Around four years after it took place, details are still emerging around the wild pig sting operation that was led by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and which targeted several hunting properties on the Upper Peninsula, including one owned by Ted Nugent. Although the famous rocker and outspoken hunter has since been cleared by a judge of any wrongdoing, Nugent is still raising a ruckus about the agency’s policies and what he says is government overreach.
In late June, Nugent spoke in front of a Michigan House committee on alleged abuses by the DNR. (Skip to 4:30 to see Nugent speaking.) During his fiery testimony, which touched on everything from mourning doves to chronic wasting disease, he accused the agency of abusing its power and promoting “anti-nature and anti-science” regulations that harm the state’s hunters, anglers, and trappers. A pair of wildlife commissioners have called his testimony “appalling” and “unfair.”
At the heart of Nugent’s indignation was the 2021 sting operation that entangled him and three other landowners in a legal battle with the DNR. That operation initially targeted six high-fence hunting properties on the U.P. that were alleged to hold Russian boar or Russian boar hybrids, which are labeled an invasive species and are prohibited in Michigan. One of the properties was Nugent’s Sunrize Acres in Jackson County.
The DNR officers involved in the probe booked hog hunts at Sunrize and the other properties under false names. In one case, the officers told the owner they wanted to pay in cash so their wives wouldn’t find out, according to The Detroit News.
The sting remained a secret; the landowners didn’t know about the DNR’s operation until 2023, when four of them, including Nugent, were sued by the agency for allegedly keeping Russian boars. (A fifth location named in the original lawsuit was later dropped.) The DNR argued in court that it had used genetic testing to make its determinations.
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Nugent had already been cleared of any wrongdoing before his testimony. In May 2024, Ingham County Judge Richard Garcia ruled that the pigs on Nugent’s ranch and a second high-fence property were not actually Russian boars or hybrids, even though they looked a lot like them. (This was by design. Many breeders who sell hogs to hunting operations try to breed for the same physical characteristics as Russian boar hybrids, also known as “razorbacks.”)
“I asked them, ‘Would you sue me for having pterodactyls?” Nugent said in his testimony. “Because I have as many pterodactyls as I have feral Russian boars. And after tens of thousands of wasted, hard-earned dollars, some judge finally went, ‘Well, they’re not feral and they’re not Russian, and some of them are females!’”
As part of his May 2024 ruling, however, Judge Garcia determined that the two other hunting properties implicated in the DNR’s lawsuit, Freedom Ranch and Superior Wildlife, were in possession of Russian boars or hybrids. Garcia did not rely on the DNR’s genetic testing and focused on the hogs’ physical characteristics instead, according to additional reporting from The Detroit News. He noted in his ruling that the pigs from the two properties “could have been used by the DNR on its website as a prime example of a Russian boar or Russian boar hybrid.”
Garcia originally gave the properties 60 days to comply with the DNR and exterminate all the Russian boars and hybrids they had in their possession. This led to further litigation, and the pigs were never removed.
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On Tuesday, however, Garcia gave the two property owners an ultimatum. He said they could either kill all the Russian boars and hybrids within a year, or else the DNR would be allowed to enter the high-fence operations to remove them. He allowed the owners to allow paying customers to cull the animals, so they could at least get some of their investment back.
Garcia said Tuesday that the 12-month window should give the two hunting operations enough time to manage their own hogs “before we start rolling through there with helicopters and high powered rifles.”
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