Joe Rogan - Ted Nugent Explains the Virtues of Bow Hunting

However, in 1911, the last of the Yani Indians, Ishi, was discovered in Oroville, I can't believe I remember all this, in Oroville, California, Northern California, and there was a bounty on Indians back then. You could shoot a man Indian and get 25 bucks. In 1911? Yep. They had bounties on them. And instead of shooting this Yani, this last Indian, they called the local sheriff and they took Ishi into custody and they called some scientists and paleontologists from California University by the name of Saxton Pope. And Saxton Pope came and studied Ishi as an aboriginal. Saxton Pope of Pope and Young? That's right. And then he contacted his buddy Art Young, who also studied in that genre. And they discovered Ishi and they were fascinated by his stealthy awareness of the wilderness and his archery control with his funny little style of shooting the bow with his thumb and getting close and doing ice cold river bathing before the hunt to cleanse himself to be worthy of the beast. So Fred Bear witnessed the film that Pope and Young eventually made of them becoming consumed with the mystical flight of the arrow. Now this was in the twenties and thirties and they put a newsreel out and went all over the country and showed this newsreel of hunting with the bow and arrow by Saxton Pope and Art Young. Shooting grizzly bears in Yosemite and going to Africa filling lines full of arrows. They weren't really as good as Ishi so they'd fling a lot of arrows and these animals were pretty relaxed, almost tame because they'd never been hunted like that before. And so Fred Bear come from Pennsylvania around that time to work at the FOMO company building cabinets for the new radio they just invented and the wood dashboards for the Ford Motor Company and he was also making bows. Handmade yew wood and sage orange bows in his little archery shop with Nels Grumley. I can't believe I remembered it. Nels Grumley, one of the greatest boyers of all time. So my dad got the archery bug because Fred defied the trend of easier hunting, easier long range. You didn't have to be very stealthy. You shoot it here at 500 yards. They don't even know you're there. All you have to do is be a disciplined marksman which is a discipline and a great accomplishment unto itself. And it was a new challenge for long range ballistic capability. So Pope and Young and a handful, Fred Bear and Nels Grumley went and saw this newsreel of these guys, these doctors, these professors hunting all over the world with these handmade bows and Fred was already into it and he goes, I'll be damned. I didn't realize you could do that. And so now people after seeing the Pope and Young newsreel started asking Fred to make bows and it spread. So he started the Bear Archery Company, late 20s, early 30s. And he moved to Grayling up in the northern part of Michigan where the wilderness was and they had cut down all the trees. So there was this new growth of ideal wildlife habitat because not many animals can live in an old growth forest, an owl or two, but you need low level escape sanctuary and browse that the animals can access. And so Fred was now promoting archery in Michigan, won all the national field archery championships along with Ann Marston. It's awesome. And so my dad was a follower because he'd come back from World War II and he needed that escape. He needed that cleansing to get away from that horror, which is why they never talked about it. And so we'd go up north every year, October 1st, the Nugent family and the Ford Station wagon and I have my little bow and arrow with the suction cups and I'd shoot stuffed animals off the couch. But my dad would walk the woods with his real bow and we'd stop at this little brick shack that said, Bear Archery and I had no idea. And so I was already into bows and arrows shooting all the time. I was obsessed. I was down river every day. No baseball, no football, no hockey, bows and arrows, bows and arrows, critters. I think I had the songbird world slam by the time I was eight. And so now I'm meeting this tall, lanky gentleman named Fred Bear and didn't register with me until I started seeing him on the cover of True Magazine and Sporting Magazines and Life magazine with a grizzly bear and an elephant and a tiger and a lion in the newsreels. And I'm going, I'm shooting river rats, which is so thrilling. I can't even describe it. And here's this long, lanky, tall, lanky guy that was building bows in this rustic shop in northern Michigan on my way to my favorite thing in life, October 1st opening day of archery season as a six, seven, eight year old boy. And we'd have chocolate milk and cherry pie with this Fred Bear guy. Now it's registering. This is the Chuck Berry of bow hunting. This is it. This is the guy. So I became enamored with him and he was kind to me and he'd show me stuff, but I got to hang out with him as I grew. By the time I was 16, we moved to Chicago because my dad got transferred, but I got to visit with Fred Bear at least every other October, never hunted with him. And I'm now, I started Amboy Dukes. I'd already had a great band when the battle of the bands in Michigan with the lures. We opened up for the Supremes and the Bow Brumbles at Coble Hall. Wow. And so now I'm in Chicago shooting my bow and arrow all the time, started the Amboy Dukes playing like a madman, graduated in 67, went back to Michigan the two years later and immediately went up to grading where now there's this huge cathedral bear archery. And Fred Bear is like that dude. He's like the sporting dude because he taught the long range marksman that there's an intimacy. There's a better learning process and a more important lesson to not kill the animal, but to understand your relationship with the animal and to try to use those God given gifts I mentioned a moment ago to penetrate the otherwise impenetrable defense system of game because they are sneaky, elusive, crafty. God made them to get away from guitar players with sharp sticks. And so this caught on because people go, you know, I kill my deer every year with my 30-30 now with the 30 out of six and