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.
There, I fixed it for you.
I'm just curious if, and how much, these guys had been drinking prior to the accident. But my guess is that we'll never know.
In my experience, way too many hunting accidents have involved drinking.
Nothing wrong with either hunting or drinking, but you do want to keep loaded guns and alcohol away from each other.
I think the important lesson here is one for the terrorists. If this is they way our VP treats his friends, how do you think he'll treat his enemies?
Well, thanks for the kind words. Just remember that the rules of the hunt depend on the type of hunt and what's agreed on by the hunters. That's the most important thing.
Anyone who has spent any time hunting knows that there is always a danger of being hit, esp. quail hunting. That is why rule #1 in small bird shooting of this type is to stay at least thirty yards away from the nearest hunter so that the shot-spread will only give you a good sting.
There is a lot I don't know about hunting, however, I do know better than this.
In fact, I picked up a couple of good tips about quail hunting on this thread.
Btw, I've been keeping an eye on what the press is saying, and they seem to be treating this like a huge scandal because the VP didn't rush out and jump in front of a camera about this incident.
Of course, the idea that the VP might be a little more concerned about the man he shot than doing press interviews doesn't cross their little minds.
Hmmm~! That might could use a clarification....;-)
I'm reminded of when my dad was a kid and the farmer with rocksalt load blasted his legs and rear......Dad always claimed he was stealing corn but my bro and I always suspected the farmers daughter had more to do with it....the farmer had excellent shotgun control, he waited until the range was "just right" to penetrate pants and just a little skin.....
"how incredibly humiliating this must be for Cheney"
Good point. I'm sure he feels awful about this. Anyone in his situation would. Fortunately, the man is not seriously injured, so it will end up being a story to tell in these old farts' dotage.
As someone pointed out, it's a good thing they weren't hunting pheasants, where larger shot and larger shotguns would have been in use.
It is truly mind-blowing that so many are working so hard to turn this into something other than a mistake by the VP, caused by violation of basic gun safety rules.
Anyone who cared about gun safety would use this high-publicity event as a teaching lesson about why we have gun safety rules, and the consequences of not following them. Instead, many folks here want to water those rules down and focus blame on the guy who has pellets in his face. Good work, y'all.
Yeah, 28 gauge shotguns ain't very common. Normally Cheney probably would have been packing a 20 gauge. Lucky for Whittington he wasn't - that would have been a lot more shot.
Have you ever been quail or pheasant hunting? You shoot the on the fly - meaning you follow their flight with finger on trigger.
Bang, Bang, he shot me down,
Bang, Bang, I hit the ground,
Bang, Bang, that awful sound
Bang,Bang, the Vice-Prez shot me down
My injuries were somewhat mild,
I know the press will still go wild,
For D.U., what a thriller,
They’ll claim that Cheney is a killer
Bang, Bang, he shot me down,
Bang, Bang, I hit the ground,
Bang, Bang, that awful sound
Bang,Bang, Dick Cheney shot me down
Good point. I checked to see what state he was from after you raised it. He's in Florida, so I SHOULD be safe here in Pennsylvania.
Are you suppose to wear orange vests when you go quail hunting?
See post #101 from Mineral Man. Sums up the safety guidelines for quail hunting quite well. From what I have read, Cheney's hunting group bolted out of a car into a field after seeing two coveys and a quail from the first covey was flushed and shot. Whittington went looking for it. If they had followed Mineral Man's guidelines, the group would have not gone after the second covey until he returned from the brush and rejoined the group. In addition, Cheney apparently tracked the bird past the point where he saw the field at the point of flush - which meant he was tracking into an area where he was not sure was in field.
So there were three mistakes - lack of initial organization, lack of patience for the man retrieving the fallen bird to return, and tracking too far from forward in the shot that caused the injury.
There will be other opportunities.
The safety rules in post 101 make perfect sense to me and seem an eminently workable plan.
Unfortunately it seems the Vice President's party was not using these rules, or if so broke them.
Years ago, I tracked a deer I had only wounded (one of my worst shots, ever) through thick woods as it was getting dark (about 1/2 hour of daylight left), dow a trail in the general direction of a friend's tree stand. When two shots rang out in rapid succession, I piped up and asked "Well did you finish off my deer?" He had.
But he also know at that point where I was (about 2 minutes behind the deer).
The point is, that if you are not using those rules, let the rest of the party know where you are, and stay out of the line of fire.
Ultimately, though, the responsibility remains with the shooter.
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