F&S: How is this show different from Surviving Nugent?

NUGENT: Surviving Nugent took advantage of the fact that I was in the enemy's foxhole stabbing them. I got in with the hippies and the anti-hunters to get the word on VH1. Now I'm taking advantage of the fact that this is on the Outdoor Life Network. So we can really kill stuff and really gut stuff, and this is paramount if we are to win the culture war about our honest relationship with nature. On networks like the Outdoor Channel, you're still not allowed to gut things-you can kill them but you can't turn them into family-size portions?! Hello! We need to show how we turn these gifts of wildlife into utility-that's respect.

F&S: So, you taught contestants from the city how to kill their first animal?

NUGENT: I cherish that position. I tell you it is so emotional, because I crave winning this cultural war so intensely that it took all my control to keep from bawling like a baby when these beautiful girls and these nice young men said what I knew needed to be said. I couldn't have written a script better. Many of them did shed tears, because they came to admit that the modern world had lied to them, about critical quality-of-life environmental responsibilities.

F&S: You might want to run for governor?

NUGENT: My critics will tell you that it's laughable, that I'm too hardcore, too nondiplomatic. But I think America's looking for a Teddy Roosevelt. And I know I've got the answers.

F&S: What would you do for hunters?

NUGENT: The list of upgrades is just glaring: no minimum age-mom and dad will determine that. Sunday hunting would be legal nationwide. Every state would have an earlier opener for archery. No more shooting hours. And in every state that doesn't have a dove season, if it is determined to be producing enough surplus doves, there would be a dove season. There are so many things that Americans are up in arms about, but apathy is silencing them, and I wouldn't be silenced. As men in a democracy, our duty is to have a whistle in our mouths. I'm a big supporter of President Bush-that's how I support him, by monitoring the job he does.

F&S: You're his neighbor now¿¿¿

NUGENT: I pass his place on my way to my hunting spot. And I've been told by some of the Secret Service guys that because they have too many deer on his property, I may be able to get in with a bow this year. Wouldn't that be neat?

F&S: You just finished a tour?

NUGENT: It's always hard to end a tour because the music we make and vent and pulverize is so stimulating, but I can't not go hunting. I don't care if John Lennon and Elvis come back and ask me to play for them, I'm not available from October to February-I have a date with many gut piles. If I sound a little high right now, my wife shot an 8-point buck yesterday with a bow. So I'm a happy son of a gun. -Kimberly Hiss [NEXT "Interview Outtakes"]

The Interview Outtakes

ON HIS NEW TELEVISION SHOW

F&S: How is Wanted: Ted or Alive different from Surviving Nugent?

NUGENT: The most important thing is that the Outdoor Life Network has made great strides-probably more than any other outdoor network-in depicting the dynamic and the honesty of our hunting heritage. Though not good enough, it's certainly a step in the right direction with the Tred Barta type show, and some of the other shows they have¿¿¿

We should be more honest in the depiction of how resources become, you know, dinner-and clothing and shelter and food and medicine and mostly spiritual protein. I will not compromise or back off or apologize or candy-coat in any way, shape, or form.

And I see great forward progress on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, National Geographic where they're depicting the savagery and the beauty of guts and blood and ripped organs by hyenas and lions and leopards and coyotes and wolves and grizzly bears, and I think this is beautiful. The vicious attack by a pack of wolves on a moose calf is not ugly to me that's a ballet, in fact.

And I was able to get across the importance of how life should be a ballet and that a higher level of awareness will guide all intelligent people to not just understand the essentiality of hunting, fishing and trapping, but to join us and to celebrate that it must be done, and the most responsible among us are doing it.

But on OLN, since it was already pro hunting and pro outdoors, I was able to depict more of the bold honesty of nature's wildness and I couldn't be more pleased-as long as it's maintained throughout the editing process, which I will have executive veto over.

There's no reason you can't have fun with a gut pile, honesty should be fun, shouldn't it? When doctors talk about a liver transplant, nobody ever mentions "the b word," they go blood, nobody ever mentions "the g word," they say guts, nobody says "the p word," they say pancreas. I'm sick and tired of our hunting industry continuing to be so stupid as to somehow hopefully placate the middle ground by being dishonest, and using letters for a word or avoiding the reference all together.

