I sauntered out onto the porch of the old Armstrong ranch, taking in a deep breath of the fresh February air. It’s in south Texas, wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it’s wild quail. It’s some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country.

Harry’s joints creaked as he came out onto the porch. He was, oh, about 13 years older than me, a fact pretty obvious from the sound of his body at this early hour on this Saturday winter morning. He handed me a mug of coffee and sat down on the bench behind me.

“Good day for quail hunting, I dare say, ol’ Dickster,” he remarked. I always hated that nickname. Then again, it was better than some of the others he could have gone with.

“Sure looks like it. You sure you’re up for this?” I asked, concerned for the old guy. There’s always the possibility of complications in somebody who is 78, 79 years old. It was 40 degrees this morning and only expected to get into the mid-‘60s. It would be a long, cold day in these woods. I poured a snifter of whiskey from my flask into my coffee, to help take the bite off the brisk morning air.

“Why? Worried about me in this cold?” He paused to do a brief stretch. “I’m just a little stiff this morning, what with the weather. If anything, I should be worried about you,” he replied, surely making light of my bum heart.

“Good one, Harry. Don’t worry about me, at the first sign of trouble I’ve got the ambulance here,” I said, pointing at the Kenedy County ambulance in the yard. “I’m gonna go get changed. Plan to head out in about a half-hour or so?”

“Sounds good,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee. I headed inside, stopping briefly by the kitchen for a couple pretzels and to check the beer supply (which was ample). In my rush to get going, I swallowed too big a piece of a pretzel. At least the Secret Service didn’t get involved. The last thing we needed was another embarrassing fiasco like George’s. My chest twittered from the excitement, taxing my old ticker. I took a few deep breaths and the pain subsided.

I returned to my room and changed into my hunting clothes: a pair of brown slacks, a plaid jacket, and a blaze-orange vest with a matching hat. I left and went outside, over to the truck. There was a lot of land to cover, so we’d be driving around much of the time, getting out every now and then to try and scare up some covey. Harry met me outside, cooler in hand, and we piled into the trucks and moved out. There was the driver, Harry, my physician’s assistant, and myself in my truck, with two more trucks of SS guys. Another two groups of people out on horseback, what we call outriders, rounded out our entourage.

We tooled about the fields for a few hours, scaring up only a few quails. Harry shot four, three for me, and about a dozen for the other members of our party. I blamed the low count on the huge group following us around, but as vice-president I had to expect these sorts of setbacks.

We drove the cars to an old—ancient—oak tree there on the place and had a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch. After lunch, we took a break, went back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hour-long tour of the ranch, with a ranch hand driving the vehicle, looking at game. We didn’t go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m.

The afternoon proved to be a lot better hunting. In the first three hours, Harry and I had shot up about a dozen quail each with the help of the outriders and dogs to scare up covey. It was getting later in the day and Harry, Pamela Willeford (ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein and friend of mine), and I were in a pretty lively patch of prairie. Harry and I had each just shot a bird when the day turned sour.

Harry’s covey had fallen into some deep cover after he shot it, and he went looking for it. Pamela and I had broken off, looking for a few more quail to end the day. All of a sudden the bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I dropped my flask and turned and shot at the bird and, at that second, saw Harry standing there. I took my shot and pulled the gun away from my eye, only to see Harry fall down, his bird in hand.

Everybody ran over to see what happened. Harry just lay there on the ground, bleeding along the right side of his neck and face. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. “Harry, I had no idea you were there,” I said to him, but he didn’t respond. He was stunned, but breathing and within a minute or two [my physician’s assistant] was on the scene administering first-aid.

It was one of the worst days of my life, at that moment. I didn’t want to complicate matters by getting more involved, so after the ambulance arrived from ranch headquarters, the rest of us headed back for the day. After such an affair, I needed a stiff drink and made a cocktail, or two—I don’t exactly remember.

The next morning, Sunday, I stood on the porch again and spoke with Katharine, one of the Armstrongs and a long-time friend. [She] suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement—that is, that she’d put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eyewitness. She’d seen the whole thing. Secondly, she’d grown up on the ranch, she’d hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the game control commission in the State of Texas, an acknowledged expert in all of this, and surely the public should hear the news from an expert.

It didn’t help though. The damn liberal media, as always, hyped up the whole affair. They compared me to Aaron Burr, they brought into question my hunting license, which I didn’t know I needed a stamp for, and they hounded me and poor Harry for days and days. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have shot a man, I had to be hassled by the news outlets. That damn Jon Stewart even went so far as to call the whole affair “Dick Cheney Shot A Guy In The Face-Gate.” It was a very trying and infuriating week.

Harry got out of the hospital a week from that Monday after the doctors patched him up. He took a pretty good amount of birdshot and even had a mild heart attack, but they said he’d make a full recovery. Harry even apologized for everything I had to go through, which meant a lot.

[Hunting has] brought me great pleasure over the years. I love the people that I’ve hunted with and do hunt with, love the outdoors—it’s part of my heritage, growing up in Wyoming. It’s part of who I am. But, as I say, the season is ending, I’m going to let some time pass over it and think about the future, always remembering the time I missed the covey and instead shot my aged friend: the least dangerous game of all.