 10 months old and and hunt the Manistee National Forest and Oglemont up near Standish and Hillman Hawks and up around uh Manistee and I think every kid back then had a Daisy Red Rider BB gun episode homemade slingshots. Everybody made homemade slingshots.

Everybody made a homemade bow and arrow. I mean, I was in Detroit, but everybody made a bow and arrow. Go down to the Rouge River and cut down a sapling and flex it and get a baling twine and bend it and cut some other ones and try to get them straight and shoot those arrows i think it's as primal a calling as exists it's probably projectile management slash sex you need to propagate and you need to protect and feed it's as it's as raw as your breath and because my dad was a bow hunter and because of that era following World

War II, my God, what a positive, glowing, good over evil, universal celebration where we crushed the Nazis because the GIs had freedom to come home to, which made their warrior spirit more dangerous, more wonderful. And the work ethic, the community the the pride of accomplishment and the forced pride of accomplishment by my dad what a son of a bitch it was a pain in the ass growing up but boy did it pan out was he a veteran yes world war ii and korea uh u.s uh army cavalry drill sergeant and he never stopped i could tell you anyhow so the discipline of gun safety the discipline of instead of bumbling into covey quail but learning to walk slower and this looks like perfect quail habitat i think i'll get down on the ground now and see if there's

any quail over there and then i would literally snake and learn the lessons that that your teacher missed that cause and effect poor woman or she was from boston with all due respect she she missed out on it she never slithered up on a covey a quail i'm sure she had lessons in cause and effect but nothing more emphatic at that mushy-brained youth of mine. You're mushy-brained, and you're picking up on information if your parents nurture and discipline you to pick up on information because you can't make the same mistake twice or it'll knock your block off. You ever heard that term before? Oh, yeah.

It goes with nose to the grindstone and all that kind of stuff that i think is illegal now so my discipline by my dad and the natural rewards of discipline hitting that pheasant before it flushed and on occasion hitting it when it did flush i mean that was so gratifying, so hallelujah of a moment. I take that quail home I killed and my dad showed me how to pluck it and sometimes skin it and fillet it and gut it and cook it. What incredible lessons for life itself. And the gratification factor of going from a homemade bow and shooting the occasional chipmunk to actually getting a fiberglass bare bow with real arrows are you kidding me because we didn't have any money we we lower middle class but frugal and prioritized which means that you're better

than rich people but you essentially went from a red rider bb gun to a 300 wind mag at that point right overnight no not really not really i was so and remained so engrossed in the mystical flight of the arrow that i have sniper rifles and when i have to kill more animals i pull them out but i am so at 73.5 years i'm more titillated than I was as that kid, which is a gift because I've been clean and sober, so my central radar is still real touchy. I consider my entire life to be a purple-rimmed dick, and the slightest breeze, the slightest breeze, come to attention.

How am I doing? Certainly paints a picture. I get it. So anyhow, I am raw and pure because I've been clean and sober. I have no tainting. And so at that era, we'd go north. I'll try not to cry. We'd go north and stop in Grayling. I was this little boy. And here's this kind of dull yellow cinder block shack

that Nels Grumley, Nels Grumley? No. Original boyer of Fred Bear that left Detroit and went to Grayling in 38, 48, whatever the year was. Bear Archery, little shack, maybe the size of this room. Were those guys making making those guys were at it in those years yeah yeah like producing bows to sell because they saw hunting with the bow and arrow by saxon pope and art young at the detroit theater that documented the ishi education

phenomena as roy Weatherby, God bless him, developing long range ballistic capability beyond the 30, 30, aim small, miss small. That's exciting. I love it.

I lived at, I'm surprised I didn't have surgery on my eyeballs to put crosshairs in there. I love crosshairs. I love trigger squeeze. And I love the ballet of marksmanship. I get to train with delta force and shoot thousand yard stuff and it it's so challenging and fulfilling but we'd stop at this

little shack and i didn't know because it started when i was a year old but by the time i was four or five and i'm already cruising the rouge River with homemade bows and arrows so I'm already naturally fascinated by projectiles I made my own slingshots and I was murdered I think I had the songbird grand slam by the time I was seven I had a blind right next to the bird feeder I learned early found it was highly productive highly productive yes we're gonna kill birds let's go by the bird feeder um but we'd meet this tall lanky funny gentleman easygoing slow guy and eventually i'm going that's fred bear that's the guy on true magazine with a polar bear met him where at his little bear archery shack in 19 probably as early as 52 53 um and eventually like just going in there yes my dad on their way to go hunting my dad would stop

and visit with him but but this is you're not even touching professional music land at this point no i'm playing guitar well by the time i was six i was beating on a guitar so the bow and arrow outdoor fascination and again you don't stalk quail when you're four or five but the time i was six or seven i never played ball or i played a little hockey in the rouge river and i did little league stuff but i couldn't wait to get to the river with my bow and arrow on my slingshot so now i'm getting to be seven or eight years old and i'm actually following my dad in the national forest with a bow and arrow um obviously i couldn't kill anything but it was a an imprinting lifestyle well now i'm realizing this guy we're stopping at the grayling restaurant having cherry pie and chocolate milk with that's fred bear that's like my bow hunting chuck berry and i get to hang with him and every year eventually

my dad who went from working for ma bell on losher in grand river i remember all this stuff um and to go to miller's feed store explain what ma bell is ma bell was the original at&t okay the phone company so this is him post-military yeah just just after the crank phone and now we can dial him i go way back man yeah um so the the crank to dial phone it played a role in my fascination with going from homemade bows to the to the fiberglass recurve to meeting fred bear and of course when you had two cedar arrows back then with real fletching you hung as an arsenal arsenal. It was like a high-capacity quiver back then. And here's Fred Bear with a wall full of arrows, and he's experimenting

with this lathe, with this lamination, the gooey glass and the fiberglass and the wood layers. He invented the layering of those components for improved cast of his artistic recurves, his beautiful pieces of wood craftsmanship. And he was such a fun guy, funny guy, smart ass. As I grew older, I realized he's a funny guy. And then my dad went from working for the phone company

to represent the Udaholm Swedish Steel Company. And their specialty was rolled tempered blue spring steel. Bear razor insert? And he negotiated with Fred. And so now the steel company from Sweden that my dad represented now made the bleeder blades for the famous bear razor heads. So now they had a business connection. And so they would hunt the quarter sections up there after you know the timbering company denuded northern michigan

and that habitat that grew up from the over harvesting of timber the total harvesting of timber perfect wildlife habitat everything all wildlife benefited from this new yeah accessible i mean beautiful so these lessons are these lessons are going into my brain in spite of the anti-education system and so by the time i'm uh 13 14 i'm like gaga that we're going to stop at fred bear's place and it was still just a shack i think he'd expanded it by that time so he he we'd eat cherry pie and chocolate milk at the grayling restaurant with fred bear and now i'm really shooting i'm starting to kill stuff with my bow and arrow then my dad got transferred to illinois schaumburg where which all pheasant country and there was no deer back then but a lot

of small game and 65 1965 my band had just won the michigan battle of the bands we opened up for the supremes at the brand new cobo hall i was on my way and i got yanked out of my bed ah damn it so i started the amboy dukes the day i landed in chicago in in schaumburg um and that's when the amboy do started but then when i graduated in 67 i immediately went back and went up to say hello to fred and now it's not a shack it's the largest archery company on the planet with this huge museum of which I was like awesome but I'm starting to look a little hippie like got long hair and I'm Amboy Dukes are just breathing rhythm and blues rock and roll fire just the intensity it's shooting flaming arrows on stage and this is a great deal you'll love this

part I know you probably love all these parts i love all these parts so now i go up and reintroduce myself to fred but i'm kind of looking like a hippie i had bell bottoms on and you know patchwork leather jacket and 44 magnum in my belt and a pocket full of speed loaders nobody saw that but boy i wasn't a hippie um and he was a little offish he well yeah i remember you ted yeah it's a great as your dad still didn't we had a conversation but i could tell it was a little uncomfortable and i was really let down you know did you know the why it was uncomfortable for him because of the rock because you became like a rock and roll hippie yeah yeah um but then he

would have been like in his 50s or yes Yes, when he just started going on adventure hunts. Like when you were this hippie coming in the shop. He was probably in his 50s. So many generations gap. A real disdain for anything hippie that I agreed with, even though I'm in the swirl of that world. And there were nice hippies and my band were hippies. Not many of them.

They eventually became hippie. But I was still militantly anti-substance abuse because I had already witnessed it turn virtuosos into slobbering idiots. So my dad's discipline, instead of me being a rebel, I went, ah, his advice makes sense to benefit the quality of my music. We rehearsed and rehearsed, and our music was so powerful. I mean, listen to the opening journey of the center of mind. Not anybody else.

Greg Arama on bass guitar, holy God, what a gifted young man. 16 years old, playing stuff that Bob Babbitt and James Jamerson of the infamous Motown funk brothers would come and watch the Amboy Dukes because Greg's bass player was so out of this world 16 year old kid and the world's most revered bass players for Motown would come and watch Greg mmm so but I'm going all over the place here but it coalesces and so the word i got i went back and visited fred again in that was 67 again in 68 when i started hunting irons i'm hunting the manisee national forest and this time he was so happy to see me and hugged me and shook my hand

and asked me how the bow hunting's going i hear hear you're a successful musician. And he goes, you know, I talked to some of my buddies and they said that you always promote bow hunting and that you shoot bows and arrows on stage and that you're all about being clean and sober. So I guess I'll give you a second shot. Yeah, rightly so. I think rightly so. I think you should be suspicious of a of a cultural segment that is is at least

suspicious and all too often negative um but so we became just the best of friends because i like that he goes when when young people come to my museum they always ask me if i know ted nugent oh really yes i'm going yeah that is music to your ears you guys found like a sim you guys hit on like a symbiotic relationship yes uniquely uniquely uh uh collision of planets um much to the benefit of both planets because i've never gone on a radio to promote a tour without it turning into a bow hunting promotion i've never done gone and done an interview to promote a new tour without it turning into a bow hunting promotion i've never done gone and done an interview to promote a new record without it turning into the celebration of the

mystical flight of the air when being clean and sober that's why my guitar playing is so sexy i mean literally it sounds cute but it's true and so we became friends and he started inviting me to grouse haven over there in rose city at his annual event. And it was heaven on earth. And then I ended up playing bass for Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. So now I'm playing bass for Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. I'm bow hunting with Fred Bear

and Parnelli Jones drives me around the Indy 500 track in a Mustang. Where else can I go? And you said Chuck Berry, that's who you're playing guitar to be like. Of course. So that had to be just on cloud nine monumental, right? Whoa!

I need to, as a young, uppity, borderline out of control, energized guy, I had to embrace these moments. So as I pulled up to Fred Bear's camp um i had to take a deep breath and go all right sponge hang with fred i didn't even bow hunt much i because fred didn't bow hunt much and i'd stay at the fireplace with him and try not to be too much of a stalker but but try to absorb all his wisdom and his touch. And I did. And then the last time was October of 87. And we walked the lanes at Grouse Haven.

