Looks like the Bush administration just can't shoot straight....for real! It appears that it took over 24 hours to be reported to the press, and even that was, apparently, not an official statement. The woman upon whose ranch the accident occurred appears to have alerted the local media. The following from The New York Times.

Cheney Accidentally Shoots a Fellow Hunter

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: February 12, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 — Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a prominent Austin lawyer while the two men were on a quail hunting expedition in South Texas on Saturday, firing shotgun pellets at the man while trying to aim for a bird, his spokeswoman confirmed today.

Mr. Cheney, a practiced hunter, sprayed the lawyer, Harry Whittington, with shotgun pellets on an outing on the Armstrong ranch in South Texas. Mr. Whittington, 78, was flown by helicopter to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition today, according to Michele Trevino, a hospital spokeswoman.

White House officials did not release details of the incident. But local news accounts in Texas suggested that Mr. Cheney fired his shotgun without realizing that Mr. Whittington had approached him from behind, spraying his fellow hunter on his right side, on his cheek, neck and chest.

"Nobody wants this to happen, but it does," Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch, told The Corpus Christi Caller-Times according to an article on the newspaper's Web site. The Caller-Times, which first reported the shooting incident, said that Mr. Whittington was a friend of the Armstrong family and was a frequent visitor to their ranch, one of the largest private properties in Texas.

Mr. Whittington is a former member of the Texas Board of Corrections, which runs the state's prison and he was once chairman of the Texas Public Finance Authority Board. In 1999, Gov. George W. Bush appointed him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission. In August 2002, he was reappointed to the commission for a term set to expire in February 2007.

White House officials, who did not make public the shooting incident for 24 hours, did not say how Mr. Whittington and Mr. Cheney were acquainted, although both have longstanding ties to the Armstrongs, a prominent Texas family. The White House also declined to say who was on the hunting trip with the two men. Local news accounts said that Secret Service agents attended to Mr. Whittington until the medics arrived.

The Armstrong ranch is a familiar hunting venue for Republican politicians, including Mr. Cheney, who sometimes hunts there several times a year.

Mr. Cheney often goes on hunting outings with other political figures. Two years ago he went duck hunting with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Louisiana, a trip that drew criticism because the Supreme Court had just agreed to hear a case involving Mr. Cheney's energy task force.

Anne Armstrong, the family matriarch, is a Republican Party stalwart who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and also as ambassador to Britain. When her husband, Tobin Armstrong, died last October, Mr. Cheney and James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, spoke at the funeral.

The 50,000-acre ranch, which features Spanish-style cottages on the property and usually has a full working staff, including a chef, was settled in 1882 by a Texas Ranger named John Armstrong III, who passed the land on to the family. It sits near the King Ranch, the legendary property settled by the Kleberg family, also in South Texas.

Katharine Armstrong was in the hunting party on Saturday.

The Associated Press reported that Mrs. Armstrong was watching from a car as the vice president, Mr. Whittington and another unidentified hunter got out of the vehicle to close in on a covey of quail. She said Mr. Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, as his hunting companions walked to another spot where they found a second covey of quail.

Mr. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Mrs. Armstrong told the A.P. "The vice president didn't see him. The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and show. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Campaign finance records show that Mr. Whittington contributed $2,000 — the maximum personal amount allowed — to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Mr. Whittington has been involved in a long-running dispute with the city of Austin, which is trying to condemn a block his family owns to build a parking garage. He has won several legal victories in the case, most recently last month in the Texas Supreme Court.

Mr. Cheney visited Mr. Whittington in the hospital on Sunday, said the vice president's spokeswoman, Lea Ann McBride. After spending the weekend in Texas, Mr. Cheney was scheduled to return to Washington this evening.

Maybe he thought there were WMD. Maybe he thought it was Osama. Maybe can't ever aim for the right targets.

My secret service sources told me that they were quail hunting(shoulda been Quayle hunting a few years back),and the guy that got shot let out an audible rectal comment(he farted) and Cheney thought it was a duck,and in keeping with whitehouse policy of shooting first and asking questions later, he turned and fired.I think he should go hunting with Bush next time.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 2 times, lastly by Larry on Feb 13, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

This incident should give rise to a lot of "What's the difference between a lawyer and a quail?" jokes. Of course, the correct answer for Cheney is "None".

Thank God (or too bad) Cheney was never in the military, and probably doesn't know how to handle a weapon, or there'd be one less lawyer in Texas today.

Score: QUAILS 1
REPUBLICAN GUN-TOTING ASSHOLES 0

mikey

Today, on his Air America show, Al Franken imagined if Cheney had shot Bush. Bush, being a pretty healthy guy, would have survived the bird shot. Also, being a macho, competitive cowboy, and quick tempered, to boot, he probably would have started shooting back at Cheney! A presidential shoot out would have ensued! Yippie-ki-uh-oh!

If it came to a Bush-Cheney shoot-out Zap, they woulda got somebody else to do the shooting for them while they hid.

I noticed Arlo made a comment about it which is scrolling across the front page of Arlonet. Very interesting...

Where is Cheney when we need him? He should be peppering those hackers with quail shot in their faces like he did to that lawyer. Why would they hack Arlonet anyway?

Buffoons, all!

ACK!

Dear Friends
I told that Lawyer Son of mind (he helps keeps kids with no money and the wrong skin color from getting too f____ed by the old white judges in the second city- beats farming - for him - don't understand - "left" (no pun) him listen to too much Zimmie I guess)
that the crime was he didn't have a direct hit !! <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/rocketman.gif" width=100 height=33>
any SOB that would go hunting with shady cheney should be shot or hung by the neck
signed
More Left (than) Most <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/rocketman.gif" width=100 height=33>
(just read this some where Irene and passin' it along)
disclaim all responsibilities for whoever's remarks (I don't want on the bench for thinkin')
Peace will come ! (when all the a-holes burn in hell)

"without freedom of speech were all in the swamp"

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by myland2 on Feb 25, 2006 ---</FONT></center>

Hey, Myland! I didn't realize that there was a "smilie" of Dick Cheney hunting!
This one actually looks like him! <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/uptosomething.gif" width=15 height=15>

There's one of "Dubya" as well
<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/confused.gif" width=15 height=22>

<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/confused.gif" width=15 height=22> <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/rocketman.gif" width=100 height=33>

Cheney must hunt with this guy.

Blind hunter able to shoot again, thanks to help from spotter
09:11 PM CDT on Saturday, March 24, 2007

By RAY SASSER / The Dallas Morning News
rsasser@dallasnews.com
ALBANY, Texas – Stanley McGowen grew up hunting near the West Texas town of Baird. A military pilot, McGowen was blinded during a plane crash. He went nine years without hunting while adjusting to his disability.

"I really missed not being able to hunt, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could get back into it," said the Weatherford resident, who lists his occupations as author, historian and consultant.

Six years ago, McGowen came up with the novel idea of mounting a handgun scope on a hunting rifle and relying on a spotter to line up the scope with the target and tell him when to shoot.

The rest of the story is at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/outdoors/stories/032507dnspooutfeature.2f8e2c7.html. I think you have to register.