By: Ted Nugent
Meat hunters are perfect conservationists. Sport hunters are perfect conservationists. Casual hunters are perfect conservationists. Gungho hunters are perfect conservationists. And shout it out loud and proud, trophy hunters are perfect conservationists!
The mere act of purchasing a hunting license, the gargantuan spending orgy on all the plethora of sporting gear and associated taxes, the vast related economy of food, lodging, travel, fuel, supplies, groceries, restaurants, ATVs, trucks, cabins, land, foodplot seed, fertilizer, tractors, equipment, guides, outfitters, taxidermists, and assorted gear are all about as perfect of a value based wise use conservation of these sacred renewable resources as we humans can accomplish.
The globally celebrated and conclusively proven sound science based American wildlife conservation model of pay as you go has brought back game populations from the brink of extinction following the unregulated wanton marketing slaughter of yore, to the healthiest, thriving game populations in the history of mankind.
The meat hunter, of which I am proud to be, pays our way, balances the herds and brings home the bacon.
Perfect.
By: Ted Nugent
I wander the wild on a daily basis. It’s just what I do. I fortunately carved out my ultimate American outdoor lifestyle Dream long, long ago to make sure I lived my life, liberty and pursuit of gonzo happiness with everything I got, and everything that God gave me, and the rewards are immeasurable.
My radar picks up on the smallest of surrounding detail as I cruise my sacred wildgrounds, and I see, hear, smell and feel new things each day that spark interest, intrigue, fascination, and wonderful memories.
There’s an old scrape there, a buckrub, a blowdown, deerbed, a new trail, turkey scratchings, a birdnest, some old bones, a shed antler, some feathers from an unlucky victim of a predator, and an endless plethora of earthly goodies that never fail to stimulate and educate me.
More and more lately I’ve been taking note of old, historical treestand remnants that bring a glowing smile to my face, for those old pieces of dilapidated, busted-up 2x4s hanging precariously from forked branches bring a flood of amazing forever moments strategizing to ambush a backstrapper.
By: Ted Nugent
Pretty simple stuff, those wonderful four seasons of the year! Who could not love and celebrate them all!
I just created another killer instrumental song recently titled Winter Spring Summer Fall and it flowed out of me like life’s breath itself!
Going back to the earliest years with my amazing band The Amboy Dukes, I have created instrumentals, moving pieces dare I say, with songtitles very close to my heart that clearly follow my love and passion for the outdoor lifestyle; Scottish Tea, Migration, Homebound, Free Flight, Hibernation, TNT Overture, Earthtones, Sunrize and now this new orchestral primal, instinctual celebration of our love of the four-season dynamo that encompasses and facilitates life itself.
Some may think that our love of hunting and the great outdoors focuses sole on the fall season, and for some this may very well be true.
Nothing like the cool, crisp, delicious predator air of October and November to set our hearts a-flutter!
By: Ted Nugent
On the wall of our old NorthWoods Michigan Nuge family log cabin are the artfully mounted heads of a pair of handsome whitetail deer. These two mounts literally reek of glowing memory tsunamis of every minute detail of each encounter that reside deep in my soul and remain on call for my serious happiness celebration anytime and everytime I see them or even think about them.
Afterall, that is the essence of the art of taxidermy and also why nobody ever hires a taxidermy artist to mount their chicken no matter how enjoyable the Cordon Bleu family meal memory may be.
Many guests to our wilderness cabin end up staring at these two deer on the wall and eventually and inevitably inquire as to why I had them mounted, for you see, the one is a button buck fawn of the year 1969 and the other is a doe fawn of the year 1970.
As I excitedly go into the detailed stories behind each kill, some soon begin to understand the spiritual moment of my excitement while others remain somewhat confused as to why anyone would ever bother to mount such non-trophy animals, missing the whole point of what such taxidermy work truly represents.
Over the years I have had many more big game kills mounted and many of them do indeed qualify as genuine trophies by any and all such measurements, both official and non-official.
