If Cheney is a true politician, he’d convince them that he was on their side, that they were surrounded by seagulls who just wanted to take their tax dollars (err, birdseed) and give it to welfare queens (err, vultures), and that these seagulls were undermining the very nature of Pheasant Society and soon he’d be leading the whole band.
Give the man a break. He’s busy and he bought all that ammo.
If Cheney is a true politician, he’d convince them that he was on their side, that they were surrounded by seagulls who just wanted to take their tax dollars (err, birdseed) and give it to welfare queens (err, vultures), and that these seagulls were undermining the very nature of Pheasant Society, but he’d set things right, by Jaysus, and soon he’d be leading the whole band.
The only thing about the OP that surprises me is the revelation that hunting wild pheasant is too difficult for the veep.
(Not that I claim to be able to do any better, but I don’t call myself a “hunter” and go on taxpayer-sponsored “hunting” trips against fattened, domesticated birds…)
What sort of fighting chance do you think the hordes of cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs have when they’re slaughtered for your hamburgers, Sunday dinners, and breakfasts? They gave the damn birds to a food bank. You’d think liberals could appreciate poor people having the opportunity to eat a delicacy.
That would be a good point if anybody in the thread was objecting to the birds not having a “fighting chance.” They’re not, though. They’re just saying that the kind of guy who would engage in this kind of wholesale slaughter for fun (as opposed to people who do it for a living) is sort of creepy.
But hey, any excuse to bash “liberals”, right?
Ferrous
Excuse my ass. The OP said that the birds were overstuffed and barely able to fly. That, to me, implies that they didn’t have a fighting chance. And then there began a chorus about the slaughtering. You were the first to raise the issue about amateur versus professional, which is silly since the employees might themselves be hunters and/or enjoy their job slaughtering domesticated critters.
Your ass is excused.
Well at least we can all agree that Cheney thirsts for blood, right?
Personally, I picture him dancing naked through a pile of pheasant corpses while “Happy Together” by the Turtles plays and we fade to black.
Um, sure. He’s not a vegetarian.
Ferrous is right that this wasn’t the point, but they probably didn’t. If they had a fighting chance, would Cheney have been able to shoot more than 70 of them?
The article says this wasn’t his first time doing this. I’m wondering how far away we are from a reenactment of the scene in History of the World Pt. I where Louis XIV is shooting peasants. 
Well, then, what the heck IS the point? Is all this some sort of slippery slope speculation about today pheasants, tomorrow peasants? A hunter got together with some other hunters at a hunting lodge and they hunted. Bunch of birds got shot. Talk about any excuse… Criminey.
I thought the point was to laugh about what a lame “hunter” Cheney is.
Or maybe we were supposed to be outraged.
Or perhaps we were to remember those pheasants who gave their lives for our county.
We’re all going to take away our own things from this thread. Lib and Brutus are going to see a liberal circle-jerk. Aldebaran is going to dream of a giant neon sign that says “No blood for oil!”. Metacom is going to go think up new and horrible ways to kill puppies.
Me? I’ve got a great vision of Vice President Cheney as Dracula. And that’s enough for me.
This was on the local news at the time (and I am sure that the local hunters love that Sen. Cornhole equated their hunting behavior with Cheney’s). One thing I noticed here that I did not before was that Cheney shot 70 pheasants and an “unknown number of ducks.” First, I guess the 70 were just simply not enough. Secondly, how did they keep track of 70 pheasants and not have an idea about the number of ducks? Could it be that ducks are a little faster?
But seriously, Libertarian, when was the last time you shot 70 birds in the late morning? You try to equate this with hunting - do you really think this is typical behavior of hunters? And I will pass your well wishes on to the poor, I am sure they appreciate the rare treat that the VP went out simply to provide for them. Perhaps he could see his way to giving overtime pay back. You know, give a man a pheasant, and all that…
This wasn’t hunting, it was target practice. For his next trick, they’ll fill a barrel full of fish and see if he can shoot them. I don’t hunt, but I’d like to hear from those that practice legitimate pheasant hunting on what a good day of pheasant hunting would be. I’m guessing one bird is what most would expect to get. Of course those wouldn’t be farm fattened birds released in shooting range, either. All things considered, this doesn’t lower my opinion of Cheney, not that that would be possible.
I know hunters; hunters are my friends. Dick Cheney is no hunter, and by no stretch of the imagination would any of my hunter friends consider what Cheney & friends engaged in hunting. Perhaps that is what you are accustomed to Lib, but most hunters would find it unsportsmanlike.
Oh, I don’t know. Tally-ho and all that.
Don’t have a dog in this fight, but to clear up a couple of things.
[ul]
[li]At no point in the article does it say “farm-fattened”, “bloated”, etc. It says farm-raised.[/li][li]Most states, especially those in migratory flyways, require a plug in the magazine of the shotgun, therefore only allowing the shooter 3 shots without reloading.[/li][li]Although it seems a lot, 417 birds, of which a significant amount were given to food banks, is really a drop in the bucket. None of the birds, unless lost, were wasted.[/li][li]Most states that have a pheasant season limit the harvest to three birds per hunter per day. (The article indicated that private hunts on game preserves there is no limit)[/li][li]By comparison, dove hunting in Argentina, Venezuela, and Uruguay; it’s not unusual for one shooter to down 500 birds a day, all of which go to feed the local populace.[/li][/ul]
Actually, Lib, you hit the nail on the head with that one, though completely by accident. The fox hunting of “Tally-Ho!” is an upper-crust blood “sport” and isn’t considered “hunting” by REAL hunters any more than Mr Cheney’s live-bird skeet shoot is.
From the linked article:
Poor guy probably went back to D.C. with a vague feeling of melancholia and disappointment. After all, sometime around the tenth pheasant or so, didn’t it get kind of tedious to raise the shotgun again? BLAM! (flop) Yawnnn…
And who did the plucking and packing? Surely not the Veep and his buddies. Can’t you people see? This administration is creating jobs! 
Being a hunter(or former hunter as I have not gone in a few years) and having no real opinion on Cheney, I agree with the “that isn’t hunting” sentiment. That isn’t hunting, it’s killing birds without having to bother with all the other tedious aspects of hunting. Reminds me of the documentary on HBO where a father and son went to a hunting farm to hunt a goat or something similar. The workers basically kept pushing the thing toward the two guys so they could keep shooting it with arrows from about 15 feet.
While the end result is no different than a slaughterhouse, it does matter that the person is doing this for fun and not food or employment. Besides, blasting birds all morning would tend to hurt like a bitch as shotguns tend to have a heavy kick. That makes me think he really enjoyed the killing.