Shaft's Big Score!

That button doesn't seem to have seen much action during Spirit of the Wild. For every vegetarian who objected to the graphic sight of a wild hog's large intestine, there were several enthusiastic bowhunters (or lovers of weird programming) who pledged money to the station.

And the success of Spirit of the Wild seems to have plunged membership manager Nash into a near-Talmudic philosophical tizzy. "Some people feel that bowhunting is cruel and inhumane," he muses. "And it is. If you don't get the perfect shot, the animal will run off and bleed to death. But then, Nugent advocates getting the right shot. He refuses to feed his family any meat he doesn't harvest himself. And areas even in our own state are overrun with mule deer...But then, he shoots a deer on one show, and the arrow goes right through it! And on another episode, he shoots a bear, which was a little troublesome to see. I don't know. He shows death on his show. The Grateful Dead don't do that."

In other words, the TV viewing public, even if willing to consume a cow, does not necessarily want to know how it became a burger.

"Yeah, and I'm a lone voice screaming from the mountain about that!" Nugent says from the Michigan office he likes to call Tedquarters. "I mean, how far can denial go? The gross ignorance seems to go unchallenged! We must arrive at the intelligent realization that hunting is okay if we do it responsibly. Not to realize that is like saying that the Exxon Valdez didn't happen unless you personally mopped crude oil off a dead cormorant."

"Sorry," he adds with a wicked laugh, "but even a tuna sandwich has a gut pile.