From Tuesday of last week, in Oregon:

The last bighorn sheep of the day.

Needless to say, we have not been watching "Sarah Palin's Alaska". But when controversy arose about her caribou hunt on that show, I had to find that segment and watch.

Okay, so she missed four or five shots. As a game warden once explained to me, anybody who claims to have never missed, hasn't hunted very much. I suspect, Murphy's Law being as it is, if the cameras hadn't been along she probably would have done just fine.

And the interview where she defended herself and hunting, well, pretty much textbook defense. Like most hunters, she is passionate about her sport, and stood her ground well.

But she, like many others, apparently does not understand that hunting is not much of a spectator sport.

As a fellow hunter, however, two things disturbed me about her caribou hunt. One bad, and one, well, odd.

First, the bad.

Perhaps in Alaska, where you have huge expanses of country with nobody else in it, you do not worry about where your bullets fly. But for the rest of us, one of the cardinal rules of rifle hunting is you do not shoot at something standing on the horizon.

Because you have no idea what is beyond the animal, and what (or who) your bullet might hit if you should happen to miss.

Four or five times.

His first year of deer hunting, youngest son ended his season empty-handed because he would not take an easy shot at a buck standing broadside. On the horizon.

Some 14-year olds know how to hunt safely, and some older people apparently do not.

The second thing that struck me was...

After each miss, Sarah's father reached over her rifle from the far side, ejected the empty brass and bolted another round into the chamber.

Ummm, I've seen parents do this for 11- and 12-year old kids, but Ms. Palin is how old? How many years has she been hunting? Being able to chamber your own round is basic firearms. Having someone else do it is like asking Daddy to turn the key so the car will start. As much as it is touching that she still hunts with her father, isn't it time she grew up just a teensy little and learned to load her own gun?

Weird.