an 11 year old hunting episode is still a campaign issue

(Texas Senator John Cornyn's shooting of pheasants released in a net right in front of him is causing animal rights activists to oppose
his election while his constant support for illegal wars and defense of the oil industry at every turn has given him other opponents.)

Friday, December 19, 2003

National

Cheney's pheasant hunt draws criticism

Todd J. Gillman - Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON _ When Dick Cheney and a hunting party that included several Texas Republicans, among them Sen. John Cornyn, bagged hundreds of ring-necked pheasants at a private hunting club in Pennsylvania last week, animal-rights activists denounced it as a slaughter.

They were especially outraged that the vice president shot more than 70 himself. But Cornyn said Wednesday that the birds had a sporting chance, even if they were farm-raised and released from nets for the hunters.

"It was a good shoot," said Cornyn, who figures he shot dozens of pheasants himself. He conceded that bagging the birds was so easy, at times it seemed "kind of like how Tyson's and Pilgrim's Pride and other people do it. I must tell you that people don't necessarily hunt the same way in Texas that they hunt in Ligonier, Penn., but it was enjoyable," he said.

Two major Republican donors from Dallas, investor Jeffrey Marcus and investment banker Daniel Cook, hosted the Dec. 8 outing at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in southwestern Pennsylvania, Cornyn said. Real estate executive and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach was there, too. Marcus declined to discuss the trip; the others did not return phone messages.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the 10-man hunting party killed 417 of 500 pheasants released from nets for the morning hunt.

The Humane Society of the United States says that smacks of a mass killing.

"These birds were just planted right in front of this group of hunters. It was a bloodbath and it was a blaze of shotgun fire," said senior vice president Wayne Pacelle.

Cheney is known as a skilled hunter, and The New York Times picked up the story this week, tweaking him as someone who shouldn't need the sort of stacked odds a preserve like Rolling Rock can provide.

Cheney aides did not return messages. Rolling Rock chief operating officer Steve Klee said club policy precludes him from discussing patrons or anything else at the 10,000-acre facility.

When pheasants are in season, which they weren't last week, Pennsylvania sets a two per-day bag limit. Those rules don't apply at Rolling Rock and the state's 358 other private and commercial hunting clubs.

Outdoor writer Ted Kerasote, author of such books as "Bloodties: Nature, Culture and the Hunt," about hunting ethics, said he's less offended by the Rolling Rock hunt than by Bush-Cheney policies that have opened more public lands to oil and gas drilling, to the detriment of game herds and sportsmen.

But he said few hunters would get much satisfaction when their prey has so little chance to escape. "That's like going to the grocery store and buying chicken," he said.

Cornyn, who was pursuing wild pheasant and quail Sunday in the Texas Panhandle when he got word that Saddam Hussein had been nabbed, said the Rolling Rock birds "had a fair chance, especially considering how bad a shot I am."

The group donated whatever birds they didn't keep to a local food bank, as hunters often do. Pacelle called that a "lame public relations ploy," though Kerasote said hunters throughout history have shared their excess bounty.

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(c) 2003, The Dallas Morning News.

http://www.dallasnews.com/

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http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=121903&ID=s1457732

Cornyn alleged the birds had a sporting chance
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add

If this kind of hunting offends you, vote for Dr David Alameel

http://www.alameelforsenate.com/meet-david
See also:
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=121903&ID=s1457732
http://www.alameelforsenate.com/meet-david