By: Ted Nugent
OK. I’m old. Not tired or worn out by any means, but relatively travel-weary after a very wild 60+ year (so far) hyper rock-n-roll blitz of superhuman/animal proportions around the globe.
I started my guitarslamming American Dream way, way back around 1955, and by the time I was 9 years old, I was already rocking out onstage like a guitarboy possessed in various duets, reviews, combos, trios and bands.
And, mind you, my mystical flight of the arrow flingfest erupted even earlier than that, if you can believe it!
Believe it!
Adventure shortage I know not, and I have thrilled and continue to thrill at every magical moment in both dynamic arenas of life, liberty and the gonzo pursuit of my ultra-rock-n-roll bowhunting happiness. And to this day 72.4 years later, the eternal passionfires blaze on ferociously into that not so quiet night!
By: Ted Nugent My wonderful Catahoula/black mouth cur Happy was singing the ultimate hound howl as I strained to find the limb-clinging bushytail high aloft in the old Live Oak tree. Old Happy is never wrong and wasn’t about to...
By: Ted Nugent
Whew! That was crazy exciting! Talkin’ about Gonzo springcleaning outrage! A bewildering whirlwind vortex of shrapnel infested dust has finally settled here at CampNuge as I just wrapped up the most insane auction in the history of insane auctions! I painfully soldoff a lifetime overabundance of incredible guns, one of a kind iconic guitars, artistic knives, beautiful wildlife artwork masterpieces, scads of historical bows and arrows, custom trucks and hotrods, legendary rock-n-roll memorabilia and unique career paraphernalia from rock-n-roll hell.
All of a sudden my barns, shops and closets have room to move in!
Though TribeNuge always conducts some sort of basic springcleaning as an annual ritual of reorganization, cleanup and streamlining responsibility, this auction was surely a once in a lifetime ultra-cleanout that should have probably happened a long time ago, but better late than never as the saying goes.
As Shemane and I continue to settle into our new Texas home, we are still in the process of getting things organized and as we haul boxes from old house to new house, this is the perfect time to sort out the truly desirable goods from an accumulation of marginally lesser desirable items.
And though my auction soldoff more than 400 individual items, as we go through our stuff now, I am reminded why I had the sale to begin with. I still have a crazy amount of really cool stuff to keep me more than busy, happy and adventurous.
By: Ted Nugent
It’s not like I haven’t got plenty to keep me crazy busy in between deerseasons, that’s for sure! But even with the nonstop orgy of my musical adventure, songwriting, guitarslamming, tone tweaking, equipment experimentation, jamming, sonic defiance, and soulmusic alchemy, I still dream relentlessly of October, November, December 2021 and beyond!
Gee, I’m almost like a deerhunting junkie for God’s sake! And speaking of God, I would certainly like to thank Him immensely for the diversity of my life’s adventures.
I raise maximum God, family, country, freedom hell everyday on global media, fulfill my daily ranch chore responsibilities, do my very best to wear out my beloved hound dogs, shoot a squirrel or two in the eyeball, check my trapline each morning, diligently pursue my husband, father and grandfather duties, and constantly reachout to remind my elected government employees that the Nugent family expects them to live up to their sacred Constitutional Oaths.
Then of course there’s always vacuuming, sweeping, dusting, laundry, general home maintenance, grocery shopping, etc, and today I mounted a new US flag and Texas flag to the front of our home.
I had to chainsaw some lowhanging limbs on the fence again this morning, fill a few feeders, cut and remove some old barbwire tangles, train with and clean a few guns, exercise my Mathews bow, and oh yeah, sign a couple thousand Come And Take It hats and flags (tednugent.com) for the hardcore freedom demanding masses!
Then I had a quick breakfast and here I am.
By: Ted Nugent
113 days and 106 deerhunting sits later since returning home to Texas last November, (I duck hunted a few mornings and evenings) the ghost appeared for the 1st time before me! Axis deer! By far the most invisible, and quite possibly, the most desirable critter on SpiritWild Ranch, and for many hunters, all across Texas.
