By: Ted Nugent
Priorities, priorities, priorities! They just keep mounting up, don’t they.
Even though the hunting season never ends in Texas, I nonetheless have a slightly different list of priorities now that another wonderful whitetail season has come to a close.
I work daily on equipment upgrades, foodplots, treestands, feeders, ranch chores, guitar adventure, dog work, media interviews and all the goodstuff that drives my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
To keep it simple and in perspective, I always start every day with my American Dream Battlecry of God, family, country.
Everything else for quality of life pretty much falls into place, including backstraps and rock-n-roll.
I figure, what exactly would God want me to do today?
Well, surely, He would want me to take care of myself, my family, my community, my country, my earth and my fellow man. And therefore, I got all the prime priorities covered real good in every category just by doing the right thing and intelligently and responsibly managing my time, energy, spirit and resources to the max for positive attitude and forward motion.
I am extremely confident that these self-evident truths are redundantly logical and glaringly commonsense to all thinking people, but sadly we all know all too well that that same commonsense is looked upon as radical and weird by a huge segment of our society.
Maybe even half of America!
As I always say, give the world the best you got and you will surely get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you got anyway.
And so goes the tragic divisiveness strangling America and much of the world.
Give the world the best we got anyway!
So, what, you may ask, does any of that have to do with deerhunting?
How about everything!
This culture war raging across America is manifested most outrageously on a daily basis against those basic American values of God, family and country.
And to my way of thinking, nothing says God, family and country quite as powerfully as the down to earth, grounded, working hard playing hard hunting lifestyle families of this great country.
The hateful and dishonest forces against us in the media, Hollywood, academia and in our own government is ferocious, deadly and relentless.
Add to those negative forces the insanity of hunter against hunter and you have a seriously dangerous whirlwind that bodes doom for conservation and the future of wildlife, wildground and our sacred sport in America.
The suicidal attrition rate and dismal lack of recruitment in our sport is a direct result of all the above, but if only we could all unite as hunters, I am convinced we could turn this self-inflicted curse around in a matter of a very few short years.
Not a day goes by in my life, especially with the social media phenomenon, that I don’t hear tales of woe, heartbreak, frustration and anger from people giving up on hunting and fishing due to the absurd, nonsensical, arbitrary and punitive regulations that chase them away from their sport.
Regulations that have nothing to do with sound science or safety, and in many cases, defy science and are clearly designed to simply harass sporters.
Just this morning my buddy told me he doesn’t fish anymore because he is forced to purchase licenses for species he will never go after. He also mentioned how he has to kill a number of fish he brings in and must release due to size limits that he would have been more than happy to keep and eat, but by law he must waste.
If we honestly want to retain hunters and fishers, the list of fixes is ridiculously obvious.
Legalize Sunday hunting in those embarrassing nine states that ban 50% of the hunting season for the average family.
End the hysterical lies about CWD.
End the ban on feeding and baiting.
Eliminate antler restrictions.
Ban the use of tax dollars to pay government killers to kill wildlife that we are not allowed to hunt and instead sell licenses.
Eliminate the minimum age laws.
Eliminate the minimum draw weight for bowhunters.
Expand seasons and bag limits where populations allow.
Keep archery seasons for archery and gun seasons for guns.
Eliminate bans on lighted nocks and mechanical broadheads.
Allow the use of bait and hounds for bear and lion instead of paying government killers to do so.
Review every state’s voluminous and counterproductive regulation books to eliminate rules that make no scientific sense.
Keep regulations simple so the average guy can understand them without hiring a gang of lawyers to translate nonsense for us.
Eliminate the failed and capricious Lacey Act.
Eliminate the 3-shell limit for migratory birds and fowl that was established way back in 1937 during the dustbowl for God’s sake!
Keep our politically correct nose out of African and Canadian hunting regulations.
Demand that game wardens adhere their oath to the US Constitution including the 4th Amendment.
I could go on and everyone knows of the plethora of goofy laws and regulations that is causing the attrition and lack of recruitment.
We as hunters must unite and raise hell with our elected employees and demand sensible, science based regs if we are to keep our hunting heritage alive.
The enemy is not winning, we are losing due to the embarrassing apathy and infighting in our sport.
Hardcore BloodBrothers have drawn the line and we created Hunter Nation to take the battle to the enemy. Please think long and hard about this and please visit HunterNation.org to see what we are up to and how you can join the team for a brighter hunting future.
Join us at my Ted Nugent facebook electro campfire to see the energy and spirit of the most dedicated hunting families in the world.
We can do this. We must do this. DO THIS!