SLEEPY EYE, Minn. – In a break from campaigning, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, who also is Minnesota’s governor, took in a high school football game in Mankato, where he once taught and coached, and the next morning went pheasant hunting 45 miles away near Sleepy Eye. His Mankato West team won 28-7. The next day Walz got off one shot with his Beretta shotgun but missed. It was his annual outing for Minnesota’s first day of the pheasant season – an annual ritual for Walz. With him, besides a watchful Secret Service detail, were Sarah Strommen, state Natural Resources director; Marilyn Vetter, national executive director of Pheasants Forever; Scott Rall, Nobles County Pheasants Forever chapter president; and landowner Matt Kucharski.
Snacking on the hunt. With a snack of venison and sharing tales from a morning with buddies and his labrador tramping through tall grass for pheasant.