Tell me ... why are you seemingly looking for persons to hunt with?
Seems to be more than a few who are making a list for folks to go hunting with, and not with.
Any here that disagree with you ask you to go hunting?
No trusting buds?
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.
Cardinal Rule #1 for Old Time Magazine: If Bush Bleeds it Leads! Thank God nobody was hurt.
Heck, we had an old man that would shoot kids with rocksalt regularly for chasing baseballs in his garden. His rule was twice with salt then pellets. My brother got hit with the salt.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters
I also used to duck hunt with my dad. But he stopped when his retriever went to college.
A friend of mine gave up hunting in the Sierra's because he caught someone putting their rifle scope on him to "figure out who he was."
I related this story to someone I knew that hunted, and he didn't see what the problem was, and that he'd done it himself.
I think my eyebrows disappeared when I heard that, and I know it left me speechless.
How is it that the press barely reported when Hillary's caravan hit and seriously injured a policeman? And didn't even stop?
Below are Jeff Cooper's four gun safety rules. If you own a firearm, you should be able to rattle off and obey each and every rule at all times. Never violate a single rule.
As far as I can tell, VP Cheney violated #2, #4, and possibly #3.
When the rules are broken, expect unintended consequences, like shooting your friends.
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
Another rule to keep in mind. Some call it the Pat Rogers' rule, but I don't know if he invented it or not: There is no such thing as an "accidental discharge". The correct term is "negligent discharge".
Extrapolating to this weekend's incident, VP Cheney did NOT /accidentally/ shoot his friend. Properly, VP Cheney /negligently/ shot his friend.
We should never excuse someone's negligence just because we support and/or voted for the man.
For more information on Cooper's Rules, please follow this link:
http://www.thefiringline.com/Misc/safetyrules.html
Tell me ... why are you seemingly looking for persons to hunt with?
Seems to be more than a few who are making a list for folks to go hunting with, and not with.
Any here that disagree with you ask you to go hunting?
No trusting buds?
Quit being a jerk to make a point.
This was not a "canned" field hunt. This is not like sporting clays, trap, skeet.
Safety is everyone's responsibility.
That said, no,I am not letting Vice President Cheney off the hook; the greatest responsibility remains with the person shooting.
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET
I'd have to say these are in the order of the relative havoc ignoring them has wreaked over the years, with #1 causing the most grief. Lots of people have been killed by unloaded guns. Thanks for the good reminder post.
We should never excuse someone's negligence just because we support and/or voted for the man.
Amen.
If the VP was simply swinging around to take his shot, he is lucky the guy was 30 yards away instead of 5-10 - he would've killed him if that was the case.
See post 101. It's not worth the risk to shoot a bird when it travels past the original point of your peripheral vision..
"A friend of mine gave up hunting in the Sierra's because he caught someone putting their rifle scope on him to "figure out who he was."
I related this story to someone I knew that hunted, and he didn't see what the problem was, and that he'd done it himself. "
It was a rather straight forward question to some who propose to be the epitamy of safety while upland bird hunting.
I'm not hearing Cheney offer any excuses.
By the way, there is only one perfect man who ever walked the Earth. You're not him. And neither is Dick Cheney.
No, that was just being petty on your part. I've never met Mineral Man, probably never will, but I enjoy exchanging points of view. And he seems like a sane, careful hunter, unlike some people posting on this thread.
You're the coolest "head on the thread" MM, and thanks for the info on Line Hunting Safety, I had no idea.....
Precisely right, Steelcurtain. It was the mistake of the man who walked up behind them and did not announce himself. I'm glad he is OK and feel very sorry that the pathetic media is blaming Cheney. (Not surprised, though)
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