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.
Add to all those stimulating details the shared adventure with my son Toby behind the SpiritWild video camera, and the world sure appears to be a perfect place.
And so it was we established a killer bait station deep in the wild big timber North country, expertly maintained by my gungho dedicated outdoorsman nephew Brennen, and the number and size of bears on trailcams hitting our honey hole was enough to drive an old bearhunter crazy!
Unfortunately, as it is with all bureaucrat tainted policies across America, our quality hunting experience was all but destroyed due to the anti-hunting insanity of opening up the early gun deerseason the day before we could hunt!
Obviously the eruption of all that human activity completely disrupted the bear patterns we had painstakingly established and all the large bears vanished overnight, not just from our bait, but from every bait by every hunter we met.
Adding insult to injury, after only one single day of bait hunting, the state opened the hound hunting which further disrupted the bear activity.
Such buffoonish policies by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan Natural Resources Committee can only be described as premeditated anti-hunting ruination of quality hunting, and the hunting families of Michigan could not be more let down or angry at such irresponsible bureaucratic tomfoolery.
With all these conditions making things as goofy as possible, we nonetheless kept at it and after much mosquito swatting and long, long hours on stand, a beautiful black beast cautiously skulked out from the swampy marsh into our little woodland clearing.
At that moment, the world was perfect!
As this stunning beast slowly tip-toed to the bait, my predator spirit was one with the spirit of the bear.
With a muscle memory life of its own, my arrow came to anchor and my 50# Mathews VXR sent a scalpel sharp Cold Steel 185 grain two blade broadhead clean through the pumpstation, and my beautiful Michigan black bear was dead in 35 yards in less than four seconds.
Father and son rejoiced and celebrated on the ridge we had shared for 44 years and that moment in the forest took on a life of its own.
The rich, luxurious coated 250-pound sow with the gorgeous brown and grey muzzle was as beautiful a black bear as anyone could ever want. Though there were numerous mature boars more than three times her size on trailcams that would have been a very realistic opportunity had the game department organized the bear hunt properly, Toby and I were in a little heaven of our own, all too aware that government agencies never get anything right.
The failures and corruption of the DNR and NRC literally vanished in that time and place, and our joy was immeasurable.
I have already made numerous calls to elected employees in Michigan, as I have always done nationwide, alerting them to their abject failure to follow sound science when making wildlife regulations, as is the law.
I got my bowkilled Michigan bear, and I am one very happy Michigan bowhunter. But I will continue my American we the people duties and hold my elected employees accountable to proven truth, logic and commonsense wildlife management policies.
All hunters across America should do the same and demand sound science based gamelaws in every state.
Please visit huntthevote.org to pledge to register and vote your core conservation values to begin to turn back the tide from the scourge of political correctness back to real nature wildlife policies.