So Wanted: Ted or Alive follows in the great Nugent tradition of here's reality, not only am I gonna offer it to you, but I might slap you upside the head with it. And that's not only overdue in our society but it's also very entertaining. I give you my rock and roll career as proof¿¿¿

Wanted: Ted or Alive is a television version of what I've proven to promoters and very conservative booking agents: where as long as I'm warned to keep it PG-13, it's probably-not probably-it is the most important message families in America can get today, and that's that apathy is a symptom of denial and that all the problems we face in America today are the direct result of the denial that can be traced right back to the political correctness about hunting, fishing, and trapping. And I for one will not stand for it any more. [NEXT ""]

STILL ON HIS NEW TELEVISION SHOW¿¿¿

F&S: What a great venue for you.

NUGENT: Beautiful, it's custom made¿¿¿This is the kind of absolutism that I've always lived by, and we got it across on Wanted Ted or Alive, and I'm just tickled. It's almost as good as shooting a big buck. In fact I think it's better than shooting a big buck because it will have a life of its own.

The response to Surviving Nugent was just gargantuan-a tsunami of communications about people that didn't like me, and didn't like the NRA, and didn't like Bambi killers, and didn't like, you know, machine gun shooters, and didn't like anything right wing. When they saw that show they finally realized that I was a nice guy and my family was hospitable and we were conscientious and the things that I said sounded so logical¿¿¿

And it just took a guitar player with a cockiness and a sense of humor --I've always said this-I think I said it in Field & Stream a few years ago-that I and all sporters, all conservationists, all hunters, fishermen, trappers, could reverse a hundred years of propaganda white water rapids by the media; we could overturn, we could reverse that in about 2 minutes if we would just engage the dialog and engage our co-workers and our family and our friends and people at church and school.

Because what we do is absolutely pure in its logic. We harvest the surplus and we eat them. It brings balance and biodiversity. And that the hunting industry has not conveyed that yet is just an embarrassment. So I conveyed it but I did it in an entertaining way and I got a huge paycheck. [NEXT "ON THE SHOW'S CONTESTANTS"]

ON THE SHOW'S CONTESTANTS

F&S: These contestants are all city people. How was it watching them kill their first animal?

NUGENT: You know I've been doing this forever-but to actually guide an outfit and nurture and in some ways, without sounding too namby pamby, in many ways it's almost a spiritual hand-holding guidance to discover a higher level of awareness, an environmental honesty and responsibility. And the worst opposite of intelligent, honest guiding into a hunt-particularly a kill-has been the old bubba Hee Haw stupidity of, you know, introducing the little lady to shooting by letting her touch off the magnum goose round in a double barrel 10-gauge and then laughing when they get blown on their ass.

So I teach them about the ballet, that we must have a graceful predator ballet, and, you know, just the fact that I got the terms graceful, predator, ballet to tens of millions of people on a television show, is the first time I think a hunter's ever used the terms graceful predator ballet, and these people had never heard it before.

They'd never heard the term sacred temple, that we should probably feed our sacred temple some proper quality protein, etc, etc. So I got some wonderful, positive, easily understood points across that identify the greatness, the wonderment, the pure positiveness of the hunting, fishing, trapping, and shooting families of this country. Every participant, each man and women, they in their own way admitted and acknowledged that-and in a certain way they celebrated it-that they couldn't believe they hadn't heard these terms before.

They couldn't believe that no one ever told them that there's no more ground, but every year the animals have babies, and where should the babies go? And they never heard what spring is really about, what summer's about, what fall's about, what winter's about-they never heard these things.

And it took a goofy guitar player who wrote Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang to teach them about this, and if that's not embarrassing, I don't know what is. So it was a win, win, win, win, win, win, win. I couldn't be more happy. Plus we got plenty silly, we got plenty sexy, we kept it plenty entertaining. [NEXT "ON HIS POLITICAL INTERESTS"]

ON HIS POLITICAL INTERESTS

F&S: So we've been reading about some gubernatorial interests.

NUGENT: You know I was ready to just say yes about August first. Over the years I had great conversations with people I really respect-some real solid conservative Republicans. And I'm so embarrassed with what has happened to Michigan.

Not the state of Michigan, but the controlling powers of Michigan. Michigan is still a solid red state, but the pimps and the whores and welfare brats of the hippie and the blood sucking city scapes have taken the great state over, and it's just embarrassing, so I wanted to get in there¿¿¿

I'm very active in politics. There's not a governor or senator or congressman who either hasn't heard from me or heard from someone down the hall that I've been squawking at. And I mean squawking. I mean I'm a we-the-people, hands-on experimentor in self government and I know that's my duty, that's my American responsibility.

