OPINION:
If that broad expanse of toothy joy doesn’t give the ultimate thanks, nothing does. Beautiful, grinning, effervescent Angela Kline and her family know all about why Thanksgiving is in November. As a gung-ho hunter, this courageous gal is a full-on participant, refusing to be a spectator of anything.
In her custom four-wheel-drive wheelchair, Angela boldly Baja’d her way through the rugged terrain of Michigan’s forests and swamps to retrieve her incredible, hard-earned prize and give some serious thanks. The magnificent Michigan white-tailed deer also should be giving thanks, for Angela “Annie Oakley” Kline killed this fat beast with a precision shot to the heart for a quick, ultimately humane kill.
Don’t mess with Texas, and don’t mess with Angela.
With herculean effort and indefatigable dedication, this amazing young lady defies the heretofore held assumption that cerebral palsy is a limiting condition, and though she gives genuine heartfelt thanks every day of her adventurous, challenging life, like most Americans, she celebrates Thanksgiving Day with increased exuberance. The tangible evidence spread out before her on the dining room table is understood and revered in the most spiritual way: We give thanks most notably on this day because it marks the natural fall season of harvest, and we should never take it for granted.
This precious annual harvest of untold bounty from God’s miraculous creation of sustainable yield productivity is appreciated by no one more than by the hunters, fishers, trappers, farmers and ranchers of America. The unprecedented success of conservation and land/resource stewardship by this army of hands-on producers and harvesters is why no one will go hungry in America. Ever.
Hundreds of millions of Americans will dine on the perfect organic protein of venison again this year. As we have done for more than 20 years, our nationwide all-volunteer Hunters for the Hungry program of hunting organizations and families - along with local butchers - will provide more than 250 million delicious, hot meals of supreme-quality meat to homeless shelters and soup kitchens across the land. That’s a quarter of a billion meals of pure venison every year, y’all!
This is a shining example of how thoughtful, independent Americans get the job done without the guaranteed waste of Fedzilla bureaucracy’s entrenched waste and unaccountability.
Drain on tax dollars? Zero. Needy neighbors and fellow Americans fed the ultimate food? Priceless.
We should all make an increased effort to educate our children, neighbors, co-workers and friends to this historical truism by celebrating the basics of a November Thanksgiving. I’m a hard-core, lifelong hunter myself, and our family has always killed our own food and gone to great efforts to waste not, want not and revere the life-giving force of nature’s bounty. The sacred flesh of amazingly productive game animals is truly the rocket fuel for the soul and reason enough for more Americans to take up this hands-on conservation lifestyle to better understand how we can be an asset to the environment and all of nature’s beasts.
With game numbers thriving and healthy across North America, and in the case of white-tailed deer, turkey, black bear and geese, overpopulated in most areas, that’s a whole lot of the best nutrition in the world getting away from us, and we shouldn’t let that happen.
We join Angela, her family and the tens of millions of sporting families in America when we toast a Thanksgiving salute to all the creatures that feed us. Happy Thanksgiving, America. Celebrate it like you mean it, every day of your lives. The beast is dead, long live the beast.
Ted Nugent is an American rock ’n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ’N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).
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