The Hunt for What to Call Cheney's Shooting Spree

All the stories I've seen today about Vice President Cheney's visit to Western Pennsylvania describe it as "a hunting trip." Almost benign. Well, longer stories usually find room to mention that in the veep's last "hunting trip," the man a heartbeat away from history shot a companion in the face with buckshot. But the fiction is maintained that the warhawk/draft-dodger is actually hunting.

Uh uh.

Whether you have a comical view of Elmer Fudd pursuing "that wascally wabbit" or are one of the more than 15 million licensed American hunters, you realize there's some sense of competition in real hunting. The human uses wiles, tools and a supposed higher order of reasoning to track down wild animals armed with speed, heightened senses, greater familiarity with the territory and protective coloration.

What Mr. Cheney is doing can be considered "hunting" only by the greatest stretching of language. His visit today was to the Rolling Rock Club, a very well placed club and very private club with a stellar golf course and a canned hunt. The birds are farm-raised, not wild, and held in captivity until just before they're shot. Blood sport, perhaps, but not hunting. The last time he was here, Mr. Cheney was chaffed for the avian carnage:

[Mr. Cheney] and nine other hunting buddies shot at 500 ringneck pheasants, killing 417 of them. The V.P. was credited with offing 70 of the birds, as well as an unknown number of mallard ducks.

The shooting spree prompted an outraged letter from the Humane Society. "This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States, wrote in a letter of protest.

Oh, I do recall hearing that the VP unloaded his dead birds on some charity, to feed the poor and homeless. Assuming that he killed the birds with the same ammunition he later peppered his "hunting" partner's face, he was shooting the critters with bunches of little pellets that are truly a pain to remove when cleaning the bird for cooking. You always miss a few and risk cracking someone's teeth. Yes, I speak from experience. I'm no hunter myself, mind you, but I have never refused an offer of excess ground venison, a cut of elk or an extra fish. (Donations always accepted, and I'll invite you to dinner, too.)

Pennsylvania just loves and welcomes hunters. My brother is a long-time hunter. So are many of our friends. Me, I was a pretty good shot when I had the practice, but I just didn't have the patience for tramping through the woods with only a slim chance of even spotting, let alone bagging something worthwhile.

Maybe that's Mr. Cheney's problem, too. No time for real hunting and even less patience for it. I can sympathize. But there is an actual sport that requires the good eye, sure hand and quick reflexes of hunting -- but without killing anything. Mr. Cheney hasn't heard of sporting clays? Hey, you can still come to the hills of Southwestern Pennsylvania and go to a pretty exclusive shooting academy at a ritzy resort owned by a rich and active Republican. He even has a private air strip, so you don't have to mix with any of the common folk or stray Democrat. It'll be nice. You'll have fun. Do it for the birds.