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.
Oh yeah,forgot about that
LOL! First VP to buckshot a friend?
Never, never let your gun
Pointed be at anyone.
That it may unloaded be
Matters not the least to me.
When a hedge or fence you cross
Though of time it cause a loss
From your gun the cartridge take
For the greater safety’s sake.
If twixt you and neighboring gun
Bird shall fly or beast may run
Let this maxim ere be thine
“Follow not across the line.”
Stops and beaters oft unseen
Lurk behind some leafy screen.
Calm and steady always be
“Never shoot where you can’t see.”
You may kill or you may miss
But at all times think this:
“All the pheasants ever bred
Won’t repay for one man dead.”
. . . that being said, being brushed by some pellets is just one of the hazards of shooting birds in company. Everybody TRIES to stay behind the line - everybody TRIES not to follow a bird too far - but accidents happen.
Nope, not hardly. Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel July 11, 1804.
He's a close friend of the VP.
"I think that damn Hippy cook spiked my food, I sure don't feel right. Look over there, it's hillary flying with horns and wings!" BLAM BLAM
It must have been that ever so famous "Bushmaster" rifle.
You shoot a lawyer you better be with him in the hospital!
Wasn't this a scene from "Wedding Crashers"?
LOL
Oh, and PING Billhilly and proud_yank
Ironically enough...(from a older FR post by doug from
upland):
------
"Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they're to shoot Quayle. … There isn't any press here, is there?" (Associated Press, Nov. 16, 1988).
Charge: Kerry delivered this joke at a business breakfast shortly after the election of President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle. The co-chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign in Massachusetts called it "an extraordinarily reckless comment" that was "very clearly in bad taste."
Oh yeah expect alot of jokes about the NRA and their safety gun courses
Gore will claim he wouldn't have missed.
Great.. now every gun control nut is gonna come out of the woodworks and announce how dangerous guns are..
Then every liberal and Democrat is gonna come out of the woodwork and jump on the bandwagon to spit and kick the
Bush administration.
And since it was a Texas Quail trip, Peta will jump on the bandwagon too..
This is gonna get extremely ugly..
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.