Ted Nugent Pleads Guilty To Illegal Alaska Black Bear Kill

Famed rock guitarist Ted Nugent has pleaded guilty to a federal wildlife violation after he failed to track down and kill a black bear he wounded with bow and arrow in Alaska during filming for his reality television show “Spirit of the Wild” in 2009.

The plea agreement was accepted Tuesday by a judge in Ketchikan, Alaska. Nugent participated in the hearing by telephone from California.

Nugent’s attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, told the Anchorage Daily News that his client was unaware of Alaska’s Lacey Act, which states a wounded bear counts toward the bag limit — one black bear per designated area — under state regulations.

“They’ve got apparently some crazy law in Southeast [Alaska] that says if you even touch an animal with an arrow, it becomes your animal,” Ross said. “He looked to see if he had hit it and didn’t believe that he’d hit it fatally.”

Four days after wounding the first black bear, Nugent shot, killed and transported a different black bear out of the national forest, thus violating the Alaska black bear bag limit.

According to ABC News, Nugent will pay a $10,000 fine and serve two years of probation.

In addition, the guitarist is prohibited from hunting or fishing in Alaska or on any U.S. Forest Service properties for one year and must also produce a public service announcement that will run on Spirit of the Wild every other week for a year.

Surprisingly, Ted Nugent’s recent black bear incident wasn’t the rocker’s only run-in with the law regarding his hunting.

Reuters writes that in August 2010, Nugent pled no contest in California to a misdemeanor charge for deer-baiting and not having a properly signed tag. He had his deer hunting license revoked as a result of that incident.

Watch the video below as Ted Nugent heads to Quebec, Canada to hunt down a black bear.

via ABC News