But I just decided that with the incredible velocity of my life for the first 57 years, that the determining factor simply boils down to this: no one has ever been able to say to me in my entire life: "Hey, what are you doing?" And I've never been able to say: "Nothing, what do you wanna do?"

And at 57 with my son Rocco just excelling in academics and athletics, with 4 grandchildren, and with not enough quality family picnics and dinners and campfires, I decided that instead of more on my agenda in '06, I needed less. I decided that I had to be able to say to my son, "I'm not doing anything, what would you like to do?"

My wife and I, in a very intellectually serious review of what determines quality of life in our family, we decided that for the next couple of years, I've gotta back down on stuff, not increase stuff, so I decided not to...

But I believe that there's still rugged individualism. That there's hard-core American dreaming responsibility in the great state of Michigan and this country¿¿¿

Whether America is over the point of no return or not would be determined by a campaign such as mine, because I would not back down and I would not compromise. And I think that Michiganiacs are capable of doing the right thing. Today when I went to the hardware store, the feed mill, the sporting goods store, and the grocery store, I bet you I had brief and some extended conversations with over--I'm gonna say somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 people already today. Because they all know what I stand for, and they all came up: black, Hispanic, white, young, old, male, female, pierced nipples to ultra conservative ranchers.

And they all wanna talk about the offensiveness of taxes, the outrageousness of government fixing irresponsible people's lives, welfare, gas prices, hunting laws, guns laws, they all come up and they talk. They know exactly what I stand for. And they initiate these very positive and very friendly and very people-to-people gregarious dialogs.

I'm so blessed to have that openness with America. And that's not just because I'm in my town of Crawford, Texas, but it happened in west Texas last week, it happened up in Cleveland last week, in Chicago last week, and in Syracuse, it happens everywhere I go: every restaurant, every air port, every gas station, every truck stop, people come up to me and talk about important issues.

So I know what they think, and I gotta believe that's a good representation that most people know what's right is right and you should probably be rewarded for doing what's right, you should probably not be rewarded for doing what's wrong. Hello! So I have unstoppable, irreversible confidence that what is common and sensible to me, is indeed common sense across the land. [NEXT "ON HUNTERS' RIGHTS"]

ON HUNTERS' RIGHTS

F&S: If you were to run in 2010, what would you want to do for hunters' rights?

NUGENT: No minimum age, mom and dad will determine who goes hunting, unless of course the rest of the nation is dumber than Texas and Kansas and Louisiana.

Sunday hunting would be legal nationwide, because we the people own 7 days of our weeks, and the biology and the science that determines a hunting season every year does not mysteriously end when the sun goes down on Saturday.

Every state would have an earlier opener for archery, and it would go longer for archery.

I believe that most states have a proper gun season, though again the age restrictions would be eliminated.

No more shooting hours-shooting hours are when you can see, to when you can't see. And if you can have five shells in your gun for shooting two cock pheasants, why in God's name can you only have three shells in your gun for shooting 15 doves?

I would get rid of everything that is just stupid. And every state that doesn't have a dove season, if it is determined biologically to be producing enough surplus doves, there would be a dove season¿¿¿

And after the gun season opens, any citizen who wants to use a cross bow for the rest of the extended season is allowed to do so.

You understand how insane this is? No Sunday hunting, no dove season, you gotta be 14 to hunt. By the time they're 14 it's too late!

First of all hunter safety must be maintained, and I do wanna salute all volunteers-I happen to be one. But it should be available like here in Texas: we take 4 and 5 year olds hunting every year. How many of them have an accident? None. There's gotta be entry-level parental determination for the introduction to the great outdoor shooting sports.

That's it in a nut shell. I refuse to argue with anybody. It's been proven across the board in the states where that happens to be the policy, so why would you see something that's been the source of zero problems, and somehow suspect that all of a sudden in your state it would represent problems.

The same thing with the squawking about waterfowl regulations and the shooting hours. You can shoot your bag limit at 5:02, but if you shoot it at 5:01 they take your truck away? What the hell's that have to do with anything? Those are still regulations that were determined back in the 1937 dust bowl when there was a drought on waterfowl, now there's a surplus, and you don't need to cling to the erring on the side of insane caution.

