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"And that's what concerns me about the fact that this would not have been reported unless it was leaked"

Umm...what are you talking about? Just because this wasn't reported to the WH press-corps within their time limit, doesn't mean it wasn't reported. Heck, there are SS agents usually with the VP, not to mention that the Sheriff had been informed and confirmed the shooting was an accident. Just because YOU or the media didn't know the moment it happened doesn't mean it was a cover-up, ala a leak.

When someone goes through surgery like the VP’s, and even if they are younger than the VP and in better general health, it’s nor uncommon for them to experience subtle changes in perception, memory and/or personality – sometimes these are transitory, sometimes stable, and sometimes somewhat progressive - it's a well known complication of such procedures. Mr. Chaney is a flesh and blood human like the rest of us, and his status as VPOTUS in irrelevant to whether he might experience such problems, and that’s the perspective – as someone who has been intimately involved with people I care about in such decline, from which I found myself reading these reports.

One of the things you want to watch for in evaluating such situations is decreased ability to successfully perform established learned behavior – for example, maintaining good field discipline when hunting. Another is personality change, something that’s also been reported, on several occasions, by observers who have known the VP for years.

In their more subtle forms none of these are individually diagnostic; in combination they can be suggestive of decreased ability, and in my experience one of their common manifestations is that individuals who find themselves diminished in such ways are often the last to observe - or at least acknowledge – the problem.

Now, we know that in this case what happened was not an “accident” (say, a member of another hunting party suddenly topping a rise); it was a “mistake”.

We don’t know what human factors contributed to that mistake (though without prejudice to those involved in this one, “alcohol” is the first thing that would pop inot the mind of an experienced investigator) but we know it was a *fundamental* mistake – one of the primary rules of field disciple is that you must know where other members of your party are located, or you don’t track a target, let alone pull a trigger – and that it was a serious error that resulted in an injury sufficient to put someone I intensive care, and on that had it occurred a closer range on a different kind of hunt could have produced even more serious injury or even death – it’s an event that ought to be taken seriously.

So if this was a friend or relative of mine, what I’d watch to see is this: does Mr. Cheney opt to put himself and others in this situation again – he was a mature individual when this occurred, his judgment is as good as it’s gong to get, he was as much control over attitudinal factors as he’s ever going to have, and his physical capacity is only going to be decline in form this point out – so like a driver who puts the car through the garage door he ought to suspect he’s putting himself and others at risk if he gores out into the field again, and from my perspective if he chooses to do so, something is wrong, and perhaps seriously wrong.

YMMV.