Last Updated on March 18, 2022 by Stone
This article was hard to write because the person I cover in it has said and done some terrible things⸺things he has all stood behind saying and doing. If you offend easily, you may not want to read this post. My goal is not to shock; it is to illustrate the level of hate that exists in the man who wolves are now up against. You can rest assured he will be out there promoting more hunts like the Wisconsin wolf hunt of 2021.
Background on Wisconsin’s 2021 Wolf Slaughter
In the waning days of the Trump administration, a law was passed that delisted the gray wolf from the endangered species list. The argument which made no sense was that the wolves had successfully recovered. The law was passed on November 6 and became law on January 4, 2021. Some states wasted no time trying to undo the recovery of the gray wolf, and the animal has been slaughtered with great enjoyment and celebration in places like Idaho, Montana, and Wisconsin.
A group of conservative activists sued the DNR, which is what made the Wisconsin 2021 wolf hunt possible. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed the lawsuit on behalf of Kansas-based Hunter Nation. The legal action came shortly after the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board narrowly rejected a request by Republicans to direct the DNR to resume a wolf hunt immediately. The result was that twice the number of planned licenses were issued (over 2300).
Wisconsin officials then nearly broke their necks, racing to open the 2021 state wolf hunt. In just 3 days, 20% of the state’s population of gray wolves (best estimate) had been killed⸺216⸺almost twice the target number of 119. Licensed and unlicensed hunters ran down the wolves for hours to the point of exhaustion with packs of dogs, snowmobiles, and GPS technology. A staffer at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources called it a “f***ing abomination.”
Almost as if planned to add extra cruelty, the hunt occurred during the breeding season, killing pregnant females and disrupting the tight-knit packs and social order required for pup survival. Nobody knows the true damage done since Wisconsin officials couldn’t be bothered to inspect the carcasses to determine the number of pregnant females.
Wisconsin’s Native Tribes
Native tribes in Wisconsin hold wolves in high regard. Their creation story says that humans and wolves were created as brothers with their fates entwined. They declined to kill the 81 wolves allotted to them by the state but fear not, other hunters killed that allotted amount for them and then some. This has left these tribes with a feeling of betrayal, surely not for the first time.
Lazy Arguments vs Math and Biology
Some hunters like to argue that if you “kill a wolf, you save a deer.” They even print this and put it on T-shirts. While wolves do eat deer, they can hardly be expected to impact the 1.8 million deer in Wisconsin. A few hundred wolves cannot eat 1.8 million deer. That seems like basic math. The quote below provides a simple biology lesson on ecosystems. Everything in nature is connected.
Wolves benefit deer in this larger view. They cull old and sick animals and limit the over-browsing that causes deer to starve and populations to crash. Chronic wasting disease, which is spreading rapidly among deer in Wisconsin and many other states, doesn’t occur in areas where wolves thrive. Deer are wary around wolves. Wary deer move more and spend less time eating understory plants and tree seedlings. Wolves protect forests by limiting deer impacts, enhancing forest regeneration and protecting soils. These enhance carbon uptake and storage. Wolves also protect human health by reducing deer ticks that spread Lyme and other diseases. Top carnivores reduce deer-vehicle collisions, potentially preventing thousands of human injuries, hundreds of fatalities and more than $2 billion of damage over 30 years in the eastern United States. Wolves earn their keep.
Washington Post
How did Ted Nugent Get Involved?
Ted Nugent is a “rock star” whose claim to fame is “Cat Scratch Fever,” which never made it past 30 on the Billboard music charts in 1977. He is a board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), an organization currently being sued for bankruptcy, so he’s found another gig as of late as the official National Spokesman for the Kansas-based Hunter Nation. This is the same organization that drove the lawsuit in Wisconsin mentioned above. They brought “Uncle Ted” on board so that he could “Help Ensure that Traditional American Values of God, Family, Country, and Hunting Heritage are Protected.”
Ted Nugent: Godly Man and Model of American Family Values. This Guy?
To define some of these traditional values, maybe we can look at some of the things Ted has said and done over the years. Apparently, these are all fine with Hunter Nation since they did make him their spokesman. This is who is advocating now for the slaughter of wolves in America. And yes, he will be relentless in this task. Seventy-two-year-old Nugent has spent a considerable portion of his life spouting hate toward immigrants, women, Jews, and others; he has added wolves to his list.
- “If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Bangor Daily news
- Normally he just would refer to President Obama as a “subhuman mongrel.” Rolling Stone
- In 1977, the Nuge told High Times that he shat his pants on the daily in order to fail his physical and dodge the draft during the Vietnam War. And to hear him tell it, it was pretty ugly:
Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer — stuff I never touched– buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup. I was this side of death. Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. Poop, piss, the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.
High Times Magazine 1977
- In 1978 he started a relationship with 17-year-old Pele Massa while he was 30. It is claimed that to avoid any run-ins with the law over this, he legally adopted the girl. The relationship did fall apart later. Snopes was unable to ascertain the validity of the adoption. He has admitted in interviews his attraction to other young girls in addition to Pele. Snopes
- I think that Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail. It is clear that Barack Hussein Obama is a communist. Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up…. Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Washington Post
- “What’s a feminist anyways? A fat pig who doesn’t get it often enough?” Washington Monthly
- “If it was up to me, if you uttered the word ‘gun control,’ we’d put you in jail.”
