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

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has made it a point to remind Americans that he was once an assistant high school football coach several times since he was elected as Kamala Harris' running mate.

However, during Tuesday night's vice presidential debate, he let everyone in on the details of another sport he played after practice while working at Mankato West High School.

During a post about 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 at the age where I had my shotgun in my car so I could hunt pheasants after soccer practice,” Walz said.

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Gov. Tim Walz speaks to supporters Sept. 12 at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. (Detroit Free Press/Adam Vander Kooy/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

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

“Yeah, I sat in that office with those Sandy Hook parents. I became friends with school shooters. I saw it. See, the NRA, I was an NRA guy for a long time. ” Walz said.

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

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

Walz is also a key organizer of his state's inaugural Governor's Pheasant Hunting Tournament. He celebrated the 2023 event last October when he declared himself a lifelong pheasant hunter.

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

Pheasant hunting is one of the most popular bird hunting sports and is particularly popular in southern South Dakota, which borders Walz's state of Minnesota and is known as the “Pheasant Capital of the World.”

However, pheasant hunting has led to a drastic decline in the bird population in the United States over the past 50 years. Although pheasants are not considered an endangered species, they are considered endangered in many regions of the country.

According to the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, the species' population in New York State has declined by nearly 90% since 1970. In Minnesota, however, the population decline has been more steady and less dramatic.

WALZ had to correct his record about whether he was in China for the Tiananmen Square protests

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Walz's habit of chasing 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 with the team, the team won the 1999 state championship. Walz's first job out of 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 to Mankato West High School's first gay-straight alliance and 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 in the Harris campaign since he was announced as Harris' running mate on August 7.

Although Walz had never coached beyond the high school level or even been a head coach in high school, Walz compared his football coaching background to that of Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who served as head coach at four different NCAA powerhouses. 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 jobs now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville and show that football coaches aren't the stupidest people,” Walz said during a fundraiser in Boston in early August.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally Aug. 7, 2024, in Detroit. (Andrew Harnik)

During a campaign speech in Wisconsin on September 17, Walz even claimed that his experience as an assistant high school football coach led him to “take football back” from Republicans.

However, during the governor's visit to the Michigan-Wisconsin game on Saturday, football fans didn't show much sympathy for Walz. Several people in attendance booed him, and another fan even shouted, “Get out of here.”

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