He had his oxygen tank that he carried with him. And he went on and on about how all the sporting goods shows he goes to that anybody under 40, all they want to know is if he knows Ted Nugent. And of course, my ego is like soaring in the stratosphere. Not really, but my appreciation for my natural activities of celebrating archery, bow conservation clean and sober that it it it ended up elevating to where my hero appreciated and thanked me for it he said i've heard people in the industry will condemn you because you whack them and stack them but the young people your young people know that that means you're having fun i mean we only kill and harvest semantics really does this ring any bells so he said keep doing what

you're doing he goes you're impacting a demographic that we desperately need the impact and nobody in the industry can or even knows it there's a whole bunch of stuff sure every leader of every conservation organization is so cautious and they were you know children it's just stodgy ted can i ask you a question specifically about fred yeah stop me if i because i so i feel like fred has such a reputation in the industry as being this like father figure of archery which i understand 100 i feel like most people probably much younger than me wouldn't we wouldn't they wouldn't have hardly been alive when he was here what was Fred Bear really like like you sitting around a campfire with him rather than going hunting with him like what what did he embody what kind of wisdom did

he have what was he like that was so impressive because you know everybody it's kind of like we've decided he's a legend and so all of us admire him as a legend we know he was a pioneer with making bows yep but it's like there's this other untold story that i don't really know that well of like why was he such a great guy well i can go all the way back to the first encounters as a little boy, just positive, funny, friendly, a gentleman, engaging. He'd talk with my dad, and of course, I was just a little kid. I was only getting the periphery. And I guess he was an accomplished, a very accomplished bow hunter. Well, his accomplishments in marketing and the technology of laminations and the upgrading of the capability

of the modern bows that he pioneered, particularly the laminations in those beautiful recurves. So around the campfire between him and Bob Munger, his partner, and then Dick Malk, who was his financer back in 60, 61, 62, who just passed away at 90, 93, 94. I hunted with Dick Malk on his last year, and we kept in touch. I'm this young uppity rock and roll maniac hanging out with these old guard pioneers of bow hunting. And I referenced Roy weatherby expanding ballistic capabilities which is awesome but some guys ben pearson roy case wisconsin um certainly uh doug walker in california western bowhunter and fred bear was the daddy of them all um and there's others but they knew as we know and we love shooting them at long range

takes a real discipline to make that long range shot no matter how sighted in your gun is that moment of truth that trigger drop it's special moment long range short range now you you magnify that by what a million when you got to be so close those deer can see your nose hairs moving and you have to execute a shot under the most challenging of conditions god made these animals not to let us do that so we have to really call upon the spirit within to earn full draw. That's what Fred and Roy Case, I can't mention his name enough, and those, Ben Pearson, Howard Hill, those guys, that's what they saw was missing in the advancement of long-range shooting. That long-range shooting, as good as it is, which is i think it's perfect but it the longer the range the more the disconnect and that's good you got got to kill the animals you got to harvest the

surplus venison at a thousand yards is just as good as well is just as good as venison at 10 yards, but probably not because psychologically, I think it's more delicious because you had to make such. You're intimate. You're so intimate. That's why I call everything I do the spirit of the wild. My song is spirit of the wild. My show is spirit of the wild.

My podcast is Spirit of the Wild. My show is Spirit of the Wild. My podcast is Spirit Campfire. I learned early on that my disdain for the drooling, stumbling dopers and drunks was at its most apparent and inescapable hunting with a bow and arrow. That's why I mentioned about slithering in on a covey of quail. My whole clean and sober battle cry is that are you making a conscientious step or are you bumbling? Hey folks, exciting news for those who

live or hunt in Canada. And boy my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there. OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Make a conscientious step. Slow. Like Fred and so many people,

I've heard you say it, you hunt more with your eyes than your feet. Your rewards are more meaningful in fact you're not going to be rewarded if you're stumbling but if you take a conscientious step stalking stealth situational awareness the rewards are ultimate backstraps or at least getting close to, I literally would be able to slither up on a covey of quail within inches of this circle. I've witnessed the circle of quail before they explode. That stays with you forever. So what Fred spread on that,

those years that he entrepreneurial marketing, promotional brilliance was his be a two season hunter. Remember that campaign there, one guy in the orange and the other guy with the camo bow and a gun. Beautiful boy. There is a harmonious message that the industry could use more of. And on 87, we walked down the trails and he thanked me and said, keep doing what you're doing.

Ignore the critics. They criticized me because I put a matchstick on my bow when I won the state 3D championship. It was one of the first. You had a pin. Yeah, a state pin. Yeah. Because he had target panic. He says that doesn't have nothing to do with anything. The critics criticize nonsense.

Inconsequential, counterproductive nonsense. He says, when you say whack them and stack them, all that really means is you're having fun. If you can get a bag limit of bluegills, that would be whacking and stacking. Find fault with that. Right? I mean, that speaks to every Michigander right there. Limit of fish, Steve?

Yes. I understand your point. But the thing is, it comes to, you use the word crescendo. I have a lot of crescendos. My whole life is a crescendo. In fact, I don't hire musicians unless I can see the veins on their foreheads pop every song. I want James Brown. I don't want Simon and Garfunkel.

Being that as it may. So, 87, October, intimate communication around the campfire. So, to your inquiry just just a shit kicker just and he would talk about the polar bear hunt he would talk about his elephant hunt he would talk about promoting the uh uh the poison pods on the arrows are you aware of that man you know what i as of a few days ago oh just learned about it well i knew about it but we had a we had a story we work on this series um these close call things where people tell close calls from the wild and a guy had a great had a we heard about a guy

that actually jabbed himself with that son of a bitch. Down in Mississippi, maybe, because it's still legal down there. Explain that. People aren't aware of this. Yeah, well. I should say, why? Fred. By people, I mean, I wasn't aware that you could still use it. Was Fred into that?

As a promoter of conservation, which I salute you. By the way, we got all the important stuff done before the microphones are turned on. We salute you. We congratulate you, Steve Rinella, for promoting the sport that is the tip of our quality of life spear. You do a great job. It doesn't surprise me you come from Michigan because of the history and the passion that comes from those deer camps in Michigan. And I salute you and applaud you and appreciate your dedication because ultimately you promote conservation and hands-on environmental air, soil, and water

upgrade through wildlife habitat safeguarding and enhancement. That's what you've done. Thank you. That's what I do. And that's what Fred Bear thanked me for. But when we're, so we'll talk about around the campfire to hear it from Fred Bear promoting the use of, I forget the term, of that poison powder that he would take a balloon neck and pull it back and put a little of this poison on the arrow. Because as all bow hunters know, one of your best shows when you made a bad shot in that elk and those other guys found it,

you can't hunt without making a bad shot. Unless, well, then again, Mrs mrs nugent defies that and yet she's never lost an animal because she waits for the shot and so do we but even when we wait for the shot humans flinch well nothing hurts more well outside of the loss of a loved one or the abuse of power by people you vote to adhere to their constitutional oath. But equal to those heartbreaks is when you make a bad shot. And sometimes it's treacherous trying to get over. What? Two more inches to the left, I'd have had him. And now I got a gutty arrow. And you can recover them if you wait most of the time.

But when you don't, you can almost not get over it when you lose an animal. You just feel. That's that reasoning predator thing. The cougar doesn't care. He wounds as many deer as possible. He doesn't give a shit. But you and I do give a shit yeah and so i've i've lost a great many i've lost and it just is yeah because i hunt so much i've lost you know i haven't lost many i didn't lose any this last season i made a couple bad shots, but I recovered him. So to be around a campfire with the bow hunting guy,

and he laments the pain in the ass of losing an animal, and there's a system by which you will never lose an animal, this poison behind the little balloon neck behind the broadhead, he was all for it but the public perception of the bow hunting master indicating in any way that he might need poison or the broadhead isn't deadly is is an image you'll never get over i didn't know know that, see, this is all news to me. I didn't know that Fred Bear, I didn't know this ever became a thing that Fred Bear was involved

in or that he got criticism for it. Oh, he was the main promoter thereof. When was this going on? In fact, watch the Fred Bear. What years was it that there was a discussion around? 63, 64. Watch the Cape Buffalo hunt on the

Fred Bear films and watch that arrow go in the narrator, that great narrator, and at a 40 yard shot, you can see the arrow go in and Fred had put some talcum powder on the arrow so we could better witness the flight of the arrow. Ah! It was poison.

And so you can make any kind of hit, as long as you get it in the bloodstream, that animal is going to die. And fred bear kill some cape buffalo without it yeah did he kill his elephant without it yeah uh did he kill a lot of stuff without it yeah but he wanted he wanted to eliminate losing game do you feel like there's a line for you between using something like poison and certain technologies that might increase kill rate well there it's not really a fine line i think it's a glaring chasm which i don't know why they call it chasm it should be chasm i don't know any friends named carly anyhow we accept chasm and chasm i go off on tangents, which makes me interested, if nothing else.

Sight pins, mechanical release aids, 90% let-off cams, scent-reducing products. it's still your hands, your stealth, no matter what kind of upgraded advancement in hunting technology, it's still you, your brain, your stealth capabilities, luck, huge luck. But it's shot placement, no matter how good the remington mushroom deadliest mushroom in the woods is so you got to hit them right i mean bull elk hit with a 340 weatherbee through the guts is still going to run off though that's a pretty powerful route i love that route because it seems like you're very much into kind of the raw organic it is i think of your he's saying technology's not taking that away and technology does not

take away that's why i don't i don't attribute traditional archery to somebody with an old fashion bow i am purely traditional what is tradition applying one's maximum effort to a clean kill. And if you want pure archery, I think Mr. Left Hand's got to grab the bow, and Mr. Right Hand's going to have to knock that arrow and draw it back. Ishii. It's as pure as Ishii. But it enhances the deadliness of your endeavor, which is a moral consideration. I still shoot my recurves and my longbows, but when I was a kid, holy God, I couldn't miss.

I'd squirrel running on a power line, bang, got him. I couldn't miss. The purity of youth and the hand-eye purity. You see samurai guys and you see Tim Wells often and some of the other guys. And Fred and Howard. Howard Hill. Guy couldn't miss. So the guy that can't miss, is he cheating?

Should we ban him? Well, in Colorado, you can't use a scope on your rifle. Well, you can with your muzzleloader. Well, you can hunt with a muzzleloader, but not very accurately. We need to reduce your accuracy. How stupid is that? And in some states there where you couldn't use lit pins. What if it's dark inside the blind, but it's still legal shooting hours?

Really? So you can hunt, but you may have to make a bad hit because I'm uncomfortable with this technology. Shut the fuck up. Well, you know what they're driving at? Yeah. They're driving at efficacy. When we were talking upstairs.

And you were talking about the crossbow. You were like, you were hand gesturing the, no matter what you've over the years, pins, release, whatever. You're like, I still hold this thing in this hand. I pull it back. Archery. And then you made a.

A rifle gesture or a crossbow gesture. Yeah. So does that in your mind what does that mean well i wrote an extensive piece on it that i love crossbows it was tight i believe the title was i love crossbows but not for me you know and that summarizes it um bunch of my buddies hunt with crossbows for a number of reasons it's's easier. Get them in the woods more. I'm all for it. So far, I'm with you. And then so many, I can't draw my bow back because it's 70 pounds. I kill everything with 50 pounds. Shemaine kills everything with 30 pounds. Wildebeest,

zebra, elk, kudu, 30 pound bow, and Hoyt of Hoyt Archery killed everything that walks the earth with a 35-pound recurve, shooting Zwicky two blades and MA2s and bear razorheads, that knife broadhead. I've killed Cape Buffalo with 60 pounds using a two-blade broadhead. You get in between the ribs, and quite honestly, almost everybody's over bowed if you're lifting your bow up it's too much draw weight and you don't need it it's stealth shot placement and the right broadhead and i i use rage and i use the the shank and i use the uh swacker and i try them all i'm always trying every broadhead, but I, when I want to, when it all comes down to it, the two blade is the deadliest.