- “Foreigners are assholes; foreigners are scum; I don’t like ’em; I don’t want ’em in this country; I don’t want ’em selling me doughnuts; I don’t want ’em pumping my gas; I don’t want ’em downwind of my life — OK? So anyhow, and I’m dead serious….” The Florida Times Union
- “I got to tell you, guys that have sex with each others’ anals cavities — how can we offend guys that have anal sex? Don’t you think that might offend some of us who think that’s despicable?” Media Matters
- “Apartheid isn’t that cut-and-dry. All men are not created equal.” Salon
- “You mean to say that when an imbecile walks into a church, office, daycare center, or school, stumbling about, almost zombie-like, with gun-filled hands at his side, blabbering incoherently to his next victim, the reaction of grown men and women is to run, cry, whimper, and hide under a desk or pew? The sheeping of America is nearly complete.” Ted Nugent from the Book “God, Guns and Rock n’ Roll”
- “You probably can’t use the term `toxic c***’ in your magazine, but that’s what she is. Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country. This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.” Washington Monthly
- He has also tried to depict Jews as the real ones behind gun control. Times of Israel
Specific to Wolves, He Makes a Classic Straw Man Argument.
“I find it simply amazing that anybody could possibly be so disconnected and outright stupid as to not understand why there are no cougars, bears and wolves in their hometown neighborhoods. For those denial cultists so embarrassingly removed from reality, allow me to explain. Wolves and neighborhoods cannot co-exist. Wolves and schoolyards and children’s playgrounds cannot co-exist. Wolves and cityscapes cannot co-exist, and wolves and healthy big game populations cannot co-exist, all of which is why the pioneers of this country wiped out the wolves and bears and cougars wherever we cleared our expanding civilization to make sure dangerous animals would not kill us, our children and kill our livestock and kill off our big game animals.”
TedNugent.com
In reality, wolves are shy creatures and would never be found in schoolyards, playgrounds, or neighborhoods and no one is advocating wolves be introduced to these places. When was the last time anyone saw a wolf hanging around a 7-11 waiting to snatch a kid coming out with a Slurpee or a principal coming over the PA system of an American School announcing that recess is ending early because “the wolves are back again kids”
Mike Phillips, a wildlife biologist and wolf expert who serves in the Montana, urged voters to support Proposition 114 in a Colorado Politics op-ed a week ago. “Nearly all wolves are shy and avoid people,” he wrote. “Encounters between the two are rare. Those that do occur typically have resulted from mistaken identities, defensive reactions, habituation, or a person getting between wolves and a dog they were attacking.”Lightning strikes, bee stings, car collisions with deer, inclement weather, or random shootings represent a much more significant threat to humans than wolves.”
Colorado Politics
Final Thoughts
Ted Nugent is a mouthpiece spouting extremist views. The sad thing is some people relate to him and even listen to him. He was just hired as a national spokesman to paint an even bigger target on the back of wolves⸺an an animal that has done nothing wrong except being an animal. His job will be to politicize the wolf, reduce an entire species down to a right-wing talking point, and edit the dividing line between red and blue in America⸺the line of God, Gays, Guns, etc.,⸺to now include wolves. Wolves deserve better than this, and it sickens me to see them drawn into the pettiness of human politics. Why can’t we do better to protect this pale blue dot (see video👇)and the animals we share it with?
What can you do to help
If you are disturbed by the situation in Montana, Idaho, Wisconsin and elsewhere in America and Canada:
- You should write to elected officials and tell them that you choose not to visit their state until they pick up the torch of science-based conservation again. I mean the whole point of visiting the outdoors is for a wilderness experience. A healthy predator population keeps nature in balance. These laws are not based on science but political pressure from agriculture, hunting groups, sportsmen businesses, and B-list celebrities like Ted Nugent.
- You could sign this petition on change.org
- On a national level, you could write to The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
- You could donate to groups like the WWF or Defenders of Wildlife who stand up for animals like the Gray wolf. If you live in Canada, you could consider a gift to Exposed Wildlife Conservancy.
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Thank you for this informative post. I had no idea how much of a POS Ted Nugent was. I hope we can work together to help these beautiful animals.
It’s so sad to see the hate for animals and insects. We call hunting a sport and pride in horrible archaic traditions of animal slaughter. What a horrible species we have become, when you come to think of it.
Each and every living thing has the same rights to live as we do. Then how can we engage in mindless killings! It’s time we woke up and stopped this horror, or life on earth is endangered.
I wish we could be more humane.
Thanks for reading.
Well, it is without a doubt that Nugent is a bigot and does not know when to keep his mouth shut. Whether you consider yourself on the right or left of the political aisle, it should be obvious that he is a major douchebag. You just don’t say things like that and expect to appeal to the average good-hearted, patriotic American. However, many people won’t research deep enough to find out who the people they are listening to actually are underneath it all.
Unfortunately, the media does not help with any of this. One side picks and chooses the comments that support their argument and the other side does the same. This country is so divided on so many things, it is getting hard to see a way forward.
I like the Post quote you included about the way wolves contribute to the ecosystem. That is the kind of information that needs to be disseminated to the public.
I have a friend who contracted Lyme disease at about 12 years old and it took years to even get a correct diagnosis. She will forever deal with a very painful disease and to think wolves could have prevented that tick from ever biting her. Its crazy.
Thanks for the info.
I’m glad you liked the post. Animal conservation should be scientifically based.