By: Ted Nugent
Recruit Retain Reactivate is known as the 3R battlecry for the future of conservation in America. With the tragic, and what I believe to be the self-inflicted decline in hunter numbers across the country over the years, if those of us who truly cherish this extraordinary American conservation heritage and vital lifestyle fail to step up and get cracking to reverse this scourge like we mean it, believe me when I tell you, all is lost.
I know all about the dramatic change in the geographical population drift from rural to urban. We all know about the intentional dumbing down of America by leftwing dingbats in academia, media, Hollywood and government to deny the necessity of annual hunting season harvests. It is painfully apparent that certain technological advances in the world have attracted more and more sedentary homebodies to avoid the great outdoors.
There are many dynamics at play against us here, but I am convinced that with a genuine, united effort by those of us who care, these unacceptable cultural suicidal trends can be reversed forthwith.
More powerful than those negative forces noted above are two areas that we can attack and fix rather expeditiously if strategized effectively.
I have just wrapped up another cross-country musical tour where I met with an average of six to twenty or more hunting enthusiasts per night for forty-two nights in 38 different cities.
Coupled with the last fifty years of doing the same for 6756 concerts, I can assure you that I have met with and listened to more hunting families face to face and up close and personal than maybe any human that has ever lived.
I will give the naysayers a moment to take a deep breath and recover from the presumptuous recoil brought about by that statement, for I am well aware of how outrageous it sounds.
But upon an honest examination of the actual facts and evidence, I sincerely hope most of you can come to grips with the critical opportunity that such intimate communication with fellow hunters provides for making intelligent, fact driven decisions for the future of our sport.
First and foremost on everyone’s mind are the mind-numbing volumes of nonsensical regulations that literally scare sporters en masse out of the sport, scared to death of getting busted for such ridiculous arbitrary rules like bowcase and guncase laws.
It has been stated many, many times that the average state hunting and fishing regulation booklets are so voluminous and confusing, oftentimes illogically contradictory, that one would require a team of wildlife specialist lawyers to translate them for us.
And we would still get in trouble!
We all need to relentlessly hammer our elected employees and state and federal game departments demanding a major overhaul of state by state and federal hunting regulations to simplify the rules to address safety and wildlife management 101, and nothing else.
Hunting and fishing regulations should make the activities as attractive and simple as possible, and what works in one state should be the model for all states.
Wildlife biology does not change at some mysterious line between regions. Habitat and population dynamics along with annual game counts should dictate harvest rates and policy. Period.
Another area that could easily be upgraded is the inexplicable hyper promotion of high velocity bows.
If I hear another bowhunter say they are going to quit bowhunting because they have damaged their shoulder and can’t draw their 70# bow, I think I’m going to scream.
I share campfires with 100s of bowhunters each season, and I can pretty much predict that 75-85% of them will share tales of woe because they have difficulty drawing their bows back. And almost to a man they admit they have always shot a 70+ pound bow.
I repeat, and shall continue to repeat how my killer Queen of the Forest wife Shemane kills everything with a 35# Mathews bow, a 400-grain arrow and a knife-cutting 2 blade broadhead.
I kill everything with my 50# Mathews. Dead!
Everybody shoots a more lightweight draw, graceful bow much more accurately, and quite honestly, more enjoyably! Shemane’s 35# Mathews delivers more efficient penetrating killing energy than a 60# bow of old.
We have the body count and backstraps to prove it.
Archery shops and bow manufacturers will have to get on board promoting, recommending and selling easier to shoot, more graceful bows if they wish to reverse the current inexcusable engineered attrition and create sport saving recruitment.
If you are sick and tired of bureaucrats wasting our hard-earned tax dollars hiring so called “sharpshooters” to kill our deer, bear, elk, cougars and wolves for us, start that essential American activist fire in your deerhunting world to demand accountability and fairness in our sport.
The list of absurd rules and regulations ruining our sport across the country would take up an entire Gone With The Wind tome, and we all know what they are.
At deercamp this season, at the range, at work, school, church, everywhere you connect, fireup your fellow sporters to get engaged with the We The People do or die political process. Do it now!
Visit us at HunterNation.org to unite and galvanize the most powerful voting force in America; the licensed hunting families of the United States.
Are you a wimp on the sidelines or are you a real American in that swirling dust in the arena?
Let’s get it on.