Saturday, December 11, 2010

PostHeaderIcon Sarah Palin Did What?

The wife talked me into watching Sarah Palin's Alaska tonight. The first episode I saw was all about the family commercial fishing enterprise. Very impressed with the family and how everybody got their fingers dirty. Cool to see the family interact and work together. The second episode I watched had Sarah going caribou hunting with her dad. It was a real tough hunt and again, cool to see a nice family dynamic.

Then, it happened. They see a caribou. Sarah gets all lined up to shoot. But the caribou is skylined, so she's gonna wait until she has a good back stop behind the animal right? NOPE! Fire away and a clean miss. Her dad says, "you shot over it". So they load another shell and they think about where that bullet could end up so they wait to fire the next shot right? NOPE! Fire away. Again, over the caribou. They wouldn't dream about firing another one right? Sure, load her up and shoot again. Over it again! Three 7MM projectiles sent flying through the air at who knows where. The family friend hands Sarah another gun. After three misses at a skylined caribou, she shoots at him while he's looking right at her... not broadside, not quartering... straight on. She drops him in his tracks... but again, a skylined shot.

I realize she's hunting in the bush of Alaska and the risk of hitting something is minimal. But there are several reasons to not take this shot.

1) It only takes one person to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to lead to a fatality. Imagine this headline:

"Hunter Dies From Sarah Palin's Stray Bullet"

Not only does someone die unnecessarily, you think the press wouldn't have a field day with that? There are millions of people praying for something like that to happen.

2) It's being videotaped and aired on national television. Millions of people are watching this show and seeing unsafe shooting. This makes hunters look careless to non-hunters, although many probably didn't even think about. It's also a bad example to aspiring hunters. If it's OK to do on TV, then why can't they do it.

I'm certainly not the type of person that wants to pile on Sarah Palin. There are plenty of other people out there doing that. But the carelessness of what I saw tonight really bothered me. Why no one said anything while it was happening, then know one said anything when they reviewed the tape, then no one said anything during post production is beyond me.

My forays into outdoor videos are small potatoes compared to this and everytime I do anything in the field there is a little voice in my head saying, "what does this look like?" I'm always thinking about what it would look like to my friends and family, to non-hunters, to the general public, and to law enforcement. If you are filming a hunt, you must hold yourself to the highest standards. Everyone is watching and once the video is released, there is no turning back. When you are under the microscope that Sarah Palin is under, careful isn't careful enough. What I saw tonight doesn't do her or any other hunter any favors.

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