Jim Tankersley A Fake Hunter?

J.J. Jackson* | December 31, 2007

I find it humorous when someone like Jim Tankersley tries to lay blame on an action on people other than who it belongs. He reports on Mike Huckabee’s pheasant hunting trip and an incident with reporters:

Republican Mike Huckabee took his presidential campaign for a quick pheasant-hunting expedition in Iowa on Wednesday, and at one point, a reporter asked why he hadn’t invited sporting enthusiast Dick Cheney along. “Because I want to survive all the way through this,” Huckabee replied, in a chuckling dig at the vice president’s accidental shooting of a quail-hunting partner last year.Any good sportsman, though, couldn’t miss a distinctly Cheneyesque moment in the press accounts of the former Arkansas governor’s morning hunt: At one point, Huckabee’s party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group’s heads.

This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form.

Your Swamp correspondent, the son of a longtime hunter education instructor, grew up plying the corn rows and stream banks of rural Oregon with a Labrador retriever and a Mossberg 20-gauge pump shotgun. On our hunts for pheasant, grouse and quail, merely swinging a gun barrel in the general direction of another person was grounds for day-long banishment to the truck (which smelled like wet dog).

Now perhaps Mr. Tankersley does have some modicum of hunting experience. But if he does, he is throwing it out the window for the sake of a story.

Contrary to Mr. Tankersley’s assertions that it was Mr. Huckabee that was in “bad hunting form”, the truth of this matter is that it was the reporters NOT Mr. Huckabee and his group that were at fault.

Why? Because no one should not be following around a group of hunters like these reporters were. That, my friends, is how people get shot.

When you are hunting, you spot your target, you follow your target and you fire at your target. You also should take a quick second to make sure nothing else is between you and your target, but as anyone who has ever hunted knows once you start to track you are not taking your eyes off the target. And despite what Mr. Tankersley would have you believe you cannot watch through your sites and turn your head all around to look at what might be coming next. Many hunters have had the perfect shot ruined because as they tracked game in their scope they fired just as a tree ran across their path.

Gaggles of reporters just lolly-gagging around in the woods looking for a story have to be aware of what is happening. When the pheasants go up, you go down. You don’t walk behind another hunter if you can ever help it and if you have to you make darn sure he knows you are there. You don’t stand around and look at the pretty bird. That is a good way to get shot.

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4 Responses to “Jim Tankersley A Fake Hunter?”

RonniesRayGun on December 31st, 2007 6:26 pm

What kinds of idiots follow a man around on a hunt anyway. I’m with ya. I learned almost right off the bat, if you aren’t there to hunt you don’t go. That’s how people get shot. Especially when those hanging around aren’t hunters and not paying attention.
Mark Taylor on January 1st, 2008 3:31 pm

J.J.
This may be a case of no harm, no fowl. But in
Gov. Huckabee’s case, a hunter shouldn’t take
that shot.
LibertarianPrince on January 1st, 2008 8:55 pm

I’m with Jeff and Ron as a hunter myself. If you are in the woods with a hunter YOU are the one responsible for your safety. That means like Jeff said hitting the deck when the pheasants go into the air. The best way to get shot is to stand in the way of the hunter and his prey.

The hunter is of course responsible for having some common sense that there are others about but if you stand around like a bump on a log and get a face full of shot for a story you’re the one that is dumb.
Oohrahman on January 1st, 2008 9:05 pm

There are two rules to hunting. First applies to the hunter. Know what you are shooting at. Second applies to others around the hunter. Know that when the hunter is getting ready to take a shot to get out of the way.

People like to only remember the first one of those two rules and I haven’t taken a hunter’s “safety course” in years. But I know when I did they only taught the first rule and basically placed the blame for anything that happened on the hunter.

Once I started going out into the woods I learned from experienced hunters that there is much more to it and that usually when someone gets shot it is their fault because they weren’t paying attention to what the person with the gun and the quarry in sight was doing.

Anyone that has been hunting (and is honest) knows that you can’t know everything about what is around you as a hunter. Nor can you look ahead to see that stupid ass reporter standing around like a moron.

Had the reporters gotten shot it would have been just a couple fewer morons who shouldn’t be anywhere near a hunter getting a hard lesson.