You're not listening to me. Within 45 minutes of Manhattan is some of the best deer hunting, the best turkey hunting, best bear hunting. New Jersey is overrun with bears right now. And idiots in New Jersey -- lunatic fringe animal rights idiots -- are stopping a scientifically supported hunting season, because they refer to these living creatures as "Boo-Boo." That's just soulless. These are the same people who think that the Osbournes' TV show is entertainment. It's not entertainment; it's a tragedy.
Go to TedNugent.com and go to Talk Back. You'll find people who come in who hate hunting, hate me, hate guns, hate the NRA, and within hours, sometimes even within minutes, they go, "Oh, I didn't know that, Oh, I didn't know that, Oh, I didn't know that. How can I go hunting? How can I get a bow and arrow?" We get that every single day. Because ignorance can sometimes be comforting, can't it? And we shouldn't allow that, because if there is a gangrenous appendage, putting it behind your back and pretending it doesn't exist will get you dead. The pain of cleaning the wound, and maybe even amputating that gangrenous appendage, may be painful. But it will save your life.
And that's what the "Kill It and Grill It" celebration is about. God has blessed us with these incredible renewable resources. I use wood, but I promise you this: I am the only guy you will talk to -- unless you talk to a bunch of people at Weyerhauser or a timber operation -- who has planted in excess of 100,000 trees with my two hands. So for every tree that I used to keep my house warm, or to build my house, for every tree that Nugent has used, I have planted at least 10,000. I want you to call me the minute you find someone who has put back in more than they take, like I do. Cause you won't.
The environmental squawkers at Greenpeace and Sierra Club, though there are many hardcore, well intentioned, and even very effective activists in those green organizations, I don't think any of them can hold a candle to what I do. I balance the land. The Mitchell-Satcher butterfly is thriving on my property based on the scientific report that I kill enough deer to save the Christmas tree fern so that they can produce and breed! That's how you do that! It's not heh-heh, the deer's in danger heh-heh, let's save Bambi! Let's live forever! Heh-heh Shut the fuck up! Have some more LSD on your Cheerios and go jam with Jerry Garcia! That's nonsense!
If you want to do good, you will take part in a conscientious, intellectual, hands-on relationship with this lovely thing called the cycle of life and death. It's not just one or the other.
Do you feel personally at odds with a number of green organizations with whom you should have some common ground, given that you are both engaged in environmental conservation? And if so, then who are your people?
Yes, I do feel at odds. Not overwhelmingly so, but more than is acceptable. I believe there is some great common ground, and I have dedicated the last 30 years of my life to offer and expose that common ground. If you truly want to save animals, you can't just save Bambi. What does that mean? Are you going to go out and save every fawn individually? You can't do it! You have to save the habitat, you have to save the population -- not individual animals. What you want to save is the foundation, the basic infrastructure from which resources are produced. You can't save Fifi and Boo-Boo and Thumper. You have to save ground. And that's what Ted Nugent and Sportsmen of America do. That's what the hunting community has always done. We've always been on the frontlines.
I can show you trillions of dollars -- and that number is accurate, by the way -- tens of trillions of dollars that have changed hands for environmental upgrade. And the source of the money in the vast majority of situations is a hunter, a fisherman, a birder, because we restrict it and regulate it ourselves, taxed ourselves, and demanded scientists, and the telemetry equipment and the trucks and the towers and the buildings and the insurance and the research and the laboratories -- we the sportsmen did this. And that's why there is thriving wildlife, because we are using science to manage these precious resources and the success is irrefutable.
So yes, I'm at odds with environmentalists to some degree, but the common ground is: How 'bout this: Do you like hunting? Know hunting? Hate hunting? You need quality water. The hunters, the fishers, the trappers may be the last line to provide that for us. Because from one source, will our air, soil and water quality be determined: wildlife habitat. And guess who craves that? Guess who craves the flesh of a pheasant? Guess who craves the screaming, testosterone-infested bull elk of September? Guess who craves the soaring eagle over a morning campfire of hot coffee in a deer woods? The hunters, the fisherman, the trappers. We crave it, and we tax ourselves and we pay big time to safeguard it.
And not only to safeguard it, but to rehabilitate already destroyed habitat. The Rocky Mountain Elks Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Federation of North American Wild Sheep, Pheasants Forever, Quail Unlimited, Trout Unlimited. I could show you billions of dollars, just in the waterfowl organizations, all of which are hunters, which have completely rehabilitated the prairie waterfowl breeding grounds of the Canadian provinces. We did that; the hunters did that. The anti-hunters haven't bought one cattail! They haven't saved a blade of grass! They have way more money than we do, and all they do is create a literature of propaganda with ugly bitches who say they'd rather be naked than wear a fur coat! I'd rather cover them with poop -- whatever it takes, cover those bitches up!
We are often shackled by these so-called animal rights, anti-hunting organizations, many of them are unlimited financially -- their propaganda feels so good and sounds so good that they get more and more money all the time. So even though we need to increase the goose-hunting season, we can't, because politicians are being inundated with propaganda from these animal rights organizations. So our tax dollars go out to shoot surplus deer, surplus bear and surplus mountain lions. In California, they've killed more mountain lions since hunting was banned than they ever did during the hunting season! No one's been saved! But they kill them after they've killed a hiker, after they've killed a kid at the bus stop, after they've killed livestock, after they've killed an entire neighborhood's pets! So we scramble for damage control, because it's politically correct, and it feels good, and they get to do it behind closed doors. We use our tax dollars to pay some bureaucrat to kill a mountain lion, dig a hole and bury this precious beast. No one gets to eat it, nobody gets to buy licenses, fees and taxes themselves. And that's only after a mountain lion has killed somebody! Oh my God! And the Osbournes are still No. 1!
Next page: Predictions for an Osbourne tragedy