Nestled back in a prime Primos Double Bull popup blind deep in the vast mesquite jungle, the gorgeous and most delicious of the deer family appeared at the edge of the distant foodplot like an apparition from the cedar valley sanctuary.
Oh my!
Still more than 200 yards out, but with a good hour of shooting light remaining, my hope meter sprang to life with visions of the spotted deer entering my killzone.
Ever so cautiously and painstakingly slow, the foursome of stags browsed and nibbled their way in my direction.
My Mathews bow was up and ready when even at that for off range, the lead buck’s head jerked erect, head swiveling to and fro, and all four deer spun and beat a hasty retreat back into no-mans-land.
As usual.
Never underestimate the power of the kill. Never compromise the essence of the kill. Never apologize for the duty of the kill. Always celebrate that it is indeed the kill that consummates the hunt and brings healthy, beautiful conservation balance to the flocks and herds while providing hard earned sacred protein for our bellies.
The kill is good. The kill is perfect.
Believe me when I tell you that nobody knows better than me that the kill itself is but a hiccup flash in time, that indeed we don’t hunt just to kill, but it is surely the kill that ultimately wraps up the natural, pure predator instinct and never-ending challenging efforts that drive us to hunt in the first place.
Give me a moment here, would you please. I must gather my thoughts, calm my nerves and do everything in my substantial power to manage the tsunami of emotional wreckage currently coming undone.
You see, it is the end of February 2021, and my beloved whitetail deerseason in Texas comes to a painful, heartbreaking, screeching halt on March 1st, and quite honestly, I just don’t know what to do with my bad-self.
With the wonderful Texas Parks and Wildlife “Managed Land Deer Permit” system we the conservation people of the mighty Lone Star State created many years ago for optimal wildlife health and balance by putting deer harvest control and decisions in the hands of landowners where it belongs, we get to hunt our whitetails right to the end of February, and let me tell you, there is simply no place else I would want to live, or quite frankly, could live the hunting life like I do.
The gorgeous whitetail buck was still a long-ways off, but if he stays on course along the rocky dry creekbed, I just may get an arrow off for more backstrap dreams. It may be late in the season for whitetails on this beautiful, cold February afternoon, but you would think this was my very first encounter ever with a deer I was so damn excited.
A handsome doe with two good sized yearlings meandered past my ambush tree and I was gearing up for a hopeful shot after a long, patience testing vigil when I caught movement off my left shoulder in the puckerbrush tangles below.
Well, lo and behold, there is no question we are in Texas baby, when the telltale red and white spotted beast stepped into view, and immediately my whitetail dreams pulsate
I constantly celebrate my extreme good fortune to share deerhunting campfires with the best people that roam the earth. Life’s blessings in the deerhunting world come in many forms, but to connect so intimately so often every season with so many great families could very well be the greatest blessing of them all.
My annual 777 Ranch deerhunt in Hondo Texas is a perfect example of such a grand experience. Each January I join legendary international professional big game hunter Jeff Rann and his wonderful wife Kwezi and team at this amazing wildlife paradise and historical whitetail deer hunting destination in South Texas.
South Texas is certainly a deerhunting paradise. My annual whitetail winter safari around the Uvalde, Knippa, Sabinal, Hondo region southwest of San Antonio is beyond any bowhunting dream this old Michigan deerhunter could have ever imagined.
Blessed and beyond fortunate to be invited on to the 8000-acre Mosing family 4M Ranch all these years has brought me so much joy I can hardly stand it. Managed for nearly 50 years for optimal healthy, thriving wildlife habitat through balanced deer numbers has created a deer herd that you would have to see it and hunt it to believe it.
For starters, I would like to wish my deeranddeerhunting.com Spirit BloodBrothers a very happy 2021! As we throttle into another gift of a new year of life in the eternal deercamps of America, I hope we all maximize the positive and fight like mad to reduce and hopefully eliminate as much of the negative as we can in our every word, deed and action.
