“Just like in California, to fight the corrupt system would have bankrupted me, taken me away from my life support careers for God knows how long, and I don’t trust our court system. This Alaska charge was an unintentional technical violation of an unprecedented, never-before-heard-of law, only in the southeast region of Alaska, where if your bullet or arrow shows any sign of hitting a bear, then your tag is invalidated. I still can’t find anyone who has ever heard of such a regulation, even amongst lifetime Alaska resident hunters, guides and outfitters, even the judge in Ketchikan stated on record during the court hearing that he had never heard of such a law. I was blindsided by this, and to my knowledge, the only person to ever be charged under this bizarre regulation.” – Ted Nugent, quoted in alaskdispatch.com from handgunsmag.com
Perhaps TN is both a liar (in this case) and mostly public relations stage talk about standing up for liberty to promote the image he has created. TN certainly has an ego. Having an attorney fight the system, over the charge, would hardly bankrupt someone with his wealth.
You know the laws before you go out hunting. If you aren’t responsible enough to check those out, you shouldn’t have a tag or a gun in your hand. Nugent is a liar.
I’m calling bullsh!t on the author. In fact, the article might be the smarmiest I’ve read in a long, long time.
The author cites two examples of “brave” Alaskans – including the author, who is the hero of his own fantasy — fighting bad government rules. Well, big f^cking whoop. It’s their state. They damn well ought to fix it. Ted isn’t an Alaskan. He doesn’t need to fight for Alaskans. The problems with the regulation are Alaska’s to fix, not Ted’s.
I just love it when some gutless punk says, “let’s you and him fight.” Ted Nugent may be an a$$hole, but the author is a major a$$hole of the lowest order.
Craig Medred is a hack and the Alaska Dispatch is a liberal rag. This is the guy who called Gov. Sarah Palin a “socialist” and accused her of “robbing the oil industry’ for creating and signing the ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) Act. Later in the same article, he accused her of being a “capitalist” for stepping down from the Governorship to make money.
In life, individuals must pick their battles.
We should hope the same is true for government entities, but that is rarely the case. The government has access to OUR money and resources. The trouble with discretion is that it is rarely used appropriately.
Did Mr. Nugent violate the law? Yes. Was it worth the cost of prosecution? I would argue no. Possibly, that is why he chose not to fight the battle. But it may also be why the government attorney accepted the plea agreement. Sometimes, a government attorney gets a case and has to wonder why it rose to the level of a criminal charge.
If you follow the link to the alaskadispatch.com article, you’ll see Ralph’s point. The author jumps on the opportunity to start throwing out coward or liar, buttressed by how he (hero of his own fantasty…snerk) fought the system and won, dangnabbit!
Then he rants for a bit.
THEN…he leaves the article with his Stay out of federal court closing:
The federal court system in the U.S. is a bad place to be these days. The idea that an American who shows up there is innocent until proven guilty in some cases appears to be an antiquated idea. Federal prosecutors these days are ruthless, and federal judges seem unwilling to reign them in…If Nugent took a plea to pay $10,000 — chicken feed to him — and avoid a felony charge, he was a wise man.
So! He’s either a coward or a liar……unless he’s not. Then he’s wise.
The author, and alaskadispatch.com, took the opportunity to call out a prominent and routinely controversial figure in a move that’s sure to drive traffic to their site (see routinely controversial).
Oh, wait a minute………
JSG
Get off the guys back.
That is unless you never screwed up, then by all means, have at him.
Um… When I was 12 years old and in Hunters Ed they taught me that if I wounded an animal and it got away that counted on my tag. Which is what Nugent was charged with.
In Colorado it is against the law to “Fail to make a reasonable effort to track and kill animals you wound or may have wounded.” One of our party hit a good bull two years ago. He and I trailed a very sparse and ever diminishing blood trail for nine hours. We stopped then because the blood sign had stopped earlier and his tracks mixed with other animals. He did not lose his tag for that season. I have never seen the film of the Mr. Nugent’s hunt in question and I obviously wasn’t there but I would not expect to lose a tag because I lost an animal.
Ted Nugent:
Nugent was charged under the Lacey Act of 1900 which is a federal law and like the name says, has been around since 1900.
In this case, without the underlying state law violation, I don’t see how there would have been a Lacey Act violation.
As I understood from one or another of the articles on this the Lacey Act violation was for shooting the second bear. So he wounded the first bear which filled his tag, shot a second bear with, essentially, no tag.
Has anyone here ever heard of that obscure law?
Stop with the BS about knowing every law you can’t it’s impossible. System is designed that way.
And before you start your blovating about knowing the laws your are supposed to know your state traffic laws also. In IL. the onion paper bound edition is 8 inches thick.
I listened to Ted on Beck and he stated that it was the Feds that went after him not the state. Come on a law only in one area and one no one has heard of before?
This how the Feds work. They create a system that at any given time we are all criminals so they can come after us if they want. The ATF re-interpreted a regulation and 24 hours later they where raiding me.