It cuts through everything. The point being is that if you want to use a crossbow, hell, I'll buy you one. If it'll get you out in the woods and buy a license and enhance the, the, the economy, cause you're going to go food, groceries, restaurants, gas, lodging. You're probably going to buy food plot materials. So anything for recruitment and retention, I'm for. This side of grenade launchers, I don't think you should necessarily go into a herd of deer with a rent-a-car

but do you agree with uh archery only seasons i believe that the statistics have proven that the hue and cry that the crossbow will reduce archery season opportunities has proven to be false um so i i believe first of all a crossbow is not a damn gun now are there 100 yard capable crossbows of yes there are and all of them will blow up at some point i mean that's not my hunch i know all these guys i know dozens of guys with archery shots and all these maniac high tension 100 yard crossbows they will all blow up at some point because it's too much tension on the components, which, again, is fine to each his own.

But crossbows shoot arrows, bolts. So it's not firearms. Some of the old school love some of them, some not so much. Well, it's a cross gun. Really? I don't smell any gunpowder. It's not a cross gun. It's a cross bow.

And I think technologically it dates pre-long bows. Maybe you would know that. Don't know that. I think it predates long bows. I've seen that claim here and there but meaningless that's meaningless it shoots an arrow and people that are trying those hundred yard shots are are learning they shouldn't because it's just not going to get there in time even with a rifle everything better be good at long

range because that animal's got to be calm he can't know you're there and you got to be super accurate but the the real conflict comes from states like idaho love them but they ban lighted knocks well they they didn't allow lighted nocks from the get-go and expandable broadheads. I know. So a lighted nock would be like when it's released off the string, the nock glows.

Enhances the mystical flight. It helps you find your arrow. It doesn't help you kill anything. Yes. Mechanical broadhead. But the point is, the mechanical broadhead is the most popular broadhead

on planet Earth. So you're telling all those hunters you're not welcome to Idaho. It can't have anything to do with killability. It can't have anything to do with ethics. I don't know. It's just an arbitrary, punitive, stupid statement by some elitist prick. And I told them that when I did a speech out there. They wanted me to help them legalize wolf hunting.

And I roamed the stage and I went, I'm so proud to be here in. They wanted me to help them legalize wolf hunting. I roamed the stage and I went, I'm so proud to be here in Idaho. Love Idaho. Wow. Rugged individuals, outdoorsmen. That mountain man is still alive and well. Then I paused and I said, why should I help you open a wolf season? I know why.

Because they're herding your big game herds. But why should I help you? I'm not even allowed. You won't even let me hunt here. And there was silence. I go, because I have a lighted knock. You're not going to let me hunt? My wife shoots a 30-pound bow, kills everything that moves, but she's not welcome in your state?

Well, I think it would be that her lighted knock is not. No, the lower poundage, too, was against the law. Oh, really? Yeah. Arkansas's 35 pounds. Yeah, there's a minimum poundage. Absolute nonsense.

I agree on the lighted knock thing. I agree on that. I think anything that allows recovery should be allowed. Oh, but this conversation is not about lighted knocks or expandable broadheads, right? We're talking about where do you draw the line at regulation and where is it appropriate? And really, we want to know this from you. I think that the lighted knocks, in my experience, can give you a false confirmation of impact.

So when I'm judging where that arrow is. Sure, because the arrow is here and the knock is upstairs. Just like when you're shooting at a target, right see the knock you don't see where the broadhead that's a good point so that's that's a personal reason of mine that i haven't like would you outlaw them based on that you know i just don't really give a shit about that that much because not let's let's say let's say the lighted knock gives you a false impression of where the arrow hits so does a regular knock yes absolutely what are we gonna ban knocks yeah so yeah but the but the real issue is they're saying this is an archery season

which they have said okay an archery season is a more traditional hunt they're banning electronics i mean that's the thing so it's not i don't think it's an issue of they sat down and debated the pros and cons they said anything that's electronic that's on a bow gives you advantage or that's the assumption it gives you advantage it's a wrong assumption unfortunately nobody was in the room to challenge their false assumption that's where i come in okay do you okay let me ask you this i also want to argue about cwd but uh we might have to argue i don't know i gotta ask let's talk about this for a second i think dr fauci would like to be in on that conversation

but go ahead i mean do you have sympathies to the people that are are regulating a giant population and it always defaults to um the the weakest link in the chain right if we don't have a 35 pound minimum is somebody going to pick up a kmart bow and a field point even though we didn't define the field point they're already doing that um, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. But do you, like, okay, here's the thing. There's a couple things going on that I want you, that you need to speak, that I'd like to get your opinion on. One of the things you're doing when you control technology,

when you control the, like, technology coming in, is you're sort of, stop thinking of it as fair, like, fair chase of stop think of it as fair like fair chase and think of it as um what was what the guy that proposed that alternative to talk about fair chase fair share okay certain technologies are meant just to control efficacy so if someone were to come in and say a state were to come in and say we're not going to allow people to use drones to um scout for hunting purposes they might say because right now we're operating on this thing where we have 20 30 success rates with elk which means shit loads of people can hunt elk and have the opportunity to hunt elk if technology were to come in and create a situation where success rates were so high, you're going to have less and less opportunity for people to go out.

Because if you're going to kill 100 elk and you have 10% success rates, you're allowing 1,000 people, 1,000 individuals to hunt. If it winds up being through the use of drones, thermal vision, let's say there's no limitation. So you can hunt at night. You can use thermal to hunt at night. You can scout with a drone. And you wind up that success rates are now 90 you got 11 guys that are going to hunt when it used to be or no you got 99 guys or whatever i

lost track of my own metaphor there's gonna be a lot but i i think that there's there's looking at it like you're sort of trying to prescribe ethics, which is so hard and confusing to do. You're trying to prescribe ethics or you're looking at being like, how do we maintain a static situation that we've had for a long time without telling people things that they've historically done they can't do anymore, which is in my mind, like where I always draw a line. I don't like to see people's traditional use practices interrupted. It winds up being that you have to look ahead and think about the impacts of technology. You used to not be able to hunt at night because you couldn't see. Well, we've crossed that bridge because all these assumptions and proposals and hypotheticals go all the way back to trajectory compensating scopes to uh 90 percent let off

compounds yeah and well we're gonna ruin our archery season we're gonna start losing opportunities since those uh hypotheticals were proposed not only haven't we reduced archery opportunities they've continued to expand and let's just talk about the elk well if i may i'd like to be the czar of hunting regulations and i am on my land i'm the czar of hunting because i don't want i want to be able to do that but nationally i should because i think i think if we got a room together we would not only have unif universal agreement on my proposals but the person who would disagree with it would would present themselves as a slobbering idiot and i think the first proposal would shooting hours you can only hunt when you see them except for hogs or

maybe other depredation considerations alaska doesn't do the shooting hour thing because they have such yes weird daylight weird daylight when can you see yeah you even with waterfowl what should shooting hours be when you can see them but okay so i think we would get everybody in the room to agree that we're not going to open a night elk season and if someone does propose that that means you haven't provided enough tags to responsibly harvest the surplus, which is the condition in Colorado in some areas, which is the condition in New Mexico in some areas.

We, unfortunately, those who propose further restrictions are either lying or woefully unqualified to manage X herd or X population. For example, I'm going to go back to the conversation you were having earlier before we went back to our guest. The mountain lion telemetry, enough already. They did, was it Hofbacher? Was that his name back in the 1950s? Where do we need to study where mountain lions are anymore?

They're under-harvested. We need to kill more mountain lions. And the methodology of hounds and herd identification, mountain lion population identification, it's like a concluded, it's already concluded. But to be fair, I'll read those studies every day so please i love those things i don't know i like to see where mountain lions go don't charge my taxes for that because i know usda hunters that are slaughtering cougars and bears year round using hounds and bait where we the people who own this resource are not allowed to hunt in the spring or use hounds

and bait i dare anybody but dude that's that that is a legitimate thing but that's a state issue california when they stopped when they bad or two when colorado when california banned lion hunting they used to kill about 300 400 lions a year and they stillia well now they pay the state to kill three four hundred after we've compensated the alpaca ranchers and after and after we relocated them three times i know the hunters i know the usda hunters why is there a usda hunting bureau why does that exist so they're they're allowed to clean up the inadequacy of yeah but yeah but nobody wants to see uncle ted creeping in the backyard to shoot the bear off okay yes they do yes they do why would you have okay if it was on vhs i'd watch it again like you run you run the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water so if we have usda

hunters like we have what's what's the it's uh aphos a okay like aphos wildlife services they ran the uh nutria eradication program in chesapeake bay okay nutria are not cougars i know but you said why would we have usda hunters that's who did that they do all kinds of coyote work for sheep producers but believe me i know these guys yeah but the point is is that are... It gets abused now and then. But again, man, I feel like you run the risk of sort of trashing on the whole system because of certain areas of abuse that often aren't their fault. The Cougar thing is like... How about it's never their fault? The Cougar thing is the fault of...

Stupid people. The Cougar thing is the fault of having state referendums where you put to voters like idiotic wildlife management decisions michigan doves michigan sandhill cranes no doubt about it well i would address it that that typically the between the media the bureaucracies and our own hunting organizations let's go right to the the horror stories of horror stories please there are eight states in the united states of america where we the people are not allowed to hunt during the rut on our farms on sunday i i here's an area where we have strong alignment i dare anybody But that's the manifestation of that cultural dishonesty.

But that's not elitism. That's very old, like not being able to buy booze. You know, you should be in church. Like, that's coming from a completely different direction. That's not like urban liberals. I think it is. Well, no, actually, in Pennsylvanialvania it's the it's the agriculture community it's the farmers well we need a we need a day of rest you had you had all spring and summer

to rest after dark the arrest but i consider it indecent i consider it irresponsible and same with minimum draw weight and lighted nox and expandable broadheads it's not like it's we're experimenting with expandable broadheads anymore i mean it's a deadly deadly tool that's been proven irrefutably conclusively how dare you ban all those people from your state so the point the real point of this is that the sporting families of this country just like the voting families of this country are dangerously apathetic they're not involved they're not right when i did that speech in idaho i guarantee if we took a vote in that room that night they would have legalized lighted noxious expandable broadheads and in eliminating minimum draw weights this ties into the apathy okay idaho until they really started screwing it up here in the last couple

years independent fish and game commission they are mandated to have a public uh process for every regulation change and our guys don't show up to the guys do not show up to the process i have spoken interviewed fish and game commissioners on major rule changes where they've gotten as low as six Hunter surveys returned on things that people are screaming up and down about, but they will not go online. They will not fill out the mailer that they're paying for through their license dollars and send it back in.

I give you Joe Biden in the White House. That is a direct result of Americans that are so spoiled and so disengaged. Well, the point is, once you cast your vote, whether your person gets in or not, your job then begins to hold them accountable. Absolutely. And we do a shit job of it. Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto. So regarding regulations, but I got to hold off one second. accountable absolute and we do a shit job of it ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto so regarding

regulations um but i gotta hold off one second i gotta clarify a thing i like i feel like we're at the risk of confusing two issues here what well no sorry expandable broadheads and draw weights like let's say let's take the draw weight thing in the expense yeah that's not them thinking it works too good that's not them saying you can't use thermal vision to hunt elk that's them saying we don't think it works good enough yes that's exactly right i feel when you get into that i'd be like okay if you don't think it works good enough and it's not that effective i don't know that it's your business. Absolutely. Just like minimum age. Because people will probably find out on their own. You could also say it's illegal to be very loud while hunting because it just doesn't work.

That's a great point. Well stated, yes. So I agree that the draw length thing, you're sort of saying the draw. I'm sorry, draw weight. Yeah, no one's dictating draw length. But I think there's an overall arrow weight there's also an overall um uh firearm weight so your minimum caliber is in africa 375 as if i can't kill a lion with a seven mag i did right right so yeah it's it's arbitrary punitive and capious, dictated by people who don't know.

