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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend February 16, 2006 Cheney’s mistake highlights outdoor problems By Mark Freeman Mail Tribune Shooting a friend during an illegal quail hunt in Texas costs one man $7, while taking a wild black bear in Oregon without a permit lightens another man’s wallet by $600. That’s the score when comparing two common outdoor problems brought to light by two unintentional newsmakers — Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States, and Rocky Perkett, a Coos County logger. For wrongly plucking a wild cub out of the Oregon woods, Perkett has paid a fine nearly 86 times higher than what Cheney paid Monday after wounding a fellow Republican with bird shot while both were hunting without required quail-hunting stamps. Perkett has a backwoods theory for why his bear-raising runs further afoul of wildlife law than the shooting of a friend by the pedigreed man. "What do those blue suits he wears cost? Six-, seven-, eight-hundred dollars?" Perkett says. "Well, I wear a pair of Prison Blues jeans, a hickory (shirt) and suspenders. That’ll cost you, what, about $70? Advertisement "It’s what you wear and how you talk that matters," he says. Cheney’s and Perkett’s cases represent two far-too-familiar problems in the outdoors — unsafe hunting practices and improper interaction with wildlife. Hunter-safety instructors consider Cheney’s incident Saturday in Texas a textbook case of a swinging-on-game shooting accident, the most common way hunters get shot by partners in the field. While in a quail-hunting party on a ranch near Corpus Christi, Cheney raised his .28-gauge shotgun on a flushed quail. He swung the gun along the bird’s flight line and fired, striking Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer who was 30 yards away. Whittington and Cheney both wore blaze orange and were part of a line of hunters working the field, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report. Witnesses told TPWD officers that Whittington had broken from the line to retrieve a downed bird, a TPWD incident form states. Whittington suffered pellet wounds to the right side of his face and neck, the form states. He remains in a Texas hospital with at least one pellet lodged in or near his heart. Warning young hunters of the dangers of swinging on game is a "big, bulky chunk" of Oregon’s hunter-education course, says Kenn Condon, education manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Oregon has not had a similar injury accident in three years, though swinging on game accounts for half the weapons-related injury accidents in Oregon’s hunting history, Condon says. Condon calls the Cheney incident a "good attention-getter" that likely will be highlighted in hunter-ed courses across the country for a few years. "At least he’s a current vice president, and the teaching tool will be useful while he’s in office," Condon says. "It can happen to anybody. It happened to the vice president." But what didn’t happen to the vice president may be just as telling. Though the TPWD investigation listed "hunter’s judgment" as the only contributing factor to the shooting, Texas investigators called the incident an "accident" for which Cheney will face no charges. Cheney, 65, is lucky his shooting didn’t occur in Oregon, where the state’s definition of reckless actions could have made it a misdemeanor — or worse. To be considered reckless under Oregon law, a person must be aware of and consciously disregard a "substantial or unjustifiable risk" of a dangerous event occurring. A shooter not taking into account what’s in his line of fire could be considered substantial enough to meet Oregon’s threshold for recklessness, says Lt. Walt Markee of the Oregon State Police’s Fish and Wildlife Division, which investigates all weapons-related hunting accidents. "Dick Cheney intended to shoot a shot and (he) should have known what was there," Markee says. "It probably is (reckless), but it’s hard to say without doing the investigation," Markee says. Cheney and Whittington have received written warnings for failing to have valid quail stamps, TPWD officials said in a prepared release. It’s the department’s standard procedure to issue warnings for quail stamps because the stamps have been required only the past five months, an agency spokeswoman says. The White House says Cheney has written a $7 check to cover the stamp’s cost. Perkett has written a check to cover his outdoor indiscretions as well. His $600 note settles his plea agreement in a misdemeanor wildlife violation meant to send a message to Oregonians to keep wild animals in the wild. The 54-year-old Perkett and his son, 28-year-old Jonathan Perkett, found the apparently orphaned cub while logging windfall timber in Coos County about two years ago. They illegally brought the bear home, named it Windfall and "raised her like a daughter," feeding it Dr. Pepper and pizza. The bear roamed free at their rural Allegany home, occasionally sleeping and showering with Jonathan Perkett. After neighbors complained, the OSP in October seized the 150-pound bear because it is illegal to remove and possess big game from the wild without a permit. Deemed too imprinted to humans for release, it now lives alone in a Merced, Calif., zoo. "I told the whole world the truth and told everybody how me and my boy loved Windfall and opened up our house to her," Rocky Perkett says. "A lot of people were concerned for us and Windfall, and that impressed me more than anything." Just like Cheney’s case, Perkett’s blunder is a textbook example of a common outdoor problem. Whether deer or turkeys or raccoons or black bears, wild animals are not pets and those that grow accustomed to people are robbed of their natural lives. "For her being able to sit on my lap and kiss me on the lips, all that cost me $600," Rocky Perkett says. "It’s a shame. It was a beautiful thing." Final score: Suits, 1. Hickories, 0. "That’s a crazy, mixed-up thing, but it figgers," Perkett drawls. "People like the vice president have more pull than me." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Cheney�s mistake highlights outdoor problems ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Computer Security Discount Hotel Reservations Casinos Canada dvd-r Generic Viagra Myspace Windermere Van Vleet Deep Muscle Stimulator Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Student Loans Sudoku Online Advertisement s