Posted on 02/13/2006 10:38:19 AM PST by SirLinksalot
How Did Dick Cheney Break the No.1 Rule of Hunting?
For veteran sportsmen like the vice president, safety is a core value
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON
The cardinal rule of hunting could not be more simple: Don’t shoot the people (or the dogs). If there’s anyone in Washington who knows this, one would have thought it would be Vice President Dick Cheney, who accidentally shot his friend and fellow hunter Harry Whittington, 78, late Saturday afternoon. Whittington is expected to recover from his injuries, but the question will linger on: how does an accident like this happen among hunters with so much experience?
For years, Cheney's take-charge public image has been bolstered by photos of him fly fishing in Wyoming and stories about Cheney jetting into hunting hotspots for quail, pheasant and other game. While serving as a congressman from Wyoming — before President Bush’s father tapped him for secretary of defense in 1989 — Cheney was a solid ally of the National Rifle Association, the staunch defender of gun rights, which also preaches gun safety.
Cheney frequently hunts ducks in Arkansas, Texas and South Dakota. His hunting career had been relatively smooth until controversy arose after he was reported to have taken conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia hunting in Louisiana in 2004, just after the Court had agreed to hear a case involving the secrecy of documents related to the Vice President’s 2001 work heading an energy task force. (Cheney was in favor of keeping them secret.)
Cheney also drew attention for reportedly shooting ducks and some 70 pen-raised pheasants at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in southwestern Pennsylvania in December 2003. Experts were quoted at the time as saying there’s nothing wrong, legally at least, with blasting away at stocked birds. But depending on how and when they are released, it should not be confused with actual hunting, since disoriented birds placed in the field or released in front of the shooters are often neither as wary or elusive as wild quarry.
An eyewitness account reported by the Associated Press suggests that Cheney may have, in the heat of the moment, violated the No. 1 rule of hunting by failing to keep track of his hunting buddies at all times. The AP quoted the ranch's owner saying that Cheney could easily have failed to see Whittington, as the latter walked up behind the Vice President from lower ground and in tall grass. To be sure, safety should be paramount for everyone in a hunting party and some responsibility would have fallen to Whittington to make sure his fellow hunters knew he might be just out of sight behind them. But for the shooter, hunting safety dictates that focusing on the target should never be more important than keeping in mind what's behind it.
Accidents can happen, of course, in a single careless moment. Quail, when you find them and they flush, don’t exactly follow gun-safety rules. They fly up suddenly and may go in any direction. And the first thing that happens to the hunter is the adrenaline rush. That’s why quail hunters wear orange, as Cheney's group reportedly were. And that’s why experts counsel the hunter not to sweep the shotgun around and fire if they don’t know what’s in the line of fire. Knowing what's behind the target is also a rule with which, one can bet, Cheney’s Secret Service detail would have wanted Whittington himself to be intimate.
What probably spared Whittington more critical injury was the tiny size of birdshot being used on the hunt; quail are typically hunted with No. 8 shot, which is even smaller than BBs. After the accident, Whittington's face "looks like chicken pox, kind of. He's so lucky, it's a miracle," Whittington's daughter Sally told the Dallas Morning News. Cheney visited Whittington in the hospital the next day. The vice president "feels so bad," said Sally Whittington. "He's a very accomplished hunter. He was obviously relieved to see how well my father was doing."
If Cheney now finds himself criticized or lampooned, he'll ironically be in the same position he himself put Senator John Kerry in during the final days of the 2004 Presidential campaign, though the circumstances then did not involve a potentially deadly accident. At the time, Cheney used his widely-known experience as a hunter to mock a duck-hunting foray in Ohio in which Senator John Kerry ended up shooting a goose. "The senator who gets a grade of 'F' from the National Rifle Association went hunting this morning," Cheney reportedly said, to hoots. "I understand he bought a new camouflage jacket for the occasion, which did make me wonder how regularly he does go goose hunting.” As the Texas incident shows, experience does not make hunters immune to accidents, which is why hunting advocacy groups put such a relentless focus on safety as the top priority.
We definitely need a picture of Al Gore and his gun on this thread.
At least Whittington would have earned a Purple Heat, unlike Senator Kerry (Mr. Bandaid)!
One would think the first rule of hunting would be not to walk where hunters are likely to shoot, without warning them you're there. Okay, maybe the second.
Blame goes to both shooter and shootee.
Remember when Vince Foster went hunting?
My guess is that, at age 78, Whittington simply can't get outta the way as fast as the quail.
I thought the number one rule is you have to shout, "it's coming right for us" before you shoot.
Wow! In the coming weeks we are going to get schooled by the left about guns and hunting!
Should be fun!
"Blame goes to both shooter and shootee."
I would agree.
A hard way to learn the lesson though. But thankfully not as hard a lesson as it could have been.
My dad and I were shot at years ago while chukar hunting. High brush, the shooter was uphill from us, etc. We ducked behind some rocks until the danger was past, then dad found the hunter later and chewed him out.
Then there was the time I almost shot the antenna off my dad's buddy's truck...
Yes,
The one of him in Nam, looking down the barrel
Anyone here see the supreme irony of being lectured on firearms safety by the Brady Bunch of Time, Inc?
I'm not sure a lawyer falls into either category.
No, the first rule of hunting is to make sure you won't hit something other than what you are aiming at. Even if you have a moron in range, it is your responsibility to make sure you don't hit them - especially when they are wearing orange.
It's amazing to see this kind of nonsense being plugged on FR - which is otherwise the premier firearms site on the web.
I just want to know one thing:
Did he hit the quail?
Cheney shot a Texas Republican, I thought Time and the rest of the MSM would be organizing a ticker tape parade by now.
1.) Don't run out of beer.
You just know there will be some lame skit on Saturday Night LIve about this. I predict it will be something along the lines of Cheney shooting anything that moves while his mobile medical team scrambles to "fix" everyone and everything.
Of course we'll never know because no one will see that stupid show.
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