Tim Walz's Hunting Trip Was an Absolute Nightmare

Matt Vespa | October 14, 2024 6:50 AM

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is on a media blitz trying to reach Midwestern men who do not support the 2024 Democratic ticket for various reasons. So, he decided to pull a page from John Kerry’s failed 2004 playbook and go hunting. I’m not kidding—like Kerry, he donned the infamous orange vest and went to shoot some pheasants (via The Minnesota Star Tribune):

On Saturday morning, the governor arrived wearing a blaze orange hunting cap and toting a Beretta shotgun in quest of a pheasant. Unfortunately, for the hunting party, which included landowner Matt Kucharski, Nobles County Pheasants Forever Chapter President Scott Rall and Pheasants Forever CEO Marilyn Vetter, Walz didn’t get a bird. He didn’t even fire a shot during his time walking through the tall grass.
But Walz — whose prowess around rural subject matter, from hunting to tinkering with vintage vehicles, has been touted by the campaign — let other hunters know when a pheasant flushed out by the inexhaustible dogs was a hen, which they couldn’t legally shoot, not a rooster.
When a rooster did burst from the thicket and soared over the press corps, all dutifully wearing orange vests, Walz raised his shotgun vertically, making a joke about the infamous hunting mishap in 2006 when Vice President Dick Cheney shot a hunting partner in the face.

This hunting trip turned up empty, but a Dick Cheney joke? Not that this territory is off-limits, but Walz couldn’t easily shoot someone or eat a faceful of buckshot since he struggled mightily to load a shotgun that he reportedly owned. The hunting trip isn’t the story; it’s that Tampon Tim was unable to load a shotgun: