Bird in the Hand Beats a Shot in the Tush

“If you get shot out there,” Mike Raahauge said Tuesday morning as I headed out on a pheasant hunt in Norco, “don’t go to the doctor. Just go lay up at home.”

Raahauge said an inexperienced doctor could make a mess digging lead out of my hide. The very suggestion made me wonder if the vice president would be joining us.

If Dick Cheney did shoot me, just like he plugged a 78-year-old hunting partner in Texas on Saturday, there’s no telling how long he’d try to keep a lid on the story. It wasn’t until Sunday that we learned he had sprayed his buddy’s upper body with birdshot, and the poor guy took a turn for the worse Tuesday with a heart attack.

Of course, if you had five deferments during the Vietnam War as Cheney did, and then went quail hunting after sending American soldiers off to risk their lives in a war that was supposed to be about weapons of mass destruction, you probably wouldn’t want the world to know your buddy was picking pellets out of his teeth.

I’m no hunter, so in fairness to the vice president, I figured I should do some field research to see how easy or difficult it is to mistake a 78-year-old lawyer for a quail. I called the owner of Raahauge’s Pheasant Club and said I was with the L.A. Times, and the response made it clear I was about to enter another world.

“Are you a communist?” Mike Raahauge asked.

“No,” I said. “A columnist.”

I don’t think he figured there was much difference. But Raahauge sounded like a good sport and told me to be at his clubhouse at 7 in the morning.

The rustic hideaway, near the prison in Chino, is adorned with photos of Raahauge and friends. He’s posing with former NRA President Charlton Heston, and several former Los Angeles Rams and California Angels. If you hunt in Southern California, this is apparently the place to be.

Hunting is safer than people think, Raahauge said, and shotgun mishaps seldom kill anyone. But accidents do happen. Several years ago, he said, 12 attorneys and a judge went hunting on his property, and the judge came back full of buckshot.

I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like an accident to me.

“Is there anybody in this room who hasn’t been shot?” Raahauge asked before we set out on our hunting trip.

Six people were in the room; three had been shot. I didn’t know if I liked my odds, but I felt a little better when I put on a vest and hat the color of Mars.

My partner was Steve Foster, the brother-in-law of one of my colleagues. Foster, a Realtor in southern Orange County, is a seasoned hunter and Air Force vet who flew hundreds of combat missions over Vietnam. He’s the kind of guy you want in your foxhole.

Foster brought along his bird dog Stormy, and we were accompanied by a top-notch guide named John Guest, whose dog Buster was in a cage with a bumper sticker that said “Sportsmen for Bush.” I love how you can travel just an hour east of downtown L.A. and be in Texas.

So there we were, setting out across several acres of rolling hills with grass and low brush, looking for three pheasants that had been dropped out there for us. It doesn’t seem quite fair that the birds were raised domestically and put out there for us to blast away at, but I knew the deal going in.

Not five minutes into our trek, we came upon a pheasant that sprung up about 20 feet away and took flight. Foster smoothly raised his Browning 12-gauge, wheeled smartly to his right as Guest neatly ducked out of the way, and fired.

I reached up with both hands and my head was still there. The pheasant is no longer with us, but no humans were injured in the killing of the bird.

I see how things can get crazy in a hurry. The bird pops up unexpectedly and the hunter quickly follows its panicked flight, finger on the trigger. But Foster put safety first, holding back until he was certain there were no heads, torsos or arms and legs in his line of fire.

It seemed like a simple enough exercise, and I began wondering if Cheney shot the guy on purpose. Would you rather have the country talking about your little hunting accident, or the fact that your aide [Scooter Libby] told a federal grand jury his bosses authorized a leak of highly sensitive intelligence?

After bagging his bird, Foster handed me the shotgun and gave me a few pointers, and I was ready for battle. Just between you and me, my hunting license might not have been entirely in order, but then, neither was Cheney’s.

Quietly, I came upon a pheasant, waited for the dog to scare him up, and pulled the trigger.

The bird looked back once, appeared to be laughing, and leisurely flew north like he was on vacation.

Nobody was injured.

Now the pressure was really on. Even Cheney occasionally manages to shoot a bird.

Stormy, trying to help me out, scared up another pheasant. I leveled the Browning and took aim, but the bird was flying low with Stormy giving chase, and all I could think of was New Orleans.

I still get mail from people accusing me of abandoning a dog as it swam through a flooded neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. It was bad enough that I was now trying to kill another member of the animal kingdom. If I shot Stormy, I’d be flogged by dog lovers until I was in the boneyard.

I pulled up my aim.

“I appreciate that,” Foster said.

Hey, safety first. Another bird will come along.

And here it was:

I stood atop a bluff, Mt. Baldy in the distance, a pheasant taking flight before me. I waited until everyone and everything was clear, fired once from about 30 yards, and sent the bird to the barbecue grill.

It’s just not that hard to do. I suggest Cheney get some training from Foster, a man of experience who doesn’t lose his cool under pressure. Or for $35, he could take the Raahauge hunter safety course.

If you’re vice president of the free world, you can’t have people thinking you’re not a straight shooter.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com.