Anyone happen to know what Ken O'Donnell is talking about when he mentions he and Kennedy dressing up as cowboys and shooting deer out of the back of Lyndon Johnson's convertible? Hilarious imagery aside I'm curious as to whether this is some actual incident he's referencing?
shareI can't answer the specific question of whether anyone shot any deer from a car. But John Kennedy, and maybe Bobby Kennedy, visited LBJ at his Texas ranch shortly after the 1960 elections. And LBJ supposedly strong-armed the President-elect into going on a deer hunt. I have no idea what actually happened on the hunt. But I'd be willing to bet good money that Johnson's plan was to shoot Kennedy and declare himself President For Life, but the Secret Service stopped him.
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A good account of a pretty terrible meeting between Johnson and Bobby Kennedy in 1959 at Johnson's ranch begins the excellent book 'Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade' by Jeff Shesol.
The story related in Shesol's book talks about Johnson taking Bobby Kennedy hunting and Kennedy being blown to the ground by the recoil of the shotgun and Johnson saying to him, "Son, you've got to be able to handle a gun like a man."
Frank: Just a man.
Harmonica: An ancient race.
Don't know about JFK and O'Donnell, but George Hamilton, in his autobiography "Don't Mind If I Do", mentions a similar incident involving him and LBJ back when he was dating Lynda Bird Johnson.
"I'm not reckless . . . I'm skillful!"
The Kennedy/Johnson deer hunting escapade really happened. It is detailed in taped phone conversations in one of Michael Beschloss's two books that chronicle the LBJ Oval Office tapes. Kennedy, O'Donnell and others reluctantly spent a weekend at the LBJ ranch in 1961, and Johnson and his ranch hands took them deer hunting on his property. What has turned out to be fictional, is that JFK hated shooting a deer. As has been recalled by others that were present, Kennedy was actually thrilled that he was able to bag a deer, and bragged about it in private. LBJ confirms this in a phone conversation after the assasination in response to pro Kennedy articles that paint Johnson as a "bad guy". It was O'Donnell who feared the poltical ramifications of showing pictures of Kennedy standing over a bloody deer carcass with a smile on his face. Thus, the event was kept quiet, and after Kennedy's death it was spun that the "mean" Mr. Johnson persuaded the peaceful, animal loving president to "reluctantly" kill a deer. All part of the campaign to portray JFK as a saint after his tragic death.
There is a scene in the old, made for TV movie "LBJ - The Early Years" where Randy Quaid (as LBJ) takes Bobby Kennedy out hunting at the ranch and does basically the same thing. In the scene, Bobby purposely misses his shot at the deer, (showing what a "saint" he was too...) and is teased by LBJ. Whether or not that actually happened is unclear. I've never read an account of any such incident.
I was thinking LBJ: The Early Years as well when I heard this incident mentioned in Thirteen Days. It is interesting because that film portrays the Kennedy brothers and their father as nearly diabolical villains (including a scene where the three laugh maniacally in the back of a darkened limo), except for the deer hunting scene where RFK refuses to drink (It's 6:30 in tha mahning") and then purposely misses the deer. I read of a similar event in the book Seeds of Destruction, where the author explains it as an attempt by LBJ to embarrass the "soft" RFK. No mention of JFK or a convertible though.
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