Some of these people dictating these policies wouldn't know a cock pheasant from a pterodactyl. Just again, the worst example is Michigan ribeyes in the sky. How immoral of a regulation, virtually immoral, to kill a ribeye in the sky and not be allowed to eat it. Yeah. It's indecisive. But let's tell people what they're what they're getting at there michigan has a recovered popular like like most of the country like i shouldn't say most like most of the country west of the mississippi that's who's declared recovered like they can state level management of sandhill cranes yeah so in michigan they they do not have a sandhill crane season they give out depredation permits for sandhill cranes but they're trying to like they're trying

to control what your motivations are oh come now that's what they would tell unbelievable that's they'll tell you so you can get a depredation permit to kill a sandhill crane but you doesn't eat it once you do unbelievable because if you eat it it might be well did you kill it to eat it or did you kill it because it was depredation that is so i there's a similar thing in australia my brain rejects the very premise it's the it is a it is a migratory game bird it is delicious it's known as ribeye in the sky anybody who forbids me to eat that is a bad person is an immoral person if you support immorality you're immoral and the morning dove well it's a songbird no it's not it's the number one game hunted species on planet earth you can't call it

a songbird i told the guys the d and i said you're liars we would hunt as kids we would hunt morning doves in michigan out of protest i i still do we had we would go up and down good for you if you're if you live in the area and you're familiar with m120 we would work the the power lines along m120 through twin lake michigan and we would go in the woods find a morning dove perch on the power line cleep up to the edge of shoot and we would do it and it was like completely encouraged and ordained by our father because he felt that it was an act of civil disobedience beautiful because you could not hunt morning doves beautiful the most harvested bird in america most harvested animal most harvested game bird in america most harvest animals harvested game

ale in america you were not allowed to in michigan because of i think it was like some public referendum yes because the public doesn't know it was a sign of love it's just unbelievable and that's why i i invited and still today you can't hunt doves in michigan i invited the attorney general to my michigan cabin and i had boxes of shotgun shells on the table with pictures of doves, dove and quail load. And I'm cooking up this nice slab of meat on the grill and it was a Sandhill crane. And I go, arrest me, arrest me and make the case to the jury that I'm doing something bad and that this is a songbird on the shotgun shell box i dare you so i'm a i'm a hell raiser because i go with truth logic common sense and science

which makes me radical instead of lies set you it's like the deer stuck in the fence which i've come upon or deer hit by cars i've come upon them all my life and people are squawking and crying what do we do what do we do i think it's the bag i shoot the deer in the head and take the straps off anybody else want the back straps because if you don't i'm taking them that is so moral that is so righteous it is so purely the correct thing to do and it's against the law i'm rosa parks that's a black ass and that's a bus seat i'm sitting down eat me cwd cwd i'm talking about scams that i share i share your loathing i share your loathing of the animal rights world. And bureaucrats. The animal rights community. No, no.

I don't think we're on the same page on bureaucrats. Okay. Because there's a lot of stuff that a lot of, like. Well, you're young. You'll learn more. No, no. It's not. Like, you can say. If I hear the word bureaucrat, I'm like, oh, we're all supposed to agree that bureaucrats are bad.

Or we're all supposed to agree that lobbyists are horrible. But there's a lot of places. There's a lot of people that are lobbying on behalf of things that I think are good. They're really bad at it, though, because you still can't hunt on Sundays in eight states. So what are they lobbying for? You still can't hunt cougars and bears in Colorado.

You just took a step in the right direction. Who else took a step? Yeah, Pennsylvania, a guy called me. He goes, hey, they gave us two Sundays. Two Sundays. They're not theirs. What, did they give you the right to even bear arms? Wow, I got constitutional carry.

I was born with constitutional carry. I don't need government paperwork for my God-given rights. We've been brainwashed that we're waiting for a handout from the bureaucrats. That's why I hate bureaucrats. Are there some good ones? I think four. But let's go to CWD. I want to go to CWD, but I want to hit the beer crack appointment.

I think that there are probably some. I feel that Stranglehold is one of the best songs ever done. I can hardly stand it. But when I hear that someone has a radio collar on a mountain lion, I perk up. Because I think that information is valuable. When you hear that someone's has a radio collar on a mountain lion, I perk up because I think that information is valuable. When you hear that someone's got a radio collar on a mountain lion, you might ask, like,

how is this going to come around to bite me in the ass somehow? Well, yeah, I do because it's just like the grants. Our tax dollars are raped and pillaged by so-called grants, and we already know everything we need to know about mountain lions. Now, if there was any indication, any real indicator, that there's a mountain lion population anywhere that needed to be monitoring, I'd be the first to make a donation for radio telemetry and finding out what would benefit that, for whatever reason,

decreasing mountain lion population. Except guess what? There are no decreasing mountain lion populations. And there haven't been. But what about telemetry? Let's get into CWD. I was going to say, I don't want you to reply to it because I want to have the last word. I was going to say, telemetry data might tell us

that we have expanding and increasing mountain lion population. But it already has. So cut it out already. Save the tax dollars. Give me my money back. You want to know anything about mountain lions? Call me. No charge.

Mountain lions are. You hear that? Santa Monica Mountains. That's a message for Bart George. Expect a call from a guy named Bart George who at this moment has collars on lions. Santa Monica Mountains. But he should pay for his own collars. Okay, the lions are bringing the wild to people who refuse to believe it's there.

Right? Those are the mountain lions that are eating the alpacas and coming into people's backyards. And God love them for it. Like, that's the real uncontrolled wild sandwiched on the outskirts of L.A. But we don't need radio telemetry to determine that. These people watch the mountain lions cross their backyards in Pennsylvania. You need security cameras above your garage. Yes.

And in Michigan, they'll tell you there are no mountain lions. That footage isn't real. It's a mountain lion on that trail camera. You're a lion son of a bitch. CWD, because I want to talk about wolves. Love wolves. Love mountain lions. Love them all.

Okay. CWD. I feel as though we disagree on this. I admit it exists. Okay. Give me your spiel. I'm going to start by a question. Let's say I went and got a bunch of seed.

This is something I used to want to do, but I feel like I'd get in trouble for traveling around with it. I went and got 10 CWD positive deer. Okay. And I made a burger. I ground it all up and made a burger. And I traveled here with it. And I made this burger and fried it up in your kitchen and offered you the burger.

Would you eat it or not eat it? I would eat it. You would eat it. Not only that. See, now I'll talk, because my rule is I'll only talk about CWD with people who would eat the burger. Not talking about, I'll only argue with CWD people who would eat the burger. And I love your presumptuous scenario because good luck finding 10 deer with CWD. They're claiming they're looking for CWD, wasting our tax dollars, wiping out entire herds in private ownership or in the wild.

And they come across it. Well, if you are spending gazillions of dollars looking for something, here's a little tip from the old guitar player. You're going to find it. Has any hunting sheep since 1967 over there in Colorado and the variation of Crutchfield Jacobs, I understand what it is. And there's the scrapies that really wiped out the sheep world in North America that was bigger than the cattle world, except for scrapies coming in.

I understand the origins. I understand the epidemiology. There's been no deer season that has been reduced because of chronic wasting disease. But there have been deer seasons reduced, which, again, I'm using the term deer season to reference the vitality of a herd. Got it. Because as you regulate based on sustained yield and opportunities to mitigate agriculture destruction, highway destruction, dangerous conditions, other overpopulation maladies um you've got

other diseases like uh episodic hemorrhagic disease that have wiped out sure that great numbers and cwd never has was it what what state was it last year north dakota north dakota had to go and buy back yes tags they yes because of of EHD. But that was EHD, not CWD. It's never happened with CWD. I know it exists, but there's no evidence exists. And even though they go nuts trying to find it, that the chronic wasting disease in cervids is transmissible to humans or cattle or dogs or sheep. So there's a... And that goes to my back, my hatred for bureaucracies.

Okay. The bureaucracies have ran with the what if. But the what if is super scary. But the what if... So am I. I'm super scary. Listen, the what if... Just think if Ted opened up with his machine gun downtown.

It ain't going to happen. Unless I run into a bunch of recidivistic assholes. Ted, imagine. I need to give people a little bit. Do you think it's a threat to your dear? Ted does have a Leatherman in his hand right now. He's got his knife out. It's a fingernail fight.

He's got it back into a corner okay i have a nuanced perspective about this and it's so nuanced it's got me in trouble with with a very dear friend of mine uh who's the friend who's doing well this got me in trouble doug because i have a friend who is living like cwd ground Where's that at? He's in southwestern Wisconsin. Okay, yeah. So it's pretty calm for him to neighbors, his place, to be like, there's a deer dying of CWD. They have a shitload of deer on the ground.

He's not going to argue it. They got a lot of deer on the ground. Live deer. You mean that they have a lot of living deer. Extremely high density of deer. And they're currently killing a lot of deer and they're killing big right now in 2022 yes because i know it came to a peak about eight years ago well they still just give me one second yep then you so your buddy is like he's hysterical about

cwd no not hysterical in other words he just misses it no. Almost like I do. No. Just give me a second. Okay. Because I'm trying to lay out various ways of approaching CWD, and I want to get to where I approach it, I want to get to how I approach it, and I want to get to how you approach it. So his concern, he's concerned about two things. He's concerned about the idea of human transmission,

and if that idea doesn't bother you, it's probably because you don't like to eat deer meat. If it doesn't worry you. Except that it doesn't bother me, and it's all I do is eat deer meat. So we'll hold you there. His concern is that he feels that you would hit a point where there's a population level impact.

Now, when I have gone and I've said, and gotten mean text messages from him, this even prompted us to find, there's an app you can get that makes your text messages not sound agitated. I will never implement that. And it was a joke that Doug needs to get this app. He was upset with me one time for saying

that if it wasn't for the human transmission possibility, I wouldn't be sitting around fretting about it. And he's like, well, what about population level impacts? Here's a person that's very schooled and lives it on his family farm, lives CWD on his family farm and is very concerned about, he hates the what if scenario about human transmission and he's concerned about disease and deer because he likes to see healthy herds so he has concern about long-term impacts and what the like this

outrageous prevalence is going to mean have they confirmed numerous cases on his ground many okay many on his ground and they're they're only increasing and increasingly he can go tell you every year how many he sent in how many pauses how many sentence how he positive he doesn't like it when the numbers the numbers that he's sending in does he have tags to kill more deer so he said in more than the average hunter that kills one or two a year he you know I I can't answer that specifically Cal might be be able to, but he has very detailed records of what he's submitted and what his results have been.

And for a long time, he was watching it all around him. And then recently it started to be that he's getting multiple this year. He's getting deer on his place that come back positive. He doesn't like that shit. The big change, Ted,

is not so much Doug himself, but the program that he's running on the farm used to be pretty restrictive group wise harvest wise. Very much. Yeah. And now greater harvest and, and more hunters involved too. Doug used to like,

I hate to be taught. I wish Doug was here. Love you, Doug. Well, he would play the guitar with you and a heart. Oh yeah. Doug played guitar.

I should have brought. So, so Doug's worried, yeah, Doug would play the guitar. Oh, wouldn't. I should have brought it. So Doug's worried about it. His family farm's been in his family since, I don't know, 100 years. He hates to see this shit. He hates to see the disease. He's worried about what it's going to mean for the future deer season. He remembers being a kid, and you would run home and tell your mom and dad if you saw a deer track.

