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A few quesions about Dick Cheney and his shotgun No More Fake News / JON RAPPOPORT | February 13 2006 I'm not a hunter. Never have hunted an animal. I've never fired a shotgun. So I'm just trying to understand the press account of what happened. First of all, the description of the event (given to the press) comes from the owner of the ranch where Cheney and his two pals were shooting birds on Saturday. Here is a chunk from the AP story: Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong told The Associated Press the vice president was using a 28-gauge shotgun, and Whittington was about 30 yards away. Armstrong said Whittington went to retrieve a bird he shot while Cheney and a third hunter, whom she would not identify, walked to another spot and discovered a second covey of quail. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," said Armstrong. "The vice president didn't see him," she said. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good." She said the pellets missed Whittington's eyes and he remained conscious. Each hunter was wearing a bright orange vest, she said. Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the 50,000-acre ranch, about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi, to hunt about once a year and is "a very safe sportsman." She said Whittington also is a regular, but she believed it was the first time the two men hunted together. end of AP excerpt Okay. So first of all, I wonder where Katharine Armstrong was when all this happened. She apparently wasn't one of the hunters. But, from her account, she was obviously seeing everything quite precisely. She saw the coveys of birds; she saw Whittington come up behind Cheney; she saw the ammo strike Whittington. Really? Quite fortuitous. She saw all the elements of the event. (One press account says she was sitting in her car.) In other words, was Armstrong's statement to the press really the result of her eyewitness observation, or was she coached afterwards? How far away from Cheney was the lawyer when he was shot? Was he at point-blank range? Was he 30 yards away? From what Armstrong states, it seems that Cheney saw a covey of birds, the birds took off into the air over his head, Cheney whirled around, and fired his weapon. Now, if Whittington was not right behind Cheney at that moment, if he was yards away, then Cheny could have let off a pretty low shot, in order to hit Whittington. Cheny, in that case, was not firing UP so much as OUT. Hmm. I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that experienced hunters like Cheney look for a 10 and two shot; they want to fire up when a bird is in the area of 10-to-two on an imaginary clock. That's UP. In which case, Whittington was really RIGHT BEHIND Cheney, only a foot or two away? And Cheney, what, just whirled around and, without any real sighting, just pulled the trigger? Here, from Gun-Tests.com, is a description of a test firing of ammo from a .28 gauge shotgun, the type of weapon Cheney was supposedly using: "With the reduced powder load needed to drive the smaller shotcharge, the 28 is a much sweeter-shooting round than its two larger stablemates. Surprisingly, it also tends to pattern very efficiently. In fact, as far out as 35 yards, the 28 puts as much of its shot payload (on a percentage basis) into a 30-inch patterning circle as the 12 and 20 gauge..." So the .28 ammo, even at a distance of 35 yards, does not scatter wildly. Seems like Cheney would be firing pretty much THROUGH Whittington (toward the birds?) in order to hit him, even if Whittington was some yards away at that moment. I'm having trouble visualizing the relative positions of Cheney, Whittington, and the flying birds Cheney was trying to hit. If I were a cop or an AP reporter, I'd want to know a lot more before I wrote off the whole thing as just another goofy hunting accident. I'd want to do a test for booze on everyone at the scene, for example. Too late for that now. UPDATE: During the local San Diego Channel 8 (CBS) noon newscast, it was reported that Whittington was 30 yards away from Cheney when he was shot. If this is so, and isn't just a misreading of earlier AP dispatches, then Cheney would have had to take a very low shot to hit his friend. A shot that seems far below the sight-line along which hunters aim at birds. An MD was interviewed, and stated that, at 30 yards, the pellets would not have done much harm, because they are scattering off the central path of force. The quote above, from Gun-test.com, contradicts this off-the-cuff analysis. ---------------------------------------------------
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