Palin Draws Fire From Hunters?

In what was quite possibly the most watched single "hunting show" in national history, last week's edition of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC featured Alaska's former half-term governor on a hunting trip. During the trip she shot a caribou, but it took her five shots to knock down her quarry. Unsurprisingly the show immediately drew fire from anti-hunting critics with the HuffingtonPost.com comparing Palin's hunt to Michael Vick's dogfighting.

The Wall Street Journal has a "Speakeasy" piece up lauding Sarah for showing her hunt unedited. The author, Pete Bodo, makes the mistake of calling Sarah's father "Chuck Palin", actually Chuck Heath, but Mr. Bodo seems to put the hunt in perspective and notes that most of the critics of her shooting are no friends of Sarah anyway.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but the big takeaway from the controversy over the recent caribou hunting episode on “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” (the series running on The Learning Channel) is that people are going to react to anything that the former vice-presidential candidate and populist icon does or says based almost solely on how they feel about her going in. The other and more interesting discovery, at least for me, is how little most people who criticized the episode know about Alaska, guns, wildlife, and hunting.

If you missed the episode, there are several clips on YouTube.