Sure. Same with me in Michigan, yeah. And he loves deer. I mean, the guy has the most legitimate claim in the world to loving deer, loving deer hunting, loving the land. He's worried sick about CWD. Huge part of our quality of life, no doubt about it. I disappointed him by expressing that I'm not worried about the population level impact, primarily because it seems that these places that have CWD are magically also the places that have shitloads of deer. So I'm not in the future enough to see where it plays out that we get to the point of having that we lose deer herds because of prevalence but it's not to me in my

view it's not unreasonable to think that if you wound up with with a always fatal disease that every time a deer gets it it dies from it um and you had somehow magically we got to some point where we had 100 transmission or 100 infection rates that i would be like is that what does that mean for the deer population let me let me inject here for a moment that you claim and i hear the claim all the time and i dismiss it okay that is it's 100 fatal the vast majority is it is it 99 of them that have been discovered to have cwd cwd CWD didn't kill them. No, you're right. Somebody else killed them.

And God knows how many we've killed and eaten that do have that. Thousands and thousands. Yeah, I'm sure of it. I kill hundreds every year and I don't check them for CWD. And I have a high fence in Michigan, so we have to turn in heads. And we haven't had any at all positive CWD. But I got to comment on that. So we have to turn in heads and we haven't had any at all, positive CWD. But here's, I got to comment on that.

There's too many instances, particularly in Wisconsin, where the DNR comes in and confiscates a deer head and it's tested positive. Well, let me see the results. No, it just tested positive. Let me see the results, Dr. Fauci. Why won't you share the evidence with the people? Why won't you share the evidence with the people why won't you share the evidence with the deer farmer they just arbitrarily decree something trust with verification okay their the history of the CWD conflict is rife with examples of where the bureaucrats make claim

for example here in Texas Texas Parks and Wildlife have have killed 86 000 deer for looking for cwd so who's the biggest threat to texas deer herd cwd or the state the state is the biggest threat yeah those are the conflicts that exist and to your point and i suspect i represent a spirit in this room and i often say it when i recover a deer on spirit of the wild television what would our lives be without this critter what a huge part of our lives it's not our kids and it's not our spouse and it's not our job but close what it represents to us as a as a as a as a as a living thing, as a source of our, whether literal or historical, food, clothing, shelter, medicine, tools, weapons, but mostly something that happens when you approach that dead animal,

and it's almost like a Disney movie, like Spirit World. It's so moving. You killed this thing, but you didn't really kill it. You accepted it because you dedicated yourself to kill it cleanly. It's more of a gift

than an accomplishment, I think. Am I speaking for you guys? Yeah, I understand 100%. It's moving. That's why I often also express, and I suspect you guys do as 100 it's it's moving that's why i often also express and i suspect you guys do as well pity the human population that has never felt this it i i and i'm gonna expand and thank you for allowing me but we talk god family country god-given individual freedoms, safe streets and neighborhoods, law and order. But we, in the year 2022, for all the advancements and all the concrete and all the electricity,

we're living the original primal scream when we go out there, even before we kill it. But then when we finally kill it,'s it can be if you approach it with the right attitude and that's where fred bear comes in a pursuing game with the right attitude um will cleanse the soul there really is no world i made a joke earlier it's not a joke but when we're out there and we come to full draw there is no no Joe Biden. Joe Biden represents a real evil force. He's just a bad, bad man. A power-abusing, criminal, oath-violating, bad, bad man. I'd ask you more about that, but that would be strange. I have a CWD follow-up question. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'd have to give him a criticism of him and his intersection with CWD would be welcome. It is, because he represents the most abusive of bureaucracies. Okay. And I think that when you look at all the money wasted studying it and looking for it and killing all these herds and... More wasteful money, that's another bureaucrat condemnation but but where has cwd heard a deer herd i can't point to a spot and but i don't think i don't know anybody that is pointing to a spot it could have changed right now like there could be areas

maybe cal could speak into on this there may be areas where there has been a population-level impact. My understanding is generally it is a what-if scenario. I hate those. What I don't like, the reason I want to spend money on studying CWD is I am acutely and very personally concerned about what it would mean for my lifestyle if it turned out that there were people contracting a prion disease from eating infected deer meat like of all the shit the government does of all the shit they spend money on um and i'm not going to stop that i would like a little bit of that money to go toward answering a question that I'm very interested in.

And I'm very interested in that question. That scares the shit out of me. It doesn't scare me at all because of all the money they've already spent and they haven't found the relationship. No. They even have people who went to a fire department fundraiser and they had 100 of them and 80 some submitted. They've been testing those people for 10 years i know those studies and again they ate venison meatballs or some shit like that ching ching ching just torch our tax dollars which is all the government really does uh yeah but but here's my question it's not out of the question though because stuff like that

has happened before it's not out of the question that's here here's my question though it's not out of the question here's the question miss wisconsin uh cwd right you you turn in your your head or your lymph nodes and they say yep you have a positive test result. And you say, well, show me the test results. What do you mean? And what would you do with those? Do you just want to see like- I would like to get confirmation that they're not lying to me because they're so good at lying to me. I mean, when you call a morning dove a songbird, that's a lie. When you say you can't eat a ribeye in the sky,'s just immoral so they're capable of runaway lies how about what a perfect setting in march of 2022 that we're discussing cwd

in the whirlwind scam of masks and and a vaccine that isn't a vaccine yeah but vaccines save you from stuff this experimental shot jeopardizes you. But you could be mad about COVID shutdowns. And I was madder than everybody about COVID shutdowns. Not madder than me. Steve was a pouting, pouting man. I pouted for two years. I didn't pout.

I just dismissed it and lived my life. But the question is, I say, hey. How does dismissed it and lived my life. Okay, but the question is, how does that become, how does that become like, you can be mad about COVID, but how does that become you don't want information about a deer issue? We've got the information. We already got it.

It's been around since 1967. I graduated high school in 1967. All they do is keep burning tax dollars and coming up with the same stuff. I really believe that the CWD scam, does it exist? Yes. Does the weaponized Wuhan virus exist? Yes. We paid for it.

How dare we pay for the communist Chinese, the weaponization of a virus. If that doesn't scare the living shit out of you that our bureaucrats and our government is capable of that treason, then how can you possibly trust those in charge of CWD? Oh, $20 million. How about this?

Colorado, $5 million grant for someone to come up with a system by which we can mitigate human and bear conflicts. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm to get to Iroh, Wango, Tango, and I can fix it. Open the season and use hounds and bait and don't bury them in holes in the ground anymore by hiring the USDA hunter, which my buddy would be pissed off if he ended it because he's living the dream at our expense

because it's immoral what they're doing. I believe that the glaring inescapable evidence for us to distrust bureaucrats has never been more profound than it is right now. And I'm afraid after studying it as extensively as i have and i suspect you as well i respect your studies and i respect your concerns but the jury is not still out the jury is in and you're not going to get kutzfeld jacobs from chronic wasting disease positive animals and we'll never know because we're killing them and eating them and how many examples are there can you count them on one hand where

they've actually witnessed a deer with the cwd symptoms and went and killed that one to test it has there been 10 of them 20 of them 100 them? I would say probably thousands. A thousand examples? Out of an annual harvest of 10 million? So my point is that bureaucrats, mankind given a hint of power, they will abuse it. And I believe CWD is a

manifestation of that right in line with this whole weaponized Wuhan virus. It's not a vaccine, and hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin is a treatment that has been incredibly successful. And when you deny a person hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and put them on a ventilator, you're guilty of murder. Well, my buddy Dirt thinks that if you take a brass rod and rub it around in your nostril, it beats COVID. I'm not mad at him about that. I'm not mad about it, no.

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cal's up on cwd you do have the ability to see the results like you right you pull the tyrosol glands out you can you can go do independent testing that they have it but now what yeah but the it like you said like it does exist and the fact of the matter is is like it came from somewhere this is knowledge do you believe in our experience you're pretty experienced but this is how things change right yeah you take a biological thing and you put it in another biological thing you shake it up you pour that cocktail out and eventually that cocktail changes the the discovery in 67 in colorado um i don't believe was the initiation of the condition i don't think that's

when it started i think they found it then even though we the colorado division of wildlife or whatever it was called at the time um there is an awful lot of evidence that they manipulated the conditions and actually injected deer with scrapies. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. In all fairness, man, you see that as being when it was first identified. Identified. The same way Lyme disease was first identified in Lyme, Connecticut, right? That didn't mean it started there. No one says it was created.

Maybe someone does. In all fairness, they point out it was identified there. Right. And so since then, since 1967, again, that's a long-ass time ago. I've done a lot. And that was a research facility. Yep. Yeah.

Government, bureaucrats, what are they doing? Why are you doing that? That goes to the telemetry stuff and again i'm all for that original telemetry because um our whether it's passenger pigeons though i don't think we we killed them that was a colonization bird that there's virus spread don't you wish you were around for passenger pigeons big time wouldn't have that a big time fun anyhow um believe me i make up for it with starlings and songbird in michigan yes but anyhow um i'm at the point in my life after being engaged and being in the

swirling dust of the arena um that i am sitting here today with all the confidence in the world that I'm sure you recognize government virtually untrustworthy virtually I can give you examples in every state where what they do is virtually proven to be immoral dishonest and counter to science in our conservation lifestyle population dynamics habitat carrying capacity sustained yield productivity that's not mysterious the jury is not still out on that and again when we initiated managed land deer permits in texas prior to the initiation of that policy where landowners determine our own bag limit because somebody downtown certainly doesn't know what my deer herd looks like. They don't know what kind of varmint patrol, what kind of supplemental food plots I put in.

Leave me alone. And so many exotics in Texas, the flourishing condition of axis deer, which are hands-off by any government agency, landowners are the best stewards of such condition and i believe that that would exist in every state if we could get past the blind obedience from the brainwashing since world war ii where people go well i don't have a gun permit you don't need a gun permit do you have a do you have a first amendment permit is there a building where you don't have a first is there a place on is there a piece of ground in america you don't have a gun permit. You don't need a gun permit. Do you have a, do you have a first amendment permit? Is there a building where you don't have a first, is there a place on,

is there a piece of ground in America? You don't have a first amendment. No, you have a first amendment. You were born with it. I don't need paperwork. Same for second amendment. But when I say that publicly, you go, well, you don't think everybody should have a gun. I go, no, everybody will never have a gun, but I don't believe that rapists and murderers and carjackers and stabbers and shooters and child molesters should ever be let out of the cage and if you stop letting them out of the cage by the very function of our failed court system we would reduce violent crime by 98 not my number the fbi uniform crime report number all this exploding violent crime it's engineered it's a direct result of

their intentions well it's gun crime no it's not it's a guy who shot people you added a cage you let him out what do you think he's gonna do doesn't matter availability where'd he get the gun i don't know where where can't you get a gun the regulated harvest though is the thing that uh intrigues me i i got a little sister who's a cop who's married to a cop in in denver and i i can talk the the other stuff a bunch too but then what i'm saying hits home for you oh absolutely and i i'll yeah anyway um regulated harvest here on the spirit of the wild ranch is or let's call it texas because my system is widespread 93 percent private property yeah but you don't you have a fence around this place that

animals can't get out of right yep or come into right right by law right so that's because we have exotics right so you have a a different system here nope there are MLD with no fences large landowners that know their habitat no fence and again believe me when I tell you I know it's hard to comprehend for Montana and wild Alaska hunters believe me I hunted no fence in Alaska and I hunted no fence and all across Canada and Montana Wyoming and Colorado you what? The fence plays zero role. It's X habitat that will support X productivity. The same exists in the Manistee National Forest. Now, can they go further to get away, but how far can you shoot your bull?

The fence plays no role whatsoever in the harvest. What role does it play? It keeps exotics from running into Buicks. What it does is it allows me to not shoot that three-year-old and that the neighbor won't shoot that three-year-old. That was the foundation of high fence hunting. My first deer kill, November 15th, 1968, was a huge button buck.

