Ted Nugent Predicts 'Widespread Civil Disobedience' After Radical Change to Hunting Rules
Music legend and pro-Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent is not happy about changes to his state’s hunting regulations, and he hinted that Michigan could be in for some trouble from other upset hunters.
Nugent’s comments were delivered to lawmakers at the Michigan State Capitol on Tuesday, with the conservative icon fervently defending a bill that would overturn a recent bans on baiting and feeding wild game.
The Michigan Natural Resources Commission approved the regulations for the upcoming 2019 deer season in July.
Since January, most hunters in Michigan’s lower peninsula have been restricted from baiting deer because the state wants to combat the epidemic of chronic wasting disease.
The regulations approved in July continue this ban, and also extend it to a 660-square-mile area in Michigan’s upper peninsula.
But Nugent has been very vocal in his opposition to the ban on baiting.
“I don’t have a lab coat and I’ve never spent a time in the laboratory,” Nugent told lawmakers, according to MLive.com. “What I have observed and what I have witnessed every year of my life is totally opposite of what the epidemiologists have forced us to adopt.”
Nugent rejected the idea that a ban on baiting deer would do anything to reduce instances of CWD.
He noted that deer often eat from the same food plots, drink from the same water supply and chew on the same branches without incident.
Nugent mocked the lawmakers, saying they wouldn’t be able to ban those things.
The rock star also said the law would hurt the state’s economy, chasing hunters away and scaring off tourists hoping to kill wild game.
Addressing reporters following his testimony, Nugent warned of “widespread civil disobedience” if the new regulations remain in place.
“This is a Rosa Parks moment,” he said. “The law is wrong, the law is bad, the law is illegal.”
The state insists the ban on baiting is necessary to combat CWD. The Michigan government’s website describes the wasting disease and its horrific effects on wild game.
“It causes a degeneration of the brain resulting in emaciation (abnormally thin), abnormal behavior, loss of bodily functions and death. CWD is fatal; once an animal is infected there is no recovery or cure,” the website says.
“It is transmitted through direct animal to animal contact or by contact with saliva, urine, feces, blood, carcass parts of an infected animal or infected soil.”
A map from the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance shows the ecologically disastrous illness has hit America’s heartland hard, infecting a block of states that spans from Utah to Tennessee, and from Texas up through Canada.
Unfortunately for Nugent, it seems like the scientists in lab coats may be right to suggest this ban.
The disease is spread by deer coming into contact with an infected animal, or its saliva or droppings. Baiting has been proven to cause an “unnatural concentration of deer,” leading to increased risk of CWD transmission, according to the CWD Alliance.
Although it looks like the baiting ban will stand for now, concerned hunters like Nugent are adamant they will fight it tooth and nail.
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