Dick Cheney: Not my idea of a sportsman
Those of you who have read J. Fennimore Cooper's Deerslayer books might remember a scene in which the pioneers are blasting away indiscriminately at the clouds of passenger pigeons overhead, while the Deerslayer picks out one bird, shoots that, and then goes to retrieve his kill for his dinner. Then the Deerslayer expresses disgust at the wanton slaughter committed by the pioneers.
Cheney's hunting accident has a foul odor, at least to my nose. Katherine Armstrong was once the chair of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, and Cheney was reportedly hunting without the proper permits in his possession. I thought real sportsmen had no qualms about the license fees because the fees support outdoor habitat and resources.
But then a little more web-cruising and one finds that Cheney doesn't necessarily hunt wildlife. Instead, it seems he sometimes hunts birds freshly released from the breeding pen. In Pennsylvania in 2003 Dickie apparently shot about 70 freshly-released birds in a private club in a just a few hours. Wow, what a great outdoor experience! The thrill of the hunt! I wonder if the club operators put monofilament on the birds' legs so they couldn't get away before they got blasted? The incident in Texas smells funny not only because the group didn't have their Upland Bird Stamps, but because the ranch owner drove them out to a particular spot where they could find birds. Makes me wonder if she had let a bunch go just a few hours before.
I'm an avid angler myself. My mother taught me to fish when I was about 9 years old, and she talked about how much her grand-dad loved fishing and the outdoors, and how he taught her to love the outdoors. Some environmental historians credit sportsmen with a lot of habitat preservation. My own experience is from my involvement with a non-profit called Trout Unlimited. Here in Wisconsin TU fights for water quality. Trout need clean cold water, and that is incompatible with irresponsible development. Another thing about TU is that it advocates managing streams for natural reproduction of wild fish rather than a "put and take" hatchery-dependent tame-trout fishery. If the only fish you can catch are the ones dumped out of the hatchery truck, your stream quality is probably pretty damn poor.
Though I'm not a hunter, I think everyone can see the difference between having an ecosystem that sustains natural reproduction of wild game birds versus rearing them in pens, releasing them, and going "bang bang" to your heart's content. If the only birds you can shoot are ones dumped out of a breeding pen, your habitat quality is probably pretty damn poor.
All of this connects directly to the Bushies' environmental policies. The Bushie attitude is that those of us with enough money can breed the animals, release them, and then have all the fun we want stalking them with rod or gun (not my idea of fun). There's no need to protect the environment in order to be that kind of a so-called sportsman. Environmental quality is for the peons like me who hunt or fish for wild things--those of us who can't afford a private hunting or fishing club (though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy most private rod and gun clubs). I bet Dickie feels sorry for those of us who backpack into the Wyoming mountains near his ranch to fish for wild trout. He probably thinks we do it because we can't afford to buy our own fish and toss them into a backyard pond so we can fish them out later. No wonder he wants to let the barons of the oil, gas, timber, and minerals industries exploit any area of public land.
Another reason that Dickie is not my idea of a real sportsman is that he shot his hunting companion in the chest. Real sportsmen know their targets before they shoot.
If you are used to shooting lots of tame pen-birds you probably don't expect your hunting companion to stop shooting and actually go retrieve the single bird he just shot. When Mr. Whittington retrieved the bird he had killed, was he making the same kind of statement to Dick Cheney that the Deerslayer was making to the pioneers in that scene with passenger pigeons? When you shoot 70 birds in a few hours I just bet you don't go and pick each one up, and you don't stop shooting and let your dog go retrieve them either.
I smell fowl, a lot of them, and they're probably rotting in the grass in Texas. All this is pure speculation, but maybe, just maybe, Whittington is the real sportsman.
Feb 16, 2006
