Legend of The Quail Hunter is great sport

George Kimball/America At Large: If the theme song of Michael Cimino's haunting, 1978 Vietnam epic film The Deer Hunter was Stanley Myers' Cavatina, will the signature music for its Iraq-era sequel The Quail Hunter turn out to be Happiness is a Warm Gun?

The question of whether hunting should be considered a sport at all has raged since at least 1954, when Sports Illustrated, in just its second month of existence, outraged its readership with a guns-and-dogs cover story.

As a general rule, I find myself on the negative side of the debate, but this story was just too good to pass up. If the vice-president of the United States wants to start firing away at elderly lawyers with an 28-gauge fowling piece and call it sport, who are we to argue?

As one television host noted a couple of days ago, when he blasted Texas attorney Harry Whittington in the face with a load of 7.5 birdshot last weekend Dick Cheney became the first sitting vice-president to shoot a man since Aaron Burr fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton back in 1804.

"Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honour, integrity, and political manoeuvring," noted John Stewart. "Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

It happens like clockwork all over America. The advent of the hunting season can be counted upon to produce nearly as many wounded hunters as wounded animals, although any reference to "hunting season" in the case at hand may be irrelevant, since it appears neither Cheney nor his victim bothered to purchase the requisite migratory bird stamps.

And describing their flightless quarry as "migratory" may also be a stretch.

But last weekend's little expedition into the foreboding jungles of South Texas did put us in mind of a similar big-game hunt we witnessed 30-odd years ago in Newport, Rhode Island.

We weren't a participant on this particular safari, rather the guest of a millionaire sportsman named James Van Alen. A socialite with roots in the old, monied Newport Community, Van Alen, the founder of the International Lawn Tennis Hall of Fame, was known as something of a tennis maverick, having more or less invented the tie-breaking procedures used in the sport to this day.

Jimmy had earned his blue at Cambridge, later played at Wimbledon and wielded a pretty mean racquet well into his seventies.

The same, alas, could not be said of his prowess with a shotgun.

When we arrived at the hunt the participants were gathered under the awning of a large white tent on the lawn of the Van Alen manse, where they steeled themselves for the occasion with cocktails and glasses of champagne. Eventually the blunderbusses were distributed, after which a couple of servants arrived and pulled the netting off a couple of large bundles, which proved to contain several dozen hapless birds.

Whether they had had their wings clipped or whether they were just woozy from their long journey remains unlearned, but the little pigeons proceeded to stagger haphazardly about the lawn while the party guests blasted away at short range until they were all dead.

Miraculously - or perhaps just because Dick Cheney was not among them - none of the guests shot another of their number.

There was a corollary to this episode. A friend who made her living catering gourmet meals for Newport society had been approached about turning the victims of the hunt into the evening repast. Not having the vaguest idea how to cook a slaughtered quail, she phoned Julia Child, the French Chef of television fame, for suggestions.

"Well, said Julia, "first you remove all the buckshot . . ."

"Forget it," said my friend, and hung up.

Some have suggested The Quail Hunter was merely doing his part to halt the spread of bird flu.

Another wag, addressing the question of how Harry Whittington could have been so careless, pointed out that the lawyer might have let his guard down, reasoning that if a politician were going to shoot him it would probably be in the back, not the face.

That the Cheney party waited nearly a full day to report the hunting "accident" - and that the secret service attempted to stonewall an investigation by the Texas authorities - hasn't made these people look any less foolish, nor has the White House's attempt to (a) make light of the embarrassing situation, and (b) blame the victim - particularly after it came to light on Tuesday that the damage to Whittingham's heart may have been more severe than initially suspected.

Now, of course, those of us who continue to ask questions about it are being labelled mean-spirited busybodies. I don't know about that, but I have a pretty good idea what would have happened if it had been me and not The Quail Hunter who shot Harry Whittingham in the face - and sport would have nothing to do with it.