Justices Kagan, Scalia Are Hunting Buddies

Though they generally aim to the right and the left, respectively, on Supreme Court decisions, Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan both shoot straight down the sight when wild game is involved.

Though it might seem improbable, the two are hunting buddies.

It all started when Kagan was going through her Senate confirmation process, The Atlantic Wire reports. As Kagan went from office to office meeting with senators, she often got asked if she'd ever fired a gun or knew anyone who hunts. It was way of getting a feel for her views on the Second Amendment without actually asking.

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"Finally somebody said to me one of these sets of these questions, and so I said, 'You know senator,' I said, 'if you were to invite me hunting, I would really love to go,'" she said Saturday during an onstage interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "And this look of total horror passed over his face. You know, 'Has this woman just invited herself hunting with me?' And I thought, I've gone too far, and then I sort of pulled back and I said, 'I didn't really mean to invite myself, but I'll tell you what, if I am lucky enough to be confirmed, I will ask Justice Scalia to take me hunting.'"

She was, so she did.

"And he thought it was hilarious," Kagan said. "He thought it was a total crackup."

The Obama-appointed Kagan and Reagan-appointed Scalia hunt birds "two or three times a year," she said. After a few trips, Scalia told Kagan it was time to hunt some big game. So last fall, she bagged her first deer.

You're getting some hisses from the audience," said interviewer Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center. "I hope you were a better shot than Dick Cheney."