Many remember the late Dick Cheney for his service as President George W. Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, shaping the War on Terror. Others remember his multi-decade failing heart--”he has his own parking spot on the ER comedians joked”--and how he shot his 78-year-old hunting companion attorney Harry Whittington in the face in 2006.
Fewer know about his love of put-and-take hunting in which game animals are “put” (released) by an organization and hunters pay a fee to “take” them. Real hunters often disdain such no-chase. no-miss pastimes which use no skill.
In 2003, Cheney’s hunting party killed 417 pheasants at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, PA, Cheney personally killing 70 pheasants and an undisclosed number of ducks. The birds were donated to Rolling Rock Club staff though the pellets had to be removed before they could be eaten.
The next year, on the day after John Kerry was defeated by Bush, the Veep availed himself of Air Force Two to visit Pierre, SD where a motorcade sped him to a Gettysburg area hunting lodge for what was characterized as a victory hunt.
Unfortunately, Cheney’s defibrillator failed him and he was rushed to George Washington Medical Center in Washington DC where he was hospitalized for shortness of breath.
“Sorry we ruined your Saturday,” the Veep’s wife Lynne Cheney told reporters gathered at the hospital with no trace of irony. Cheney was going to be fine and he got plenty of shooting in, she assured the public.
Three years later, in 2007, Cheney in a caravan of 15 sport utility vehicles and an ambulance--no jokes, please--made his way to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club about 70 miles north of New York City, near Poughkeepsie, for more controlled hunting. His spree cost $32,000 for local law enforcement officials who guarded his hotel, protected his motorcade and diverted school buses. This was not Cheney’s first visit to the 4,000-acre club which costs $150,000 a year to join and featured a male-only clubhouse. Yes, you read that right.
Club staff remained tight-lipped about the take—whether the Veep was shooting pheasants, ducks or the “Hungarian partridges” that the club advertises. Nor would an employee on the phone confirm. But, in more bad press for the Veep, a photographer from the New York Daily News noted a Confederate flag displayed in a Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club garage and snapped a photo.
Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell quickly said that neither Cheney or his staff saw the flag. Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, on the other hand, demanded that Cheney “leave immediately, denounce the club and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people.”
A New Heart in 2012
Though many claimed Cheney could not have a heart attack, because he had no heart, he got a transplant in 2012 after his heart attacks.
“Two years ago this time I was on a respirator, heavily sedated. Just had a pump… installed on my heart because my heart had gotten so weak after six heart attacks and 30-some years of heart disease that it was, you know, it was at the end,” he said after the transplant. “There’s not been a single glitch, no sign of rejection, everything’s just gone perfectly.”
Who was the donor? Cheney said he neither knew whose heart saved his life or thought about it much. “I don’t spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person,” he said. “The way I think of it from a psychological standpoint is that it’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart.”
Whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cheney’s helming of the war contractor, Halliburton or his love of put-and-take hunting, many continue to have questions about his heart… even after his death.