Ted Nugent pleads “no contest” to poaching

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

SACRAMENTO–Rock star and Outdoor Channel hunting show host
Ted Nugent on August 17, 2010 pleaded “no contest” in Yuba County
Superior Court to misdemeanor charges of illegally baiting a deer and
failing to have a properly signed hunting tag. Nugent was fined
$1,175.
The violations came to light when Nugent broadcast videotape
of his actions on the February 9, 2010 edition of his Spirit of the
Wild television program.
Hunting guide Ross Albert Patterson was fined $1,125 after
pleading “no contest” in connection with the same incidents, which
occurred in September 2009 in El Dorado County, California, near
the town of Somerset.

Nugent, 61, of China Springs, Texas, a 15-year member of
the National Rifle Association board of directors, was originally
charged with 11 misdemeanor counts, including killing an underaged
buck with a bow and arrow. California Department of Fish & Game
spokesperson Patrick Foy told Matt Weiser of the Sacramento Bee that
investigators learned Nugent had illegally baited and killed deer in
El Dorado County on three different occasions.
“Ironically,” recalled Weiser, Nugent “wrote an opinion
article on one of the NRA websites in 2008 arguing that hunters send
the wrong message when they constantly tout their ethics. He said
this “does nothing but cast a dark cloud over the entire hunting
community, as if ‘ethical’ is a rarity and must be emphasized.”
Nugent has paid a price before for reckless speech in defense
of hunting. In April 1995 Nugent settled a defamation suit brought
by then-Fund for Animals national director Heidi Prescott for $75,000
in legal fees and damages. Nugent had accused Prescott, a devout
Quaker, of sexual licentiousness during a November 1992 morning talk
show on the Detroit radio station WRIF. The station settled out of
court earlier for what the Fund called “a sizable sum.”
Prescott is now senior vice president for campaigns at the
Humane Society of the U.S.