We should always manage based on the side of caution but not to the irresponsible, illogical extremes it currently is. And there's a whole bunch of those types of issues. The name of the game is to recruit. [NEXT "ON HURRICANE KATRINA"]

ON HURRICANE KATRINA

F&S: After Katrina, when Mayor Nagin ordered the confiscation of civilian-owned firearms, what was your reaction?

NUGENT: Well, thank god the NRA pounced immediately, but it was on my website as it happened. And I once again galvanized my troops to just bombard the authorities and elected officials with our blanket condemnation of such a draconian, nazi-like response.

And thank goodness it was reversed. Our job, our responsibility, our duty, our moral obligation is to have a whistle in our mouth at all times and to be highly suspicious of everything the government does, and if we blow it a little too often, that's just tough. They work for us.

It's our job to scrutinize what they're doing with our lives and that was a perfect example. But once again, the Ted Kennedys and the Charlie Schumers and the Sarah Bradys get away with what they get away with because we're not quite vigilant enough.

God bless what I see in sporting publications from Guns & Ammo to Shooting Times to Field & Stream to Outdoor Life to Sports Afield and all the NRA publications obviously, and with Gun Owners of America and the Second Amendment Foundation, Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, all of which I'm active in, all of which I'm either on the board of directors, or a life member, or participate in many ways.

Thank God we still have these citizen alarm groups. But the Patriot Act could get out of hand really quick, and it's up to we the people to constantly monitor those conditions and blow the whistle and let President Bush know that no, when there's a national disaster we do not want to employ the military because there's a section in our constitution called Posse Comitatus, and it's unacceptable, Mr. President. And he needs to be told that. He works for us, not the other way around. [NEXT "ON PRESIDENT BUSH"]

ON PRESIDENT BUSH

F&S: You're his neighbor now, aren't you?

NUGENT: Yea, I'm living right on the corner. I train with a lot of the federal agents. We shoot machine guns and go through tactical training on my ranch here. And they invited us--my family and I went on Air Force One here recently.

F&S: You're being serious--

NUGENT: Yeah¿¿¿it was just an absolutely mind boggling experience. And it was exactly what I'd want my Commander in Chief's Air Force One to look like and be equipped with. I was quite impressed.

But I'm a big supporter of President Bush, my criticisms notwithstanding. That's how I support him, by monitoring the job he does, and that's what a citizen's job is supposed to be. So I think he's doing a good job, and often times he's doing a great job. But I would like to see him do a great job all the time. And I do everything I can to remind him that that's what we expect from him.

F&S: You said you shoot with the Secret Service?

NUGENT: Yeah we shoot together here on my range--with taxpayer ammo, I might mention. I'm a sworn Sheriff constable, a Texas Constable here in McLennan County, so I have to qualify any how, and I may as well qualify with the best. That's kinda cute, isn't it? [NEXT "ON HIS '05 HUNTING SEASON"]

ON HIS '05 HUNTING SEASON

F&S: What are you up to now? Have you been on any great hunts lately?

NUGENT: Constantly. I just came back from a phenomenal west Texas antelope hunt where we did eight for eight. I book guided hunts with my Sunrise Safaris now, and this year I'll guide and outfit over 400 hunters.

This first one was west Texas and we were 100 percent, which is amazing on antelope. And six of the eight were bowhunters, so that's quite an accomplishment. I got a beautiful buck, and all my hunters got real nice animals, and all on great video for my Spirit of the Wild TV show on the Outdoor Channel.

And Shemane [BRACKET "Ted's wife"] got this beautiful buck yesterday. I got a beautiful Michigan buck here recently: a big Pope & Young 9-pointer. And I passed on ¿¿¿ typically in the last couple years, I would have shot any of these dozen or so bucks I had a crack at here. But in Texas we really have learned that you just don't shoot them until they're 4 or 5 years old.

And so I've been passing up on a lot of bucks, which is very un-Nugent like. I typically don't have any requirements for what I shoot as long as they have backstraps. But I've been passing up on just dozens and dozens of deer because I'm waiting for some older bucks to show up. Which is amazing, and just great that such quality hunting is available.

F&S: Do you have any big trips coming up?

NUGENT: You know, because I travel so much touring, that when I get home for hunting season, I like to hunt at home, I like to stay close to home. Everybody else, all the TV producers stay home all year, then when hunting season starts they literally go on their hunting tour. Well I do just the opposite. I'm a touring rock-and-roll maniac all year, and then come hunting season I like to stay home.

