He was 78 when shot. Pretty tough old guy
He wasn’t shot, he was “peppered” with shotgun pellets at long range. I once had it happen while duck hunting with my father in the 1950s. We were well bundled up against the cold, and nothing reached our skin. Cheney did violate a cardinal rule of upland bird hunting on groups by following a bird too far, but the incident would never have rated a single column inch in the local paper if it hadn’t been Cheney, and there hadn’t been a coven of hostile “journalists” around.