"You've got to ask yourself one question, 'Do I feel lucky?'... well do 'ya punk?"
Posted on 02/12/2006 12:46:46 PM PST by bayourant
Edited on 02/12/2006 2:10:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
___
Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.
I started dove hunting when I was ten years old with a single-shot .410. And I agree, I was out there more for the act of hunting than to just bag birds (although I'd often get four or five). The good thing about doves is that you are typicallyshooting upwards and have less safety concerns that quail hunting.
Which means if you are quail hunting, where the birds tend to flush and stay closer to the ground, you have to be less concerned with the birds and more concerned that you have a clear path of fire.
"You've got to ask yourself one question, 'Do I feel lucky?'... well do 'ya punk?"
Say WHAT? If someone did that to me I would never hunt with them again as to give them a second chance to inure me.
Thanks for the info. You're right, Katherine would not likely be a staffer for Whittington. The Catheine Armstrong staffer in charge of cemetery & crematory licensing for the Texas Funeral Service Commission may be a daughter or niece of the wounded-in-the-tall-grass Whittington. Seems just too coincidental to be completely unrelated...
I wouldn't do either.
We expect the Dems to apologize for Ted.
I would expect more from freepers that they wouldn't rationalize away what Cheney did here. It was dead wrong for him to hunt in such a careless manner, and does not speak well of him at all.
That's a pretty big assumption. I haven't seen enough information released yet to conclude that.
I can't believe the number of people on this thread who seem to suggest that shooting a fellow hunter is "normal." I've been hunting with friends and family for well nigh 20 years now, and no one has ever been accidently shot.
Bottom line: Cheney was careless.
Not really. They jumped out of a car and went into a field, shooting at one covey and then another, rather than exercising basic caution to ensure that the entire party was accounted for. And someone provided a link to a canned hunt where Cheney bagged 70 pheasants - so he's out there to shoot a lot of game, not just to hunt.
I don't like this incident one bit. It speaks very poorly of Cheney. We like to poke fun at Al Gore for aiming his M-16 at his head in Vietnam. How is this much different - poor gun safety - and, in this case, someone got shot.
Ban all VPs now!
Shot his lawyer?
"Cheney's first attempt at tort reform".
Also known as a good start.
Has anyone pointed out the possibility that perhaps Cheney has gone rogue? Seriously. He's been under a lot of strain with the stupid Libby witchhunt, he hasn't looked well lately in my opinion. Look at recent photos. There's a weird look behind his eyes that brings to mind a trapped animal.
Some people are suggesting that the whole thing is a cover-up, that the guy startled Cheney and Cheney jumped him and chewed off half his face before they could pull him off. One report has it that the were going to put the Vice President down then and there and test the corpse for rabies, but that cooler heads prevailed.
These are not good times.
Sounds like a threat. (var. 'Thinly Veiled')
I am not surprised.
BTW, you will receive no reply to your way over-the-top spew-rant @872. I'm not going to even dignify that venom with a comment.
Bumper Sticker Idea: You're STILL safer hunting with Dick Cheney than riding in a car with Ted Kennedy!
You forgot your sarcasm tags.
A talking point is a talking point.
"People get sprayed sometimes while hunting." "Whittington shouldn't have walked up behind them" - an aside: from which direction should one approach then? "They were equally at fault."
Not exactly what you'll hear in your firearms safety course. But why bother with reality when there is spinning to be done?
Petty media... sniffing for a scandal.
You must have missed the presser in front of the hospital this afternoon.
There were some extremely awkward statements issued.
One of the most curious was when the doctor issued a very terse "No comment" in reply to a simple question of whether there'd been any surgery performed on the victim. The doctor shot out an immediate "No comment", and the whole sequence was strange, and tense. It was one of those scenes where you know the reporters immediately made mental notes to the extent of "find out what kind of surgery they performed on him!"
Another "radar-raiser" statement was when the doctor said that MOST of the wounds were "superficial".
"Most" of them are superficial? OK, then what about the REST of them?
Consider the known facts, and do a little logical analysis: He was described as receiving a fairly large part of the "pattern", over an area covering the side of his face, his neck, and his upper torso.
I would really like to be a fly on the wall, and see just what, if anything, is going on with regard to any "issues" concerning "pellets" in proximity to his carotid and/or jugular, both of which are smack dab in the middle of the area that was hit, both of which are soft tissue, and both of which are very close to the surface of the skin -- skin, which in men of that age, tends to be very thin and fragile.
Might explain why he's been in intensive care for the past couple of days -- and remaining there. Might explain why the whole MAJOR news item was buried, hushed-up, and jackhammered into the GO AWAY zone.
It ain't gonna go away, and I think there is a lot more to it than we've been told.
OK, the partisan hacks can now creep out of the woodwork and climb all over my post and try to rip my logic to shreds. Be my guest. I don't deny you your right to earn a living (although frankly I'd think "telemarketer" would offer a bit more self-respect than "political shill").
I don't make thinly veiled threats. If I was was to threaten anyone, there would be no doubt in my intentions.
I am not surprised.
That is because your paranoid and think people are out to get you.
BTW, you will receive no reply to your way over-the-top spew-rant @872. I'm not going to even dignify that venom with a comment.
Good I don't really have anymore time for people who use Reality Filters and make up stories.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.