Illinois sheriff stops 'meat shoot' planned for rival

WATERLOO, Ill. -- Monroe County Sheriff Daniel Kelley says he was just enforcing an old, long-ignored law in barring a shooting competition in which cuts of meat are prizes.

Never mind that the fund-raising "meat shoot" -- to have been held today -- was for Joe Brauer, Kelley's Republican opponent in the Nov. 5 election.

Now Brauer has a beef with Kelley. He says the sheriff's call to Walsh's Inn in Burksville to tell owner Dale Walsh that he couldn't host the event had less to do with the law than it did with politics.

"The sheriff, I'm sure, thought he was just shutting me down," Brauer said Friday, when he canceled the event over the sheriff's enforcement of the law prohibiting the discharge of firearms in areas zoned for commercial or residential use.

"What he's done is shut down the whole county," Brauer added, "because churches and sportsman's clubs, they all sit on commercial or residential property."

Kelley, the Democratic sheriff since 1982, said he received a tip that the meat shoot would violate a county ordinance that even the county commissioners acknowledged they didn't know about.

Meat shoots, in which meat is awarded to shooters who strike closest to a bull's-eye, are popular fund raisers for churches, sportsman's clubs and other groups. Monroe County officials said the events have been a staple there for decades.

During a special meeting Friday, the county commissioners agreed to revise the ordinance next month to explicitly make meat shoots legal.