I'm afraid the author went a bit over the top in relating the cosmic irony of persons who send men and women into battle hunting unarmed birds - this is, after all, the sort of thing that he's just complained about with respect to the city boys. Quail hunting is not really comparable to warfare and anyone who's ever done both knows it.
There is, in addition, one thing that as a media figure himself he hasn't seemed to grasp yet:
It's no wonder we're spellbound by Dick Cheney's hunting accident...
We aren't.
Excellent points......I concur.
I'm not a hunter but, in thinking about your comment, it stands to reason that you would not want to use a heavy guage shotgun (e.g., 12-guage) to hunt small birds like quail so as not to 'atomize' them.
I agree. The "cosmic irony" angle was the article's flaw. Had he used it as an opening hook and then discarded it, maybe that would have been okay. But he reprised it the end of the piece, which was a step too far.
So what's all this fuss about Cheney hunting for Dan Quayle and settled with a lawyer instead?
Seriously, the only thing scarier than combat is going quail hunting and a bevy of them rustle out just as you pass them. The sound rattles the best of 'em.
If you watch quail when they sense they are being tracked, they simply walk under a bush and freeze motionless. hen at the least provocation, when the first one bolts, they all take off in a rush. Scares the living dickens out of a hunter if he's being stealthy trying to sneak up on them.
So the last thing you want to do is sneak up on the back side of a hunter looking for quail.