I took it to the taxidermist. I go, yeah, it was my first kill. And he goes, you're going to mount this? And I go, yeah, it's a buck feel. It's on the wall. That's how pure I am. You still got that on, Ted? You still got that mount?

Yes, it's on my cabin wall. Oh, up in Michigan. Yeah, in Michigan. And you know what's next to it? A yearling doe that was my first bow kill. If that's not the purest trophy celebration available to us, I don't know what would be. Okay, I'll get back to man and harvest.

You got to dig in on this. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll agree with you that it doesn't have anything to do with the harvest, but you also set up your aquarium walls, so to speak. You have an area of operation to which you are God, the captain of your own ship. Love when that happens. Right?

But I'm also God on my 1,200-acre Michigan swamp. No fence. There is nothing I do on this high fence that I am not mandated to do on the no fence. Nothing changes. But for regulated harvest on your 1,200 open acres, you decided one day to just shoot every buck that came through prior to the rut. Can't do that. Shouldn't do that.

You could, right? Those animals aren't going to then well your travel and and tell me how this connects to cwd oh we're talking about regulated harvest now yeah we're off cwd but it's reference it's it's it's reference to that though because in where cwd is the most dangerous possibility is in under harvested herds. And you could see that almost in every instance, I think, where the population is, if not out of control, certainly overpopulated. That being said, in Michigan,

I harass the DNR bureaucrats because of all the slaughtered deer on the roads and no corn grows, no beans grow, there's deer everywhere. I got four tags on 1,200 acres. Well, that's irresponsible. And who can dictate that I let the public on my land? Nobody. So I pushed and pushed and I brought them out. I almost had to grab them by the ankle. Come here, come here. Look at that. Where's the corn? Come over here. You know, like a school kid for, you know, smoking cigarettes.

And I said, I need a hundred doe tags. Well, you can't do that. And I go, you can't not do that. And they ran into a dead end brick wall of a we-people guy living science versus their presumptive regulations. Like in order to properly manage your property, you needed to remove that many does. Yep. And you're the only guy to do it, right?

Yeah. That's what, okay. But they resisted. They resisted. I go, well, that's great. I'll do it. By the way, we're filming this, and they offered me three doe tags. No corn! Gobbled everything up.

You could see the browse line. I'm smarter than them. I'm more knowledgeable than them. So I harassed them. I said, well, I'll be sure to do a Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild TV show and show you your immorality and that you disdain the science of sustained yield and habitat carrying capacity. That'll be a great show. What's your name again?

I'll make sure I feature you. And I got up at the time the governor was a good guy. And I said, this is what's going on. I said, they're anti-hunting. They're anti-nature. They're anti-healthy environment. They're anti-freedom. So I finally got my doe tags, and I'm able to harvest a lot of does.

Now, because I do have a hunting family, we're able to take enough bucks. But does it really matter whether shemaine shoots two and toby shoots two and rocco shoots two or or we just harvest 10 but do you do you disagree with sort of the the like the foundational american principle that wildlife belongs to the american people absolutely i'm 100 you agree with one of those agree with that i'm one of those people yeah absolutely yeah so here's one for you so on a high fence by law in texas and wherever you find him uh you have to have because you have the exotics and even though the floods come and the fences come down and next thing you know there's a kudu down down which i think is

awesome um or the zebras running loose that was a couple years ago yes it's awesome who doesn't want to kill a zebra on opening day of deer season by the way they're delicious and there's a whole another subject to be scrutinized when i post pictures of zebras and kudu and elephant people well i can see hunting for food but not just to kill stuff i go well give me the name of somebody that does that would give me share with us your last experience with someone who just kills stuff to kill stuff. Got a name? The person doesn't exist unless they let them out of jail for doing that. And they go, why would anybody shoot a zebra?

It's a deer with stripes. It's delicious. They're food on the hoof. But I would say there's a huge controversy out there an outside connotation with whack-em-stack-em doesn't lead people to the plate right they go do you really do you think do you think the guy in the tie at the safari club international banquet that says you know there's a we need to harvest an adequate supply of animals talking like that do you think he's ever inspired any young person to ever buy a hunting license

because my excitement level with whacking and stacking has cost thousands of young people to put down the crack pipe and get a bow and arrow so i dismissed that out of hand you couldn't be more wrong it's exactly what my excitement level does with fun terms like whack them and stack them ted have you ever he was the back let me just say in ted's defense from the vhs i don't need it he talked about backstraps backstrap fever i mean he was the original guy that was talking about food i'm just saying that yeah i mean it's not the original guy that talked about food but you hear what i'm saying no Ted uh um I remember someone expressing something similar to uh I can't I wish I could remember it's a famous quote expressing something similar to what Ted's

expressed is he was like without great love there could not be disappointment okay or some things such as that right so I like ted occupying the position you occupied i remember one time i don't want to name who said this i remember one time someone being like grossly disappointed with nugent because they were watching spirit of the wild and there was a date stamp and ted was hunting in texas on october 1st and they were infuriated that how could the Motor City Madman, how could he, that's Michigan's opening day of deer season. Yeah, Teddy Nuggets. Why would Ted not be in Michigan?

And he was like, I'm tired of, it's our opening day and he's in Texas. You can't win. Petty. Petty. Petty. How? Just saying, you've occupied that thing now to say to say something like and and i can i see how it's received to throw out like whack them and stack them at least people be like what is getting whacked and where is it getting stacked do you

have you ever in your life later laid in bed and thought you know i stand by what i was saying but i should have said it differently never and if i if i need to explain what whack and stack means i'm gonna call 9-1-1 and get you some fucking help um well listen you know what the most the the most the thing that shook me up the most is when you pointed out catching the limit of bluegills. Because, yeah, you stay until you get your limit. It's a stack. You stack them in a bucket.

And to go back. And smelt. It's a little bit of historical revision to go back to the 90s and criticize a statement. Because back then. You mean when he was in trouble with my friend for missing Michigan? Well, no, no, I'm just saying I'm defending the whack-em-and-stack-em statement because today in a world where maybe the more it would be,

you wouldn't say that as much in some circles, okay? Yeah. as much in some circles okay yeah he he was coming out of a time when we were trying to make hunting relevant and fun and exciting and it introduced that so it accomplished i would say a pretty significant purpose during that time yeah there's all kinds of things i see in the hunting world there's all kinds of things i see like i see it i'm like i agree with it i've done it too um there's nothing to be ashamed of but now they're just like just just come on all right let's put it this way about like just think for a minute about the ram the possible ramifications of of like what you're doing right like to have that i got a bear i'm

gonna put a baseball hat on him i'm gonna sit him up in the car seat i'm gonna put a cigarette in his mouth right the bear's dead the bear's dead you killed the bear legally you're allowed to transport the bear i wouldn't question any i like i support everyone's right to hunt bears you know where we have a population that warrant that can support hunting which is almost that. I support your ability to transport your wildlife as you see fit, top of your car, back of your car, on the hood. I support, I don't think there should be a law

saying one shouldn't put a bear in a thing. If someone said there's a law against dressing dead bears up, I would be very incredulous of like, how you're going to enforce that, what exactly it means. Or why would you propose it? But does that mean that it's smart to put a

baseball hat on a bear and a cigarette in his mouth and drive around downtown i believe that it's so inconsequential so inconsequential that we're wasting our breath discussing it okay that's a that's a totally valid point but i do look now and then i'm like among my own brothers and sisters i look now and then i'm like I'm like, man, it's just creating problems where there aren't any. You're creating a dialogue that isn't necessary to create about whether or not you should be able to put hats on bears

and cigarettes in their mouths. You know, if you look at the industry now, you watch all the different shows, whether it's Pig Man or Tim Wells or Fred Eichler or some of my favorite shows, and you see the ads by huge hunting corporations, whack them and stack them, educated them that they better have energy.

They better promote this sport with energy and enthusiasm and fun, because if it's not fun, ain't nobody going to go. And I epitomize that, if you may, that I've never been inhibited. I have fun with it. What is the difference between whacking and stacking and harvesting and butchering? Semantics. Period.

And you already gave your double middle finger to semantics. And how petty can you be? And it's the same embarrassing depth of pettiness that, Why wasn't Ted Nugent in Michigan on October 1st? Oh, shut the fuck up. Listen, that was my response at the time. That was my response at the time, and it's become something of a joke. However, I was just pointing out, I was setting the stage to be

that a person in your situation is just inherently going to have people pecking at you let her rip peck away it again i'll try to summarize it like this and it's it's conclusive and the definition of summary families with terminally ill sons and daughters five six seven year old little boys and girls for whatever reason i think i know the reasons because of my enthusiasm because of my energy on spirit of the wild for 33 years i've been doing this that little boy macon lynn six years old gonna die of cancer in six months his last request in life was to go hunting with Ted Nugent.

So guys that are more polite, guys that won't whack them and stack them, people that won't put a cigarette in the bear's mouth, Macon Lynn doesn't even know they exist. Oh, but you didn't put a cigarette in the bear's mouth. Next bear I kill, I'm going to. But my point is, these little boys and girls their families is there a more demanding vetting procedure whether you deserve to take my little boy on his last hunt than a family at that emotional horrible time in their lives to call the whack master if i qualify for that my critics can kiss my ass and i've done it

dozens of times if i have earned that you rest your case i'm untouchable no how about that how about uh chris About Chris Campbell, Navy SEAL who went to save Marcus Luttrell and the chopper crashed. His will and testament was that he wants Ted Nugent to play Fred Bear at his funeral. Critics, bring it. And here's the ultimate. This will leave you hurt. So Marcus called me and said, Chris's family would like you to play Fred Bear

when his remains come home. When and where? Got my guitar and amp. Got a buddy with a jet. Getting ready to go on to go to Norfolk. And Marcus called back and said, you've been disinvited by President Barack Obama. He won't allow you there.

So the president, the commander-in-chief, who I am diametrically opposed to on every issue, every breath the man takes that's his stand to say you to a navy seal who died for our country by declining that dead seals request and disinviting ted nugent to play fred bear at the return of his remains i'm the good guy my critics are bad guys that thing that happened that's exactly what happened so i did a private one for his family at a different time but how low can you go if you're the commander-in-chief of the united states of america no and a dead

seal has a request and you decline it because you don't like the guy involved with the request. How beautiful am I? I can hardly stand me. I'm so fucking good. If that kind of evil is that against me, that's why my confidence cup runneth over because that little kid's family thinks I'm okay to fulfill their dying son's request. And that Navy SEAL wants me to play that song. I'm surprised my feet touch the ground it's a blessing it's a gift i'm humbled by it i'm honored beyond words but those

indicators in my life make people who are upset with me for not being in michigan on october 1st. So stupid, it's hysterical. My priorities have obviously been well aimed that Fred Bear said, keep doing what you're doing. That the family of a dying child thinks I qualify to fulfill the dying request and a Navy SEAL's family wants me to play that Fred Bear song at his funeral. I mean, is there other more powerful indicators in life? Can you name any?

I can't. Or that my own family relationship, or that you're here to do an interview with me. I qualify for the meat-eater podcast. I have enough indicators. That's a high-ass bar. That's a high-ass bar. And it is.

