The Nuge teaches us how
to kill it and grill it


By LORI HALL STEELE
On a rainy November morning, rock star Ted Nugent has just dragged a “beautiful buck” back from the swamp on his land.
     “He tempted me and tortured me and now he’s going to feed me — and how beautiful is that?” asks the Motor City Madman. “It’s the perfect existence.”
      The wild patriot, clean-living advocate and vocal outdoorsmen is talking rapidly on the phone about his new book: “Kill It and Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish.” He goes off on the politically correct anti-hunting crowd — a “lunatic fringe,” he says, that condemns killing Bambi while snacking on tuna harvested mercilessly in nets — and then he opens his home’s door to watch Canada geese flying overhead.
      He’s still adrenalized about the morning’     s hunt. Not just the kill, but the whole experience.
     “The tamaracks are gold, the maples and beeches and oaks are on fire — and it’s mine,” he said. “Who could possibly find fault with this or be uncomfortable with this? What I do is pure. It is the most perfect relationship with good Mother Earth available today.”
      Nugent will be signing copies of “Kill It and Grill It” — along with his new CD, “Craveman,” his first studio release in seven years — from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday at Borders Books in Traverse City. He said to bring along “bows and arrows and guns and guitars and naked children” for his autograph.
      Nugent’s high-energy treatise on the sacred and primal thrills of legal hunting is co-authored with wife Shemane “Queen of the Forest” Nugent. The book includes hunting anecdotes, detailed instructions on cleaning and dressing game, nutritional information, and, of course, recipes, ranging from Bar-B-Que Black Bear to Curried Pheasant Stew. What constitutes proper stalking? The Nugents let you know.
      But mostly, the tome extolls what Nugent sees as the environmental, health and spiritual virtues of killing and grilling, the honesty and exuberance of embracing humankind’s hunter-gatherer essence.
     “Isn’t it embarrassing that a guitar player has to go around the country and remind people there’s this thing called the cycle of life?” he said.
      Nugent’s big on self-sufficiency, and he upbraids everything from consumerism and fast food to cultural hypocracy and the “zero-feeling ... pap” of the Grateful Dead. Vegetarians, beware.
Nugent — who has not eaten store-bought meat since 1969, and who grows his own vegetables — vehemently takes on the anti-hunting crew (“Free-range chicken ain’t free and that ain’t no range”), champions the environment (“We need another mall like I need another rifle,” he says), and lambasts the cheapening of hunting to “a mere recreational maneuver.”
     “The killing of game for consumption is a deep, intensely connecting act,” he writes. “To take an animal’s life in order to feed our family is serious, serious stuff. We must elevate the meaning of this activity to a much higher level.”
      So what’s Chef Nuge’s recipe for “the soul and guts?” Simple: Kill legal game. Add fire. Devour.
     “How better to give honor to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than to party hardy with delicious meat, lovingly carved from the skeletons of protein-rich animals in their ultimate afterlife habitat of steel and charcoal?” Nugent asks in his book.
      Nugent hunts daily from about Sept. 9 through early February to provide food for “Tribe Nuge.”
     “I have a sacred time of year that is really the ultimate application of the term sacred: A time of connection, renewal, of harvesting my family’s protein,” he said. “I swap my guitar for a sharp stick. It’s a very very powerful force in my life of remaining humble.”
      Nugent said he never puts “junk” in his body. His idea of fast food is a mallard.
      “That stuff under the arches, that’s not food,” he said. “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. Whole foods — that’s what I dragged out of the swamp today. I’m going to get my protein from God’s own source.”
     At the Nugent house, “we all cook like maniacs and we all eat like maniacs.” Dinnertime is a stimulating experience that’s not much different from sex or rock ‘n’ roll, he said. Fully engaging the senses. Or, as he puts it: “It’s sizzling sex on the grill.”
      Though the years, Nugent has been inundated with inquiries from fans who wanted information on which arrows or shells to use, or how to butcher meat.
     “People want to know about this hands-on natural lifestyle that is so healthy as to be unrivaled anywhere on this planet,” he said.      “I started writing in response. I am both honored and humbled by their interest.”
Beyond that, he said: “I write all my books because I see a void of pragmatic, hands-on information from experience, that’s projected with a dynamic, with a passion, with a volatility.”
      Nugent began hunting in 1953 and playing guitar in 1956. He’s sold 30 million albums — “Craveman” is his 31st recording — and still plays about 100 live shows a year.
      In addition to being the Motor City Madman — known for his wild shows — he’s also a brazen darling on the media circuit. He’s been a regular guest on shows hosted by Larry King, Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, sharing views on issues ranging from gun control to bio-diversity.
     “I make them think and make them understand the simplistic truism that we all consume and should be more accountable, responsible and should give back more than we take,” he said. “Anybody that doesn’t get that is dedicating their life to avoiding fact.”
      Good food and clean living — no drugs, no drink, no smoke — produces lots of energy, he said. And so he uses the energy: Nugent is a National Rifle Association board member, national spokesman for the anti-drug DARE program, runs his Kamp for Kids, lectures nationwide, writes for more than 40 publications, is editor and publisher of Adventure Outdoors magazine and penned the New York Times bestseller, “God, Guns and Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
     “We’re going to die someday,” he said. “Go wild until that day.”
      And on this November morning, after killing a deer for the family’s larder, he’ll do an interview with a British newspaper, then head back outdoors to clean the dog’s kennel, clean his deer. The day before, he planted 100 trees on his land, probably, he said, because he’s planning to cut down a Christmas tree pretty soon. It’s all about being connected to the cause-and-effect of consumerism, he said.
     “I don’t need some Greenpeace dope addict to tell me that. It’s in my heart,” he said.

Published in Traverse City Record-Eagle

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