Huckabee did everything right for a cammo close-up. He scheduled the photo op pheasant hunt, held in rural Iowa, post Christmas day when there is little news. He intoned the usual DNR catechism about killing being stewardship --"It's the hunters who actually keep the wildlife alive"-- and he wore a cap that said EAT, SLEEP, HUNT. Cute.
But Huckabee got no bounce out of the event.
Maybe it was the rumors swirling about his son, David, hanging a dog while a counselor at the Boy Scout's Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, AK in 1998 from which he was fired, years before the Michael Vick dog murders. No charges were filed says Newsweek but talk of obstruction of an investigation and a family culture of cruelty were in the air.
But probably it was the way Huckabee joked about the bird he killed with his 12-gauge having his opponent's name written on its butt that lost him points.
"See, that's what happens if you get in my way," he chortled to the press as if he had thrown a horse shoe instead of ended an life. If a pastor finds death funny, whether an animal's or a human's, what does he take seriously, the press wondered out loud.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford didn't try to use hunting to get elected -- but getting on the wrong side of a gun (both of them if you count the one used for "fun") almost cost him his post.
While most people know he went AWOL from his gubernatorial duties over Father's Day in 2009 to "hike the Appalachian Trail " in the arms of his Buenos Aires consort, Marà a Belà ©n Chapur, fewer realize the official delegation included dove hunting in Cordoba, Argentina. An excursion paid for by his appointee and Cabinet member Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor.
News reports don't give the name of the dove hunting lodge where the wing shooting took place, but Cordoba is said to be a dove hunter's paradise. At JJ Cecelia's Estancia, "It is normal to shoot between 1,000 to 1,500 shells per hunter per day" according to the web site and hunters "regularly use two guns to prevent barrel overheating" thanks to "no bag limits or seasons." Photos show mountains of deceased birds in front of grinning he men.
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