'One of the Worst Days of My Life'

Following are excerpts of Vice President Cheney's description last night on Fox News of his Saturday hunting accident that injured lawyer Harry Whittington, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:

We were hunting quail late in the day ... in south Texas, wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. ... There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. Covey is flushed, we've shot, and each of us got a bird. Harry couldn't find his, it had gone down in some deep cover, and so he went off to look for it.

The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction ... away from him -- where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right. ... Just two of us at that point. The guide or outrider between us, and of course, there's this entourage behind us, all the cars and so forth that follow me around when I'm out there.

But bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there. Didn't know he was there. ... I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast. ...

He was dressed in orange, he was dressed properly, but he was also -- there was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level, although I could see the upper part of his body when -- I didn't see it at the time I shot, until after I'd fired. And the sun was directly behind him -- that affected the vision, too, I'm sure.

But the image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment. ...

We went over to him, obviously, right away. ... I'm guessing about 30 yards, which was a good thing. If he'd been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater. ... He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body. ...

As soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind. I don't know whether the bird went down, or didn't. ...

He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. And one of the fortunate things was that I've always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician's assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two, he was on the scene administering first aid. ...

I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there." ... He didn't respond. He was -- he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't -- he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. ...

I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious. You just don't know at that moment. You know he's been struck, that there's a lot of shot that had hit him. But you don't know. You think about his eyes. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. ... The physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there, and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.

The complete transcript of the Cheney interview is available athttp://washingtonpost.com.