Ted Nugent poses with a guitar and an assault rifle.
Wild pigs are definitely a nuisance in parts of Texas, 39 other states and three Canadian provinces, according to Smithsonian magazine.
Up to six million of the feral animals are said to cause up to $400 million in damages annually to crops and grazing land. Texas is one of the few states where it’s legal to hunt the pigs from a helicopter. And, hunters can kill as many as they want without limit year round.
Wild pigs on the run in Texas (Photo: Smithsonian).
Officials claim its the only way to control the fast-breeding animals, which have no natural predators anymore. What’s more, they are surprisingly intelligent, smarter than dogs some say, which makes them difficult to trap. But they’re apparently no match for a machine gun toting red-neck in a chopper.
Nugent, 64, who started out as the lead guitarist for the band Amboy Dukes before going solo with such hits as “Cat Scratch Fever” and “Wango Tango,” has been featured hunting on the cable Sportsman Channel. He also still tours.
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“I took my machine gun in the helicopter — in the Texas hill country – me and my buddy ‘Pigman’ … his name is ‘Pigman’ – I’m the swine czar,” he told Brett Winterble on Sirius Radio’s XM 166.
“I killed 455 hogs with my machine gun. I did it for Bill Maher and all those other animal rights freaks out there,” he added. “My haters will hate me more for that.”
Nugent said his machine gun is capable of firing 750 rounds a minute.
“We saved the environment from the destruction of these out-of-control pigs and I’m not talking about Washington D.C. or San Francisco … I’m actually talking about actual pigs,” he explained.
His says his actions help save farms and taxes and wildlife, “because the hogs destroy all the ground nesting birds, they destroy all the turkey eggs and all the quail eggs — they eat and kill fawns — they erode the land and destroy habitat.”
And he adds, the meat was not wasted. “We distributed tons of the most delicious pork to the soup kitchens and homeless shelters of this state. Everything we did was perfect – win win win.”
