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The Wisconsin State Journal Bill Wineke Column: Why Shouldn't 8-Year-Olds Hunt? Just Look at Cheney

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 February 2006, 09:00 CST

By Bill Wineke, The Wisconsin State Journal

Feb. 14--Obviously, we're aiming at the wrong target here in Wisconsin when we try to keep 8-year-old kids from hunting.

We'd be better off worrying about the possibility that the vice president might choose the state as a vacation spot.

Let's face it, for people like me who make their living writing columns, Vice President Dick Cheney is a gift from God. Saturday, he was quail hunting in Texas when he shot his companion, a 78-year-old millionaire, in the face.

I'll leave it to wiser pundits to draw all the analogies about why the people now running our government would do better to look before they shoot. Let's just say the accident was all too symbolic.

Fortunately, the results weren't tragic. The hunting companion, Austin attorney Harry Whittington, will recover. The shotgun Cheney used sprayed a small number of low-caliber pellets. The hunters were, after all, trying to bring down birds, not elephants.

But it was no doubt embarrassing for the vice president and even more embarrassing for those who try to make him look good.

For reasons that I can't begin to understand, even President Bush didn't get in on the act.

His office announced that the president was informed Saturday that someone in Cheney's party had been shot but that he didn't learn that Cheney did the shooting until Sunday morning.

And he didn't ask? Isn't the leader of the free world curious about anything?

I happened to learn of the incident while watching Fox News and the commentators there assured me repeatedly that Cheney and his colleagues had been using "safe hunting" procedures.

Ah ... no.

I think I can speak safely on behalf of the entire hunting community when I suggest that if someone is shot, safe- hunting procedures were not followed.

What happened was surely an accident. The vice president may well be ordinarily the safest of hunters. The incident may be an aberration -- but it was not the result of a safe-hunting procedure.

Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong suggested that getting shot is something of a Texas tradition.

"This is something that happens from time to time," she said. "I've been peppered pretty well myself."

Well, that's pretty scary. If getting shot is a common occurrence on her ranch, one might make the case that the vice president shouldn't be walking those fields. But, I digress.

Armstrong went on to suggest that Whittington was probably at fault. He was supposed to announce his presence when he came up on the veep.

"He didn't do what he was supposed to do," she said. "So, when the bird flushed and the vice president turned to shoot at it, Harry was where the bird was."

Yes. And that's the way lots of hunters end up dead. Only a murderer deliberately aims at a companion. Hunting casualties are almost always accidents.

Which, of course, is why the idea of 8- year-olds being allowed to hunt continues to be a bad idea.

It's not that the overwhelming percentage of parents will fail to supervise the kids directly. I'm sure the parents will be most careful.

It's just that among the most careful of people, accidents can happen. And even the most careful of hunters can, momentarily, be careless about where he or she squeezes a trigger.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Wisconsin State Journal

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Source: The Wisconsin State Journal

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