And I know I'm controversial because in a world gone berserk, good is controversial. Well, I got to tell you, there's a long period of my life where I was outside all the time, ingested very, very little hunting media or media of any sort. And, uh, you know, Clay and I were talking on the ride over here to the ranch this morning. I'm like, where we know Ted Nugent from essentially. Right. So, um, and I have one article. I was always, always aware of, of of of ted nugent but you're like

rocker fame stardom guy and truly i didn't give you i you know like you see with people on tv i was like i don't know if this guy's what he actually is it's all an act but i'm sure i'm sure there's a good paycheck there and uh i pick up a magazine off the back of my buddy's toilet, start going through it, and I'm reading about, it was like an opening day type of scene of elk hunting. And it's one of your articles. And man, I'm there. You're talking about the woods coming alive

and the elk are bugling. It's dark. You're not in them yet, but you know, it's going to happen. And I'm guiding it. I'm a full-time elk guide at this point. Right. And I, and I'm, I'm living it. I'm there. And then the reveal starts happening. And you're like, you know, like I turn in my stand and I'm like, oh, guys hunting out of a stand. Huh? Okay. Sure. Still there. Still painting the scene. And then you're on, I think you even described like a feeder going off or you're, you describe a high fence. I've never hunted an elk over a feeder, but I would. Okay. Well, it's a long time ago. So, um, this is like how the ages have progressed anyway but you were in a high fence

place and i was just like nope this guy nope i don't know not legit not no this is 100 right yep and i was elk hunting perfect and you know it's it's truly own only come to now where i'm like oh this guy has you can't ignore the passion that this man has and they're none of my bullshit meters are going off on when you talk about the animals and the outside and the wise but i mean that's a big span of time from that article where i'm like oh this guy isn't doing it the way I do it. So he must not be good. But I do do it the way you do it. I hunted Alaskans in 77, got a moose, got a bear,

got a 400-inch caribou. I hunted the Sudan. I was the last white guy to get out of the Sudan alive. There's no fences. I hunted all across the world, no fences. I hunted all of Manistee National Forest. I hunted wild everywhere. I've hunted everywhere. No fences. fences. I hunted all of Manistee National Forest. I hunted wild everywhere.

I've hunted everywhere, no fences. But sometimes I hunt in a fence. Some people's land is in a fence. My land is in a fence because I want to hunt oryx and aldad and blackbuck. And it's as real, it's even far more difficult than no fence Sudan or no fence Zimbabwe or, quite honestly, no fence Illinois or especially no fence South Texas. You want dumb, retarded animals, go down to South Texas and make the sound of a corn feeder going off.

And I'm all for that because I like to kill stuff with my bow and arrow. I like to get close. I've done it all, and I will continue to do it all. My Michigan ground, I have a high fence in Michigan, but my 1,200 acres is all wild wild ground and i'll give you a bow and arrow and if you can kill a deer on my ground you can have it good luck they're the smartest animals in the world and here on this property you get your bow and arrow you you can have whatever you kill and you ain't gonna kill. These are the smartest, spookiest animals. You better be Cochise meets Natty Bumpo

because these animals are spookier than my Michigan swamp animals. These animals are so tuned in. So I hunt for the hunt, and all my hunts are the hunt. Now, do I desire a dumb deer? I deserve a dumb deer. I need a dumb deer after a few weeks of hunting and if you want that go to illinois next to one of those forest preserves those are wild deer there's no fences but they're dumb kansas some dumb deer um ohio some dumb deer compared to my Michigan deer.

My first white tail in Wyoming up there near Devil's Tower. God, that was the easiest deer I've ever killed in my life. 100 yards away, they don't even care if you're there. I'd never seen a deer like that in my life. And I couldn't wait to go back because I'm sick and tired of white tails and snorts. So I've done it all. Back when I was hunting Alaska every year, every year from 77,

and the wilds of Africa, still hunting with a bow and arrow. I didn't film any of that because there was no outdoor TV and I didn't even have any idea. I just wanted to go hunting. So I do hunt the way you hunt. Yeah, I guess my point though is that at that point of reading the article

i thought you and i were quite opposed and it just takes a long time because the high fence yeah to come full circle well because i also had this image of like guys got this big lifestyle that's far outside of hunting right touring rock and roll awesome all the things that you think about right awesome stuff exactly so now you're saying you can you connect with him and you see some of the positions he's got yeah but it's taken a hell of a long time yeah well yeah what i've always i have never doubted um even in the areas where you've said things and i'm like man i wish you wouldn't have said it that way uh like i agree with the sentiment i just wish you wouldn't have

expressed it that way it's it's always been where i have always known and felt that we were in large measure talking about the same things i mean i've known since those days in the late 80s early 90s that you uh did find that like that that that sentence that you've said many times like the spirit of the wild that phrase the spirit of the wild that you felt that spirituality sure and and promoted it and and connected with it fuck i've never doubted that shit i've never doubted that it's just yeah at times i have because of the role you're in at times i've just been let me let me can i summarize yeah can i summarize something that's unique that's happening here that i can maybe i could say is that you guys it's interesting sitting

here with steve ranella and ted nugent, because your passion for hunting and the way you articulate it and the excitement and all the things that you did years ago that formulated stuff, I think you had a big influence on Steve Rinella. Absolutely. I mean, a very positive influence on the way, like talking about the spirit of the wild, when in his own words, Steve talks about the spirit of the wild when in his own words Steve talks about this exact same thing I think it and you learn to play

it I never learned to play guitar when I was a kid you learn to play guitar the first he learned how to play was Fredbear yeah oh boy I mean it's just like did you listen let me let me make my guitar no I never never taught we need to hear him place we need to hear him play Fredbear. Go ahead. But so Steve Rinella is the guy that came on the scene, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that brought a new academic, intellectual kind of draw into hunting that a whole bunch of people have been like,

man, we never heard anybody talk about hunting like that. And it was an appeal. It was the same thing you did. It really was. No doubt. I've seen that. Sure. What he did was the same thing that you did.

And it's interesting to see y'all sitting together because probably 90% of the stuff y'all would probably agree on. And the messaging and the frequency of the messaging is slightly different. And I feel like what Ted's position is, the messaging and the frequency of the messaging is slightly different. And I feel like what Ted's position is, is, hey, we are what we are. There's no reason to lean any direction to try to accommodate anybody.

And like, there's this like stance of just, this is who we are. You've come in in a way that we all deeply respect, have catered the message of hunting in like probably a broader way so here's my question here's my question easy with that assessment okay but go ahead okay well it's not perfect but um so my question is you know i think well my assessment is that i think there's a place where you you stand and say hey this is just who we are we whack them and stack them it's just kind of what we do and that's what we've been doing for you know thousands of years and that's just who we are as humans we're not changing and then but then there's also the side of the equation where we you know

cater would be the wrong word but where we appeal make our message more appealing to a broader audience do you see what i'm saying like there's two things going on have you ever thought of being a marriage counselor if i may if i may one of the reasons will you guys scoot closer and hold hands one of the reasons that you're uncomfortable with some of my uh deliveries and you were uncomfortable with some of my deliveries is because before there was the term political correctness political correctness was beginning to happen and in the hunting second amendment community our so-called leaders were afraid of their own shadow in outdoor life magazine they would actually say don't wear camouflage in public and don't bring up the hunting makes people uncomfortable it's just the total opposite

approach you should take but but i like i've spent my whole my whole career has been talking about hunting my whole career is identifying as a hunter sure i've never done anything other than talk about professionally and otherwise i've never done anything other than hunt since before i was supposed to before i was legally allowed to do it to now and talk about hunting however at times like i have strong opinions about how i like to explain it or not how i have strong opinions about how to explain it so that people are most likely to get what I'm saying and get on board with what my program is. And a salute to you because you do a great job at that.

The whole concept of meat eater, it galvanizes the entire process of the hunt that the fruition is sustenance. So I salute you on that. But I'm not sitting there being like, oh, no, no, no, don't show that. That's dirty and naughty. That's not it.

I'm like, listen, there's a lot to be proud of here. I just have opinions about how I like to express it. And you do a fine job. I support 100% the way you do it. You were at it long before me, and I don't even like to be in here. I don't even like to be in here acting like they're sort of like you're, what you've done, what I've done, and juxtaposing it all. You've been there long before me.

I've just like, as a point,'ve talked about a couple areas cwd and whacking them a stack and there's a point where i'm like i'm like ted man i i just wish you thought about this a little differently i thought about it a lot and i'm not going to think about it differently because i think the best i expect you to i think the best remedy against denial um propaganda against hunting propaganda against venison propaganda against a self-sufficient lifestyle is what we embody and what you promote beautifully i think i promote it more effectively because i'm uninhibited in that, that you'll never, well, I was going to say, I was going to say you will never address the outside demographic,

but you have, you've lured in an outside demographic. He's done that a lot. Because there was an establishment of field to table prior to meat eater. And you, you maximize that delivery in a, a perfect way but there's more to it but here's the thing corinne's give me the wrap it up let me just say one last that'll be the day okay look at it like this for a second though let's say you're addressing the american public i do every day i know okay corinne this is what people came to this podcast to hear no this to hear let's say one's addressing the american public and their interest is that they want to be able

to continue um they want to be able to continue their lifestyle of hunting and they want to make sure that there is a lot of wild animals around okay and they come to the american public and they're like okay in the back of my head, I'm trying to preserve my lifestyle and preserve something that I feel is beautiful and right, which is hunting. And perfect. Hunting, fishing, trapping. These things are right. Traditional use practices need to be defended.

Promoted, not defended. Okay. Preserved. Defended, promoted, preserved, whatever. And I have one minute to speak to him about it. I might be more inclined to take my minute and say something like, there's a system that works very well

and we've fine-tuned it in this country where we have biologists and others that count population levels and determine the long-term, that are tasked with guaranteeing the long-term viability of these species and they determine that they set regulations by which we abide this is not a free-for-all we're not driving game animals to extinction quite the opposite the things that are thriving most in this country are the things that have hunters interest your minutes up by the way okay that was your minute

that was awesome but like i would tend to take an approach like that well you like you need to do more you need to do more homework did you see i'm serious don't laugh at you need to do more homework please did you see my vh1 hunting special you You didn't see it, did you? Did you see my MTV hunting special? Don't tell me I didn't see this stuff. Did you see them? Yes. Because I articulated that profoundly. I never said that you didn't articulate it.

Well, good. But you said, given a minute, you do it your system, you did it good. But guess who's done it better, longer, and to thousands of times more people than you have? Phil. All across Europe in all across europe all across when was the last time you were on tucker carlson explaining sustained yield wildlife habitat well i could my point is i'm not i'm not i got i got i can't tell you well i'm going to get you on because you're a great job but my point is is that the point you just made is the exact point

i have i'm not saying you don't okay yeah yeah he's not always made. I'm not saying you don't. Yeah, yeah. He's not comparing and comparing. I'm not saying you haven't made the point. He's just saying he would say it different. But the reason. I just think. We don't say it different.

We say it exactly the same. But when you go like, well, here's what we do is we whack them and then stack them. I just. That's so oversimplification. That is another example of me not being in Michigan on October 1st. It's grossly oversimplified. And he's not criticizing you for that either. And I'm not criticizing him.

But it's a thing that people hear and misinterpret. Well, all I can tell you is that my vapor trail of recruitment and retention. Unparalleled. Unparalleled. Unparalleled. I would never, ever deny it. And you know why? Because I'm uppity. I'm believable.

I know my science. I'm able to articulate my science and then embellish it. Because I'm just typically an uppity guy. I'm very much alive. But that uppity-ness and aliveness is the contagious factor that's what draws them in and here's an example and again i'm not bragging i know what i do and again the deer will humble me immensely later on as as will mrs nugent but when i go to a shot show okay you can promote with all due respect i haven't been there lately with you

and i mean this with respect you you can promote Steve Ornella, 2 o'clock at the X booth. Michael Waddell, 2 p.m. You can promote all the biggest names in our industry. We won't touch new people. Ryan Callahan, 330. 315 to 330. I will stop to tie my shoe and have more people around me than all of you guys put together.

Not at a rock and roll event. Yeah. At a hunting event. That's a touch anecdotal. No contest for me. And no, it's not anecdotal. It's universal. Zero contest for me.

