Posted on 02/12/2006 12:46:46 PM PST by bayourant
Edited on 02/12/2006 2:10:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
___
Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.
Too funny!
The DU comments are actually pretty good...
"Probably cracked a joke about Libby." "nawwww ... he said ... ain't your daugther a lez-bean?." "They LOVE killing." " Yeah, it's not the guns that lead to shootings..... it's the f*****g retards that use them. " "What are the penalties for accidentally shotting (sic) someone? I have a feeling Mr. VP will be resigning has a result. " "From what I know about Cheney, this was almost certainly a case of attempted murder (motivated by pure psychopathic behavior), but will there be an investigation? "
-
Picturing the following banter just before the accident:
"Yeah I got your BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN right here..." (*oops*)
This sounds like a typical follow-too-far/up too far incident. The VP had a bead on a bird, the bird swerves to one side, VP follows and crosses the path of the victim. A good shooter is smoothly continuing his swing while he pulls the trigger - if somebody's where they're not supposed to be it may be too late to stop. You can go, "Oh (*&(*&%!" and yank your barrel up, but half the time the shot's already out of the muzzle and gone. Which is why it's very important not to move out of line.
Could be a little of the Veep's fault, sounds more like a little of the victim's fault . . . but the chances are it was largely "just an accident". And the fact that the VP was involved has nothing to do with moral or legal liability - because this is not an unusual occurrence. (And the idea that lawyers are going to have a field day on this is unlikely -- there's something called "assumption of the risk" and all bird hunters know that catching a pellet is part of the risk, it can happen with no negligence on ANYbody's part.)
Fortunately it was probably No. 7 1/2 or 8 shot . . . a little late in the season for No. 9 . . . which unless you're unlucky enough to get a pellet in the eye is not going to do you a great deal of harm.
" . . . my friends use me to drive the deer and help butcher because I have a heated machine shed."
LOL, so THAT'S how you get invited on a hunt. Guess I'll have to order me one of those.
Actually Hunters are a strange breed and I could never see how they could be out in the cold and wet all day and night,sitting in the tree stand just waiting for Bambi to show up. I know of a Person I shall not name who actually was so fanatic about getting his deer that he suffered for Hours in a tree stand with acute appendicitis, and had to be taken out of the tree by the Paramedics and rushed to the Hospital for emergency Surgery. I think he loves Venison so much he would do anything to keep himself stocked up on it. By the way Mary Jo would have been 66 or 65 this year. I believe she was only 28 or 29 in 1969 when she was left to die by the Swimmer.
Ok ..good. Just wanted you to know that everyone's fine .. just a little buckshot .. but you know how long the MSM will belabor this minor event, in which the Vice President was NOT at fault.
"No, no, no... he shot him because he did not donate enough."
Man those Republican fund raising parties can get a little rough if you don't bring checks.....
Big enough to hit birds but too small to eliminate Democrats. Rats.
A friend of mine called the hospital trying to check on a friend that she had been told had died in the hospital. Couldn't get them and she asked the receptionist for a report on the lady's condition. The receptionist said, "She's stable." My friend said, "Well I heard she was dead."
Receptionist replied, "Well, can't get much more stable than that." !!???!!!???
I know that the WSJ opinion online has been running this riff on Yassir Arafat for months . . . but it happened to my friend first.
Yeah you are right I think if worst if you are enemy of VP LOLOLOL!
ROFLMAO! This upcoming week is gonna be fun, fun, fun! :)
Then Secretary of State Rice is put in as VP and soon announces she is running for president. Then we'll see if the DUmmies are still laughing.
Raising Weimeraners, I do not take my mutt quail hunting. Too easily hurt.
I've hunted for over thirty years. Everything from upland small game -- rabbits, squirrels, birds, to deer. No waterfowl, no bear.
And while, yes, it is "the responsible thing to do" for a "potential target" to do everything in reason to ensure that he is visible as a human (hence, the near-universal "hunter-orange" clothing laws), the fact remains, that if I pull the trigger on you, I am to blame, period.
It's no different from the ("classic") "rear-end accident."
In fact, when my body was ruined in a "rear-ender", the ***** who flew into me while I was stopped behind another car at the intersection got into a pissing match with the cop, demanding that he ticket ME, because, as she put it, "It was HIS fault!"
The cop finally threw up his hands and said OK, fine -- what should I ticket him for? (This little adventure was related to me after the fact by one of the numerous witnesses.)
Suffice it to say she got the ticket and I nearly bought the farm.
Yeah, I should have had "working brake lights", to warn her that I was stopping. (And I did!) But regardless, it was HER responsiblity to "maintain control over her vehicle".
When you point the muzzle of your gun at something, and you pull the trigger, then you own the results of whatever happens when the load meets the meat.
That is, unless you are of sufficient "rank" to not have to worry about such trivialities.
So far the MSM headlines are reading;
"Cheney shoots man"
I can imagine the field day the libs and dims will be having with this.
"...guy who was hit is his friend..."
Uh, that may change....
Thanks. Good joke.
No. 8 is pretty standard unless you're shooting at a distance or they are larger quail or very spooky.
It's the duck and goose, and to a lesser extent pheasant, hunting where you have to look out for the big pellets -- those can do some damage.
"Then Secretary of State Rice is put in as VP and soon announces she is running for president. Then we'll see if the DUmmies are still laughing."
Works for me! Liberals can NEVER think more than one chess-move ahead of themselves, can they? That is certainly to our advantage. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.