I will be sharing some of my amazing deerhunts from 2020 and still going on into 2021 here in an effort to emphasize the many lessons I have learned. When approached with the proper mindset, each and every hunt will provide important lessons in not only how to be more efficient deerhunters, but more importantly, how these powerful lessons of cause and effect can be applied to our every day lives for overall upgrade.
Many of us will hunt nonstop for the next month or so, and I thank God everyday for the opportunity to connect with His physics of spirituality in the soul cleansing great outdoors.
Anybody get the license plate number on that runaway tandem gravel scow that just twelve-wheel drifted broadside into our American Dream! I think it said “2020” in big, ugly, bold numbers!
That is a number we will not soon forget, unfortunately!
I’ve been around for 72 of these wild earthly American years, (measured in deerseasons) and I’ve seen and witnessed a lot of extremes, but there was no way I was ready for what the year 2020 had in store for us.
Here on this wonderful December 17, 2020 glorious day of bowhunting whitetail deer on the gamerich grounds of Texas, I pause to say a loud and proud, loving Happy Birthday to my dear old dad, Warren Henry Nugent. Born on this day in 1920 in Detroit, Michigan, dad would have been the big 100 this year!
I know we don’t frame everything in our lives in deerhunting terms (almost) but having just celebrated my 72nd birthday with a deercamp full of incredible Americans as I do every year, I must share the amazing consistency with which so many people communicate with me as to how their birthday celebrations do indeed reference our beloved deerhunting lifestyle more often than not.
Hunting is a very individual, independent loner function for many of us in an otherwise gregarious world. Sure, hunting camp is a powerfully traditional gathering of family and friends, harking back to our very earliest ancestors as we discovered the necessity of teamwork to slay the mighty dinosaurs and giant beasts of prey, but our individual hunting time is almost always a loner experience.
In the modern world of deerhunting, our natural predatory meanderings, swampbusting, woodland forays and ridgerunning pursuits are more often than not a very personal, solo endeavor.
Even though the year is not quite over and we continue to celebrate some great deerhunting as the Christmas Holidays approach, during ThanXgiving with family and friends we can begin to review another year, another tsunami of powerful memories, some great, some not so great, but nonetheless, in the final analysis, how we here in the United States of America have much to be thankful for.
I am ever so thankful to be an American, where life, liberty and our individual pursuit of happiness can still guide our every choice and every dream.
I am well aware of and deeply committed to joyously celebrating any and all beginnings of each year’s hunting seasons whenever and wherever they may occur. With early archery seasons kicking off close to summertime and various state’s early gun openers and early doe seasons erupting here, there and everywhere, it is difficult to keep track of all the deerhunting startup dates around the country.
And of course, more opportunities are always better than fewer opportunities!
Being that as it may, I am equally certain that all my fellow deerhunting maniacs across America know very well and good when all such opportunities take place in our home and destination states, and certainly, they are all special and worthy of serious anticipation and gungho celebration.
By: Ted Nugent
Early November in the heartland truly is a time to rejoice and celebrate our spiritual connection with nature with maximum mucho gusto! According to all my hunting buddies across the land, our deerhunting dreams are alive and well and the Great Spirit of the Wild runs deep and strong.
I think we all know that each and every day hunting can be best described as some of the happiest and most fulfilling days of our lives, and more and more, hunting families in America cherish these soul cleansing times together more passionately and vigorously especially is these trying political times.
Having spent the better part of 2020 stumping for President Donald Trump, I have had the distinct and humbling opportunity to meet with and connect with conservative families here, there and everywhere, and I have come to know, understand and appreciate these fine people with whom we share the traditional American family values of God, family and country.
In each instance, in every city, at every event, I was surrounded by dedicated hunting families, and you would think that the entire presidential campaign pivoted on our hunting culture.
And when you get right down to it, that is exactly what is going on here, for no other demographic better represents our foundational American values than the wonderful families so closely in touch with God’s miraculous creation as hands on conservationists with our hunting, fishing and trapping lifestyle.
What I wish to drive home in this here deeranddeerhunting.com NugeBlog is that for the first time in my lifetime, we have a family in the White House that knows us, respects us, believes in us and is actually one of us.