Steve Rilla didn't write tied up in love, though. I know. total zero it's universal zero contest for me steve reilly didn't write tied up in love though and and when i'm at i've got the highest votes ever for 28 years on the board of directors of the nra except for charlton aston why because i'm absolute and i embellish i don't intentionally embellish. It's just the way I talk. It's more exciting. It's more Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang than Billy Joel. So my point is, and I know you're not Billy Joel, Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang. My point is that, yes, I concur. A slightly different approach. My uppity-ness passion is so contagious.

And they know that I'm not trying to hide anything, and neither are you. Again, I can't salute your style enough. It's awesome. The whole meat-eater concept is perfect. But so is hitting a demographic that will never, ever watch your show. And I've caused them, in many instances i don't know the numbers but i know it's meaningful to buy a bow and arrow yeah and to buy a hunting license and to join us so i would if that is your like if that is your measure i That's the only measure. Is there another measure?

I'm just saying, if that is one's measure, undeniably. I would never, ever, ever come here and suggest anything other than that you are the most impactful, alive human being today in the world of hunting. There is no, like, there's not even a second place because i take advantage of every public opportunity to promote it with passion and rock and roll and embellishment that's the only word comes to mind and so the people who are like when i did the joe rogan thing and he'll tell you that the response about the the the vapor trail of the tractor and the disc and the plow no one had ever heard that before no one had ever known that in order to grow tofu you got to kill everything and anything that might slither back into that tofu field we're going to call man santa we're going to poison the shit out of them um so your tofu

salad is more deadly or your friends of wildlife services yes your tofu salad is more deadly than if ted nugent traded his bone heroin for an a10 warthog um you can't kill more stuff than the growing of vegetables and wine it's the it's the definitive genocide of anything threatening those agriculture products no one has ever even mentioned that before because i'm the only guy in the public visibility that actually runs a tractor and likes the seagulls and the crows following me and and i know that i'm slaughtering everything so i can grow lettuce or whatever crop i'm growing so it's that boots on the ground understanding the communication needs of conservation to a distant disconnected demographic and i've drawn them in um do i piss some people off yeah mostly people in the industry that don't get it that will never recruit anybody

it's literally like i'm saving kids from the whitewater rapids and the the swimming coach is angry and cal's english teacher in missoula montana yes yes exactly he cussed he was just cussing and swearing he saved the children but did you see that speedo you would have made my mama mad too buddy i made my mama mad actually my mama loved this shit so my my point is that i'm a spirited unafraid unapologetic absolutist and i do pg-13 it because i speak to a lot of young organizations on t on spirit of the wild i know that i have a an unprecedented youthful demographic even though i'm one of the oldest guys on there on tv because of my exuberance because of my i'm unafraid and you didn't adjust your style because you felt that you had to reach an expanded demographic i think it's

really you i didn't make i don't i never you just do you just do steve i yeah i never imagined making a style it's just like there's a thing I cared about, and that's how I cared about it. That's how I talked about it. That's what I'm saying. Y'all did the same thing. My motivation completely. I could care less whether I make people happy or angry.

This is what I believe, and this is how I present it. And I'm not for everybody. You're not for everybody. But thank God we're both in the same team. That's right. What are you afraid of? Nothing. Nothing at all. That's right. What are you afraid of? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Not even this. You don't feel like a weekly, daily, like a fear of something? Nothing. Never. Anything. It's because I carved out this unbelievable dream. Holy. Look at what I live.

I mean, I live on paradise in my mission you got to come to michigan my swamp i have a fen i have the largest fen east of the mississippi that's a unique wet land um and the biologists come because i got the mitchell satyr butterfly that's thriving it's almost extinct everywhere else and the christmas tree fern which they claim the mitchell satyr butterfly needs to propagate and they all the biologists go you know why your fin is so healthy because you must kill a lot of deer yep so i know what sustained yield is i know what habitat care and capacity i'm the first guy to bring those terms into the public arena i was the first guy to do that nobody from sci ever did that you know but they're not only that but they're not allowed in the

public arena because they're too stodgy yeah um so so i i've carved out a dream where i'm i'm really not afraid of anything um you fuck with me you lose um and and i i live this independent, cocky, confident, righteous, do-good lifestyle. And it's so simple. That's why my music is so raw. I mean, I have a new record coming out next month. I was going to ask you about that. Just a moment. Yeah, but he had a record come out last year.

Was it just pre-COVID he had a record come out? music made me do it music made me do it monster song this new record holy god what a riot um so yeah i've i'm old but i'm healthy and i i live a perfect life it's just i i want for nothing can i see one last question go nuts there are many concerns but if you have uh advice for outdoorsmen let's even say outdoorsmen and outdoors women yes you have it what would you like what is the piece of advice you have for people that want to preserve a lifestyle? Well, every problem in America can be traced down to conservatives not engaging. And again, what's conservative values? God, family, country, Constitution, Bill of Rights, that work ethic, that entrepreneurial spirit, that man in the arena, law and order.

All those things I just mentioned are not only the foundational values that made this the greatest quality of life in the history of the world, but they're also very controversial today. All the best things about America are considered controversial. So we've discovered through our Hunter Nation organization, people go to hunternation.org, they can see the statistics. We bought the list of every licensed hunter in America back in 2016 when we saw an outsider campaigning for the presidency

against a horrible, horrible power-abusing criminal Clinton organization and when what we discovered was so heartbreaking that in every state there's an enormous and consequential percentage of licensed hunters that are not registered to vote and that have never registered to vote but they're also the loudest squawkers about infringements on second amendment rights um regulations hunting regulation hunting fishing and trapping which i've always used the big three hunting fishing and trapping they're all critical essential conservation uh endeavors that an embarrassing percentage of licensed hunters don't vote we got michigan wisconsin pennsylvania was in texas sick over 60 percent of licensed vote. We got Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Would you say it wasn't Texas? Over 60% of licensed hunters in Texas

have never registered to vote. How could that be true? How can that be true? Wisconsin, 50%. Michigan, 50-some percent. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, the big three, even though Texas is more powerful and more inclusive than those

three states. In in 2016 i campaigned maniacally in michigan wisconsin pennsylvania to basically inspire slash scold what i consider to be the most defined conservative demographic a licensed hunter all those basic traditional family values are they embody the hunting lifestyle the hunting family and we got them to register and vote in 2016 and we won though as a 501c3 i can't endorse a candidate and i never did but when you mention god family and country you know who that doesn't include and And all across this country, every state has an embarrassing percentage of licensed hunters that are not engaged. And again, I'm controversial because I've always been engaged. When I see stupid regulations, I protest.

When I see Scott County Park and Brown County Park, no hunting allowed, and it looks like a moonscape and it's all dirt and ribby deer. We attended meetings with the bureaucrats, and we opened up bow hunting in those states. And the vegetation, the habitat came back, and the diversity came back, and revenues were generated, and family hours of recreation were generated. And it didn't happen just by buying a hunting license. No, it happened by lobbying and by showing up at these committee hearings and raising hell and identifying the embarrassment of environmental destruction when you don't harvest responsibly. And so I've seen how just speaking up can change stupid into good. And that's what I've always been involved with when I see regulations. Like in Michigan, even if you had a concealed weapons permit, which you don't need, ultimately, you don't need a permit from anybody to carry a gun. God gave you the right to keep and bear arms.

But even if you had a permit, which I did back in the 60s and 70s, you couldn't carry a pistol when you're bow hunting. How do you square that? Since when does self-defense have anything to do with recreational concerns and so i lobbied against that there were 11 counties in michigan you couldn't hunt on sundays my brain didn't know what to do with this information it's just insane which it is so i lobbied and got those counties legalized steve did you know you must know in michigan until 1975 the government said you can't

climb a tree and hunt but have you got to be there's a man in charge of my tree climbing i want to meet this guy i'm going to hire mike tyson whenever anybody does something stupid i'm gonna say mike give that guy one in the throat would you just punch him because how insane regulating somebody out of a tree how embarrassing is that so so yeah i've uh i've i like that you uh you work within the system often yet by expanding the system to include common sense but yeah you but you you uh half of you rebels against it but half of you rebels against it, but half of you is very willing to engage in it. Well, I think... To get the change you're after,

you're like, there's a civil... You have like a strong civil disobedience vein. While pushing to make it legal. Yeah, but then you also have a policy vein. And I think the ultimate rebellion is engagement. And again, this is an experiment. That's the thing that glues them together. Yes, absolutely.

And I think they're one in the same in actual practice. And so when I see stupid, I attack it. And I spotlight what makes it stupid so that people who have accepted stupid finally goes, yeah, that is stupid. You know, Cal spends a good part of his personal and professional life cajoling people into engagement. Yes, sometimes it takes advocacy, right?

As we can review. And all you hear is, talk about hunting and keep politics out of it. I'm like, well, if you want your hunting, it is politics. My God, what the hell are you doing? What is more political than hunting regulations? Oh, man. So, oh man it's so yeah it's driven me crazy and that's where you hear the the squawking within the industry huh Nugent's radical well hello of course I'm radical how dare I experiment self-government

that's the most radical thing in the history of the human experience I'm really swinging over to this uncle Ted moniker that you michiganders have we got a lot in common ted well ted you would love his podcast for real it's 30 minutes i need to tap into this core information be sure you dump on me how to access all these things and out in my spirit uh campfire you should witness because it's all i want to do it it's all over the map it's guitar playing and it's social stuff it's silly stuff it's hardcore stuff it's condemnation of power abusers and illegitimacy that infests our government uh but it's also fun outrageous defiant uninhibited irreverent all of my favorite things

irreverence you're smiling we need a we need a meat eater episode with you two in michigan absolutely absolutely how about this let me leave you with this another one that's what i gotta leave you with can you give us so i don't have to argue with a bunch of people can you right now give us the verbal okay is it are you legally allowed to say that we can close the episode with fred bear absolutely in fact i like it's some some annoying person's not going to give us a cease and desist? I think you should open it, at least with that opening chorus.

That's the ultimate. We recently used it. We do a trivia show. Do the whole thing. We recently used it, a clip on the trivia show. I would use every, all of the above.

I have a song on the new record called American Campfire and a song called Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. I'll play it for you. That is just beautiful. Have you ever heard my instrumental Sunrise? Oh, yeah.

Oh, what a, if that doesn't capture our, you're getting to the location and waiting for the life to come alive around us. Only I could have written that. And it was spontaneous. Michael Lutz in Ann Arbor had a new recording device. I go, well, I got my six-string Fender bass here. Put a mic in here. Let's do this.

Take one. I made that song. That's how Fred Bear happened. Take one. I showed it to my guys in between sobbing, and we recorded it. Take one. So, yeah, use that stuff. Use Sunrise.

I'm the only guy who's created really outdoorsy music. That's also ballsy. Okay. Now you got it. Who else? What other song is outdoorsy? Don't give me this country crap. Well, outdoorsy and, see, there's outdoorsy and then there's outdoorsy and ballsy. Yes.

Outdoorsy and ballsy. But Sunrise is a beautiful, it's symy, and then there's outdoorsy and ballsy. Yes. Outdoorsy and ballsy. But Sunrise is a beautiful, it's symphonic. Yeah. And Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, I have a song on my, a couple albums ago called Earth Tones that is just orchestrated. Amboy Dukes, Hibernation, Migration. Check out the song Migration on the first amboy dukes a beautiful instrumental orchestrated symphonic you know crescendo here comes the elk

i i i unleashed that in my music i'm very very proud of that all right this is urgent this was grand deadly deadly you people deserve me you are you are special people thank you i've always said if you're not having fun with me you're weird thank you very much man god bless you yeah thanks ted I'm real! All day, baby. We're at a stranglehold. It's a stranglehold. It's amazing. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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