Lesson to politicians: If you shoot at an animal, you’d darned well better kill it. Media outlets are hammering Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty for shooting a buck and failing to find it.

According to an Associated Press report, Pawlenty shot at the deer from about 200 yards away — a long shot, for sure, but easily within the range of most modern center-fire rifles. After the shot, Pawlenty and members of his hunting party appeared to do everything right. They waited 30 minutes to allow the buck to settle down, found blood at the place where the buck was standing when it was shot, and followed the blood trail until it petered out.

Pawlenty had to leave to fulfill a speaking commitment, but members of the hunting party searched the woods for two days and never found the deer.

Now Pawlenty’s enemies — including some in the media — are making political hay from the Republican governor’s misfortune. The headlines have been brutal: “Gov. Pawlenty shoots deer, leaves it to die,” wrote one blogger. “The buck apparently didn’t stop anywhere,” wrote another.

Note to self: If you ever get famous enough that people pay attention to your hunting trips, make every shot count.

Hat tip: J.R. Absher at The Outdoor Pressroom.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Ethics, Hunting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.