Tim Walz says he kept a shotgun in his car to hunt pheasants after football practices

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has made it a point multiple times to remind Americans that he was once an assistant high school football coach since being selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. 

However, during the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, he let everyone in on the details of another sport he engaged in after practice when he worked at Mankato West High School. 

During a segment on gun control policies, Walz claimed that when he worked as a football coach at Mankato West, he kept a shotgun in his car so he could hunt pheasants after practice. 

“I’m of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice,” Walz said. 

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The statement came when Walz was asked if he would support an assault weapons ban after previously opposing such a measure. Walz, who was previously an NRA ally, said his stance on gun control changed after meeting the parents of Sandy Hook victims and befriending school shooters. 

“Yeah, I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents. I’ve become friends with school shooters. I’ve seen it. Look, the NRA, I was NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety,” Walz said. 

Walz’s hobby of hunting pheasants is something he has spoken and bragged about in the past. In July, Walz bragged that his pheasant-shooting skills were superior to Vance during an interview on “Anderson Cooper 360.”

“That’s what JD Vance’s stick is, talking about guns. I guarantee you he can’t shoot pheasants like I can,” Walz said. 

Walz is also one of the main organizers of his state’s Governor’s Pheasant Hunting Opener. He celebrated the 2023 event last October, when he declared himself a life-long pheasant hunter. 

“As a lifelong hunter and Pheasants Forever member, the pheasant opener is one of my favorite times of year,” he said in a statement.

Pheasant hunting is one of the most popular bird-hunting sports and is particularly popular in South Central South Dakota, which borders Walz’s state of Minnesota and is known as “The Pheasant Capitol of the World.”

However, pheasant hunting has also led to a harsh reduction in the bird’s population in the U.S. over the last 50 years. While pheasants are not considered an endangered species, they are considered at-risk in many regions across the country.  

The species’ population in New York state has declined nearly 90% since 1970, according to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. In Minnesota, the population has seen steadier and less drastic decline, however. 

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Walz’s habit of hunting the birds after football practice means he contributed to this decline during his tenure as an assistant coach at Mankato West in the 1990s. 

During Walz’s tenure as an assistant on the staff, the team won the state championship in 1999. Walz’s first job after college was as a teacher in China, before being hired by Mankato West in 1996, where he was a geography teacher. 

He was also the first faculty advisor of Mankato West High School’s first gay–straight alliance, and he worked to organize summer educational trips to China for high school students.

Walz’s short tenure as an assistant football coach has been a talking point for the Harris campaign since he was announced as the running mate for Harris on Aug. 7. 

Walz, despite never having coached past the high school level or even as a head coach in high school, compared his background as a football coach to that of Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who served as the head coach at four different NCAA Power-5 football programs from 1995 to 2016. Tuberville led Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati as head coach, and even won an SEC Championship with Auburn in 2004. 

“I feel like one of my roles in this now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville, to show that football coaches are not the dumbest people,” Walz said during a fundraiser event in Boston in early August.

Walz even asserted that his experience as an assistant high school football coach meant he “took football back” from Republicans, during a campaign speech in Wisconsin on Sept. 17. 

However, football fans did not show much favoritism to Walz during the governor’s visit to the game between Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday. Several in attendance booed him, with another fan even yelling “Get out of here.”

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