This book touches on it.
Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
Harvey Silverglate
“The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.”
Jay, where can we find up to date information about the Elite Ammunition case? Everything I’ve found online is a year old.
“the integrity of our constitutional REPUBLIC hangs in the balance.”
Fixed.
Beautiful, and he should have know that.
The laws regarding whether or not a wounded animal invalidates your tag varies by state.
I will say I had a friend of mine hunt there last spring and he, the outfitter and the other hunters knew about the law and it affected some of them.
Happy shooting, dv
TN put a bullseye on his back more than a few times. They might have him on this technically but it’s a political motive to pursue it.
I wish that he would have handled this differently. I can say that it would scare me to death to try to have a hunting show like his and have to try to deal with all of the different laws in all of the different states, and even within the states. Clearly he is not out there intentionally trying to break laws or thinking he is above the law, liek some hunting show hosts seem to do from time to time, especially some of the smaller regional guys.
On the other hand, I wish that he had simply said that he made a mistake; he should have paid closer attention to the regs. The law is not obscure, It is widely known in Alaska – I would have assumed that most people here knew that regulation. I think it is a good regulation, because we have a lot of people who pay a lot of money to come here to hunt, and there is often a strong temptation to shoot another animal after losing one, or to abandon one and shoot a larger one when you have spent the kind of money it costs come to Alaska to hunt. This is one reason out of state hunters are required to hunt certain game with guides here.
I don’t think there is a need for him to fight the law – game has to be regulated, and if people are shooting bears and losing them, there is no way to account for them because there is no way to report them. The law may also result in a few cases in which the shooter knows the animal was not wounded badly, and still has to punch his tag, but it is still not a bad law. I don’t think his prosecution was politically motivated, although whoever turned him in may have been.
I was amused by all of the comments in the linked article saying no one ever eats a bear – I have a freezer full.
Some days you eat the bear. And some days the bear eats you. 🙂
Having grown up in alaska, I’ve known people who have ended a hunt because they wounded an animal that got away, and they knew it counted legally, and that responsible sportsmanship said that it counted as well.
It’s neither obscure nor unfair.
Those too busy to see what he is actually being charged on.
Alaska law states that if you are hunting for a bear and shoot at one – if you hit the animal it counts towards your tag no matter if you bag the game or it gets away.
Ted seems to have shot at a bear and it ran off after he hit it. That should have counted as hit limit. Bad guide, bad reporting, or bad judgment determined that he should go out and shoot another one….Which he did successfully.
That is actually a minor crime involving a fine at the least and confiscation of gear, fine, and court appearance at the worst.
HOWEVER!!!!!
It appears that he transported that dead bear back home. Since technically he harvested that game afoul of the Alaska law he made a major mistake. The lacey act is a federal law that makes transporting illegally acquired game across state lines a federal crime. This is what they are hammering him with.
Did he do it on purpose is the question. Often the guide is the one who should bear the brunt of the guilt if a paid hunt (you are paying them for knowledge of local laws too) but the law doesn’t see things that way. There are a lot of people who get tangled in lacey inadvertently.
Lacey act is a very easy law to violate.
Example….pick an orange on the side of the road during a Florida vacation and drive back home. You just committed a federal crime.
…Or have children gather spanish moss in some vacation hotspots.
…collect insects or bird feathers? Likely to zap you if you live on the state line.
…Buy any number of reptiles as pets and bring them along if you move to a different state. Federal crime in some instances.
ANY violation that involves interstate travel is a federal crime according to lacey.
Most crimes that involve interstate travel can be prosecuted at the federal level. A power which, I think, comes from the commerce clause in the constitution. Crimes that happen on federal lands can also be prosecuted at the federal level.
Per Randy Wakeman Outdoors;
it seems that the Judge did not know about the law and it is fairly obscure.
This was supposed to have happened in 2009. So why wait until 2012?
The guide should have known, and should have stopped him. I’m sure that there was intense pressure on the guide to come through with success with a client like this. It could easily cost a career, though
The problem was it was federal charges, so it has nothing to do with the state law other than the fact that the state law was violated, making the transportation of the bear a federal crime.
TN is looking a bit like Charles Manson in that photo.
First time commenter here but seeing as how I’ve lived in Alaska my whole life it seemed like a good as place as any to comment. Literally every single hunter and friend I’ve discussed this with has called bullshit on TN. The law is in no way vague or unknown. In fact as far as I’ve heard that particular one got a lot of support from the hunters around here.
Exactly…I’ve been hunting in AK, hmm let me see…ONE TIME. I quickly knew the law in talking with my AK hunting buddies (who live/hunt there). Nugent is lying out of his south hole.
You “quickly knew (every) law”. Your holier-than-thou cloak of many colors makes you look fat(headed).
Ted Kaczynski…ERRRRRRR…Nugent is a giant boob. That’s really all anyone needs to know………
I still don’t know. C’mon, Big Guy. Sell it to me.