Dick Cheney Hunting Accident

Is Dick Cheney a real hunter, or just a sociopath with a shotgun? That horrific choice is brought to us by Michelle Pilecki of the HuffPost. We're informed that the birds he shot yesterday weren't wild, but were raised specifically to be hunted, and were released just prior to the awful event. In other words, it was a "canned hunt".

It also links to 2003's "Cheney faces heat for 'canned hunt'" about his day at the same Rolling Rock Club. Out of 500 ringneck pheasants that were released, only 83 managed to escape, with Cheney himself being responsible for 70 of them.

This caused an angry missive 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... If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets.

Vice president Dick Cheney is in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania today to engage in the hunting of poor, defenseless pheasants and mallard ducks. When I read the article and saw the phrase "Rolling Rock", the first thing I did was yell, "duck!" Then, I realized that that's not what he'll be drinking, but instead it's the Club he'll be visiting.

An avid hunter, Cheney is no stranger to Rolling Rock. He has made several trips to the club since 2002. During a 2003 trip to Rolling Rock, he bagged more than 70 pheasants and mallard ducks.

The hunt occured after his morning briefing, and whether he's doing it on company (i.e., our) time is unknown.