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.
Thanks for posting, Cooper rocks.
BTW, I tell new folks that I'm hunting with that if they shoot me they must kill me, because if they don't I will surely kill them!
I think that is probably one of the top five newbie comebacks of all time. If you are actually a Democrats Unlimited Troll, we're in trouble.
It was an accident. It happens. The most you can say is that both Cheney and Whittington should have been more careful. Let's just be thankful the man's all right.
That, and that it wasn't the president Cheney accidentally shot. Think of all the worry, conspiracy theories, and (I know you people) jokes that would have spawned.
I always hunted quail with a 20 ga. gun. I always wanted to own a nice 28 ga. side-by-side, though. Never did buy one.
My father, who is a mean, mean man, always took his Model 42 Winchester .410 pump gun when we went quail hunting back when I was a "yute." He'd routinely bag more quail than either me or my brother with that little shotgun. He'd knock one down while we missed ours, then just grin at us. Old fart!
He's 81 now, and doesn't hunt any more, but he still loves to give us a hard time about us needing a huge gun like a 20 ga. for little tiny birds like quail. Still grins whenever it comes up. Gotta love the old guy!
"Are you suppose to wear orange vests when you go quail hunting?"
Depends on the state laws.
The number of folks spewing talking points here is amazing. How can so many supposedly responsible gun owners pooh-pooh taking a shot with someone in your line of fire?
I'm not so sure about that. Shotgun velocities with field loads are all around 1200-1300 feet per second. The difference in gauge is the amount of shot thrown at that velocity. I don't think a 12 ga. would provide more penetration, but it would put more shot on the target, which is not pleasant in this situation either.
Welcome to FR.
Yes, Whittington should've been more careful by not hunting with people who don't follow basic firearms safety rules.
My dad started me with a .410 single shot for dove hunting when I was ten. He always enjoyed ragging his friends that came out with us when I would get more birds than some of them using 12-gauge pumps.
It's funny, but when he allowed me to start using his Ithaca double-barrel 12-gauge, it initially made me a worse shot. Nothing like knowing you have one shot and not much of a pattern to make you focus on it.
"How can so many supposedly responsible gun owners pooh-pooh taking a shot with someone in your line of fire?"
Some of those folks don't really hunt. Some may not even own firearms at all, or have some they keep in the closet, but never use.
There's a lot of hyperbolic heated air blown around in these threads. Judging from what's been written, that's certainly true in this thread.
I haven't seen anything in the press that has said that the Vice President has NOT taken responsibility for the shooting. On the other hand, it was not malicious, NOR was it intentional. Accidents happen even when safety measures are in place.
I heard on the radio today, that Mr. Whittington has been joking about the incident with the nurses at the hospital. Seems like HE, more than those pontificating about the accident, has the right attitude about it.
The Winchester 42 is sweet. I see them from time to time in shops, but they've really gone up in price.
"Let's just be thankful the man's all right.
That, and that it wasn't the president Cheney accidentally shot."
Or Justice Scalia!!!!!
See my tagline...
"I heard on the radio today, that Mr. Whittington has been joking about the incident with the nurses at the hospital. Seems like HE, more than those pontificating about the accident, has the right attitude about it."
Yeah, if he doesn't mind being shot in the face by his hunting buddy, why should anybody else care?
"It's funny, but when he allowed me to start using his Ithaca double-barrel 12-gauge, it initially made me a worse shot. Nothing like knowing you have one shot and not much of a pattern to make you focus on it."
That's true. My 20 ga. side-by-side is an Ithaca Featherweight. My dad gave it to me when I was 12, and it fit me like a glove. When I got to my full height, I had to add a recoil pad to it to get the fit right again, but I love that gun. It has short chambers, and I only shoot low-base shells in it. The barrels are a bit thinnish for high-base, in my mind.
That said, I don't really hunt any more. Too much else going on, and the bird hunting in Minnesota is more duck and geese, plus pheasant and turkey in some parts of the state. I'm thinking about going after turkey with my next door neighbor next year, but the old 20 isn't getting much use any more. Maybe I'll teach my nephew to hunt and pass it along to him someday.
That's some good stuff, I'd post more but my keyboard is covered in beer.....
#4. Don't shoot.
LOL. That is my #1 DO rule. When hunting I always shoot something. When I was a kid, when we went hunting if we didn't see anything we'd stop off at the city dump on the away home and use up a box of shells.
If you go for a walk with a gun, you gotta shoot something! :-)
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