By: Ted Nugent
Stop the presses! Release the hounds! Houston, we have Spirit Arrow LIFTOFF! THE DAY of infamy has arrived and the American bowhunting spirit hath risen once again! Sanctuary for the mind, body, spirit and soul is upon us!
Say Hallelujah and Amen brothers and sisters!
Celebrate it like you mean it!
A snarling, growling, singing, howling, joyous, gnashing of teeth Happy Happy October 1, 2020 my fellow mystical flight of the arrow Fred Bear BloodBrothers everywhere! Today, all is good with the world! Everything bad and ugly in life has just been obliterated and momentarily washed away by this magical, mythical, wonderful, long awaited traditional October 1st Opening Day of archery season in many American families’ lives.
I know! I know! Many an arrow has already been unleashed across the land and many backstraps have been lovingly carved from hard earned trophy kills here, there and everywhere as so many hunting seasons have opened up in many states and provinces by now.
But for this old guitarslamming bowhunting addicted backstrapper, and so many others like me, no other day of the year resonates quite so powerfully as October 1!
The Autumnal Equinox builds steam!
By: Ted Nugent
Mercy, mercy me, was I a hyper rapscallion ridgerunning MoFo back in the good old days as a young whippersnapper deerhunting fool or what?
Clearly, there is no what, for the inescapable evidence tells no lies and my youthful incendiary vaportrail in the wild burns on!
I mean, when I hunted partridge and timberdoodles behind my trio of equally hyper Irish Setters, Paco, Popeye and Pinecone, we covered ground like some sort of swamp bustin, timber scrambling Olympic Samurai sodbustin marshland maniacs. We’re talking, miles, and miles, and miles and miles and miles each morning when the flight birds were in, and then we would grab a quick bite, dump our hard earned gamebag full of birds, reload, oilrag down the short barreled side by side 20 gauge then head right back out to do it again.
After yet many more bone fatiguing trudging miles, a quick change of clothes, a hot shower and getting the amazing hounds fed, watered and kenneled up, I would race to my favorite high ridge makeshift treestand with my trusty bow and arrow for another thrilling afternoon of deerhunting.
I look back and chuckle with pure happiness and thankfulness at the incredible pace I would maintain each fall season, then I sit here in the fall of 2020 and realize those crazy fast paced days afield are pretty much done with, over and out.
By: Ted Nugent
We all know that every hunt is a very special experience. We so eagerly anticipate each fall season that it is hard to put into words the excitement we actually feel coursing through our veins this wild time of year.
People often ask me what my favorite alltime hunt is, and I always respond, “My next one!”
Each outing provides its own unique set of dynamics and as we move on in life, we tend to cherish each and every detail of the overall adventure.
As I excitedly plunge into my huntseason 2020, my long-awaited Michigan bear tag represents one of the most desirable hunt opportunities of my life.
I’ve killed many bears over the years across North America, and each and every one of them is powerfully special and memorable. Bears are a fascinating animal and the wild grounds in which they inhabit accentuates every hunt for sure.
But when you draw a bear tag for your own privately owned bear infested family hunting grounds in an area that had no bears at all when I first explored that region 50 some years ago, the hopes and dreams of this hunt take on a whole accelerating dynamo.
By: Ted Nugent
I am a gungho deerhunter, but much more than that, I am a gungho hunter of allthings fun, sport, meat, trophy conservation!
Every deerhunter that I know also hunts all sorts of smallgame and big game here, there and everywhere.
“I hunt too much!” nobody ever said!
As much as I absolutely love deerhunting, I do indeed crave my sacred time in the duckblind with Happy, Sadie and Coco when the fowl are flying.
And with all my habitat renovation and varmint control over the years, we have some incredible pheasant and rabbit hunting on the old Nugent swamp these days.
It’s been a while since I arrowed a pronghorn, elk, caribou or moose, but that’s because I so crave my time at home with my family during the fall/winter seasons and the plethora of game that abounds on our homegrounds.