Roy Bred, whether it be long range. I wonder if I'm a bad ass enough to get close to a deer with a bow and arrow. So it caught on like wildfire. And they made the first, Fred got the first legal season in Michigan at the Alligan State Park on November 1st, 1947 where George Nichols, my buddy, got the first legal buck in Michigan with a bow and arrow on that morning. So I knew these are the guys I hang with. These are the founders. These were the, you were, I was at the Concord Bridge of Archery. And so Fred embraced me and it was real suspicious of the long haired hippie looking, you know, rocking maniac, Motor City madman. But all of his friends went, no, no, he's not into drugs. He's, in fact, he's anti-drug and he's always promoting archery. I shot my bow and arrow on stage forever. I'd shoot flaming arrows at skulls and a big illegal, I think it was a felony, a big turkey vulture. I had stuff, but it looked great backlit, you know, and I'd shoot that fucker off the amps at night. People didn't know whether to shit or go blind. It was this wild man screaming the bird lands. Making all this outrageous racket. I come out with a bow and arrow and a flaming arrow and blow up a turkey vulture. What more do you want? And so Fred got, looked past the insanity of the fear factor of rock and roll. And he finally admitted to me, said, every sporting good show I go to Ted, all the young people, anybody under 30, all they want to know is if I know Ted Nugent, because that was the first time they ever saw a bow and arrow. And they read my interview, my interviews about the spirit, the cleansing of escaping the insanity of whatever your job description might be, mine being maniacal rock and roll. I need to shut the fuck up. Take a deep breath, get my bow and arrow, let my guitars breed, head back to the woods and live and remember who I am and what I'm here for. And I never killed a deer. I was just a little too uppity and we didn't know what we were doing back then. You were too uppity? You think? What do you mean? I just, I'm high energy. So you're too... I do. I'm too loud. I don't know about too loud. I mean, I could walk through. I learned from Fred. I learned to walk toe first and I learned to go around anything you, instead of stepping over and to stay in the shadows. So I knew the maneuvers, but coming out of tour and playing 350 nights a year and then you get a couple days off during November and you get the bow and arrow, it's hard to go from that to total sounds. Yes, but you know what, Joe? What? I've mastered it. Oh, I know you have. I know you have. Finally. I mean, I did by the 60s. You've been doing it for a long time. By the 60s, I don't know about masters. You'll never master it, but I mastered the transition. What do you say? What do you say when people, like one of the arguments about hunting that people bring up is why would you use a bow and arrow? Bow and arrow is not as effective. If you wanted to kill something, you should use a gun. There's people that don't hunt that think that hunting should only be one thing and it should only be killing the animal from meat. Whereas I think that someone who hunts definitely kills the animal from meat. But there's more to the whole thing. Have you ever seen me expound on that fun sport meat trophy? You can't hunt without having fun or you won't do it. It's fun to challenge yourself. It's fun to get up into the dark. Some people have a problem with that word, right? They can kiss my ass. If it wasn't fun, none of us would do it. I understand your take on it, that they can kiss your ass, but it means something to you. It's not as simple as like, fuck you. This is just how I'm going to do it. Deep, deep fun. It's being the greatest basketball three-point shooter. Isn't that fun? It must be. Discipline. Yeah. But it's always fun because it's invigorating. Right. And the bow hunting is more invigorating. Because it's so difficult. It's borderline impossible. It's so difficult. Fun, sport. Well, I don't think sport hunting is good. You shouldn't have sport. How can you hunt without sport? Don't you think that there's just too many of these words are poisoned? There's like trophy hunting. You can't hunt without a trophy. You know what I have on my wall in my northern cabin? You already are inclined to love me, but now you're really going to butt fuck me right here on the show. That's not love. Well, it's metaphorically speaking. That is for some of my buddies. Anyhow, on the wall of my cabin in northern Michigan is my first kill, November 15th, 1969, at my dad's pre-64 moment. It's a button buck. Button buck. Do you hear the story? Yeah, I took it to the tax firm and I said, I want this monitor. He said, you're going to mount this? I go, yeah, it's a button. Button buck is a fawn of the year that has little buttons on its forehead, which is a legal deer with a doe tag. And I had that here. And I said, it's a buck feel. You have to feel on the head to make sure it is a buck because it's such a little guy. And it's a legal deer and it's a delicious deer. Their deer of the year is a fawn. That's why we have this hunting season in the fall because now they're independent. They're been weaned. They're independent animals. In fact, the button bucks are their asses get kicked by their mother to throw them out of the herd to get the hell out of the way for more breeding, which is what I do. And and so I have that button buck mounted. Well, who's going to tell me that's not a trophy? The the the experiences, the memories, the clothes, the bullets, the day, the sunrise, the crows, the sandhill cranes, the birds, the movement, the anticipation. And I got backstraps. I had fun. Ultimate discipline challenge sport, ultimate meat, ultimate protein, the purest, most organic before it was even hip. And if you could I dare you to tell me that button buck is not a trophy. I got I have wood chucks mounted. I got a shot of woodchuck in the eye with my grandson. I have I have squirrels. It's always a trophy mounted squirrel. I sure I'm the squirrels are. You know, when you when you first start out and you kill that first squirrel, that's exciting stuff.