Daily Herald: Rock star's verbal arrows fly in neighborhood's bow hunt debate

The Nuge strikes back!
Some of the usually reserved residents of a gated community are in the cross hairs of rock star and hunting activist Ted Nugent, who is backing local leaders' plans to cull deer. But residents on both sides don't like the attention. "This is out of control," said Richard Scobee, president of Wynstone Estates, an upper-class subdivision in North Barrington where guests need approval from a resident to get through the front gate. Wynstone leaders have proposed a bow hunt in the coming weeks to kill off half a herd, about 40 deer, that they say is eating thousands of dollars' worth of landscaping and endangering drivers. The Motor City Madman, as Nugent is sometimes called, is on their side, though they didn't really invite him into the debate. Nugent, perhaps best known musically for his rendition of "Cat Scratch Fever," first came on the scene when a local trustee played a video at last week's board meeting that featured him howling as he killed various animals with arrows at his sprawling game ranch in Texas.

The short clip was meant to stir emotions against bow hunting, but a majority of officials still approved a plan to allow the Wynstone hunt.

A few days later, Wynstone resident Carol Bieniek, who opposes the hunt, gave a local radio interview in which she called Nugent a "redneck."

Enter Nugent: "My critics are soulless. They try to fault me for participating in the proven assuredness of the renewable harvest," he responded in an interview Thursday with the Daily Herald... "I started bow hunting on my father's back before I could walk," he said. "I have been anointed in God's tooth-and-claw nature system, and I bow to its authority."

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This is getting more fun by the day. This Barrington area is, shall we say, extremely affluent, so we are watching people who have lots of time to fuss over things like this.

Note the homeowner association president freaking out because things are "out of control." And the liberal suburbanite Carol "I'm a mom" Bieniek, who can't abide killing deer, and no doubt would have a fit if anybody around her used a politically incorrect epithet, but has no problem calling Nugent a "redneck" even though she doesn't know him from Jed Clampett. Talk about acting to type--I guess they sent these two folks down from Central Casting.

By the way, the article notes that Nugent lived in nearby Palatine when he was a teenager. Do they have any rednecks in that particular Chicago suburb? Any Palatine neighborhoods called Possum Holler? I didn't see any refrigerators in the front yards last time I was there, and people seemed to have all their teeth. But still--it isn't Barrington, don't you know?