Plus I have unlimited hunting around me here. There are all these land-managed deer permit operations here where you can shoot until you blow up. And so I'm able to shoot lots of different deer, and help manage a lot of different properties, and take a lot of children with the Texas Parks and Wildlife's Youth Hunting Program. And with our Ted Nugent Kamp for Kids I take a lot of permanently ill children hunting, so I'm constantly doing that kind of stuff. That's pretty exciting.

Quite honestly, I don't know how much more phenomenal a hunt a guy could want than what we had yesterday with your own wife in a tree stand with you and shooting a pretty buck like that, so every hunt is sacred at our house. [NEXT "ON THE CROSS-OVER BETWEEN HUNTING AND ROCK AND ROLL"]

ON THE CROSS-OVER BETWEEN HUNTING AND ROCK AND ROLL

F&S: How do you compare performing in front of thousands and shooting a big, beautiful buck?

NUGENT: First of all, I've played in front of a half a million people, and I've shot little tiny does. It doesn't really matter what the audience is like because the music has such a life of its own. We played in front of 70,000 people and then we played in some places only 5,000 people this year.

But they're all riveting for me as a musician and a guitar player because my musicians Mick Brown on drums and Barry Sparks on bass guitar create such a primal scream of rhythm and blues and rock and roll for my guitar every night that it's heaven on earth, with a dash of hell thrown every few minutes. Just a wonderful emotional outrage and intensity to my music that I just thank God every day for that.

But the sacredness and the spirituality of my isolated time and my silent stationary time in a tree stand is equally as riveting, but all the opposite manifestations. My tree time is silent, alone, and immobile. Whereas my music is highly athletic, loud, and very gregarious. But they each provide a certain primal scream in its various forms to an overall quality of life for me and I cherish them both.

I've got to balance my summertime tour with my fall and winter hunting, and it's a perfect combination of two extremes that are very, very gratifying. It's super healthy. I hold nothing in. And to let out real honest music, you have to be totally uninhibited, and to send a good arrow into the beast, you also have to be totally uninhibited while at the same time being hard-core disciplined. I think the discipline of good music and the discipline of good hunting has a dynamic parallel, and they're both very, very rewarding and demanding.

F&S: Is there any crossover during the hunting season? Do you ever write a lyric in a tree stand?

NUGENT: Absolutely. The music ideas just flow because the silence of the hunt, it makes me want the opposite, so I'll just grab a guitar. And a lot of times on my hunts that I personally guide, I'll always have a guitar with me.

F&S: Do you have any favorite campfire songs?

NUGENT: Well, Fred Bear. The Fred Bear song is just a power unto itself. I have a hunting music CD that's been around for 20 years, I think every pickup truck in America has one, unless you're a Hee Haw fan, of course. But I got a song called I Just Want To Go Hunting, and Spirit of the Buffalo, the Great White Buffalo, and certainly Fred Bear, and a bunch of these little jam sessions that I do. So there's always new hunting music. And they're very dynamic on all the emotional and human spectrums, from hard-core grinding to very peaceful and surreal¿¿¿ [NEXT "ON THE FUTURE OF THE SPORT"]

ON THE FUTURE OF THE SPORT

F&S: What's your gut feeling about the future of hunting? Are you basically hopeful?

NUGENT: The prognosis is somewhat improved, but I'm not excited yet. People need to get more active. They need to recruit everybody at their work place and their schools and churches. We need to impress upon everyone how important hunting, fishing, trapping and the shooting sports are for the American dream.

It's about outside the choir. God bless the Outdoor Channel and the Sportsman Channel, the Men's Channel, and the OLN. I'm so pleased that they're pushing the envelope somewhat, certainly Wanted: Ted or Alive is gonna push that envelope. We don't just get out of the box, we throw a grenade in it when we leave¿¿¿

But that being said, just the fact that you're not allowed to gut anything or butcher things on these outdoor networks¿¿¿And again my show on the Outdoor Life Network is just gonna jettison past the Outdoor Channel because I'm not even allowed to do that on Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild. It's just inexcusable, it's just so unsophisticated, so out of touch with mom and pop America that I just feel terrible that these people are in charge of such things.

We need to start showing how we turn these precious gifts into utility¿¿¿And without that procedure depicted honestly on television it's gonna leave a blank, it's gonna leave, "Well, all this killing, now what?" They kill something every 5 minutes, what do they do with it? We should be showing them.