Candidates hunt for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Shotgun in hand, rising Republican candidate Mike Huckabee bagged a pheasant on Wednesday as U.S. presidential hopefuls hunted for votes just eight days before the first contest in a wide-open nomination race.

After a 36-hour Christmas break, Republican and Democratic candidates poured back onto the campaign trail, battling snow, cold temperatures and air traffic delays as they fanned out through Iowa and New Hampshire.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, nailed a pheasant during a hunting expedition in southern Iowa. He has rocketed to the top of opinion polls in the Midwestern state, largely on his appeal to its sizable bloc of religious conservative voters.

"Hopefully we'll just shoot pheasants, not each other," Huckabee told reporters during the outing.

Most contenders focused Wednesday's efforts in Iowa, which on January 3 begins state-by-state battles to choose one candidate from each party for the presidential election on November 4, 2008.

Hillary Clinton, striving to become the country's first female president, leads national polls among Democratic voters but is locked in a tight three-way struggle with Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa.

Obama, an Illinois senator hoping to be the first black president, campaigned in northern Iowa, while Clinton's return to the state was delayed by air traffic problems in New York.

The New York senator's campaign events with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were pushed to late in the day.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who has touted a populist message of fighting special interests in Washington, headed to New Hampshire, which holds its selection contest on January 8, just five days after Iowa.

Edwards cited polls showing he could beat the leading Republican contenders in November during a stop in Conway, nestled in New Hampshire's picturesque White Mountains.

"People want someone that they know can win in the general election and I think the evidence is overwhelming that I am a very strong, the strongest, general election candidate," Edwards told reporters.

"My campaign is a call across party lines to rise up together and say enough is enough," he told the crowd of about 300 people.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, a poor finish could derail the leading contenders and a surprise showing could give new life to lagging candidates.

Second-tier hopefuls like Democratic Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Republican former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, are concentrating on Iowa down the stretch in hopes they can finish strong in the state.

All of the campaigns took a brief break during the Christmas holiday, fearful of angering families enjoying a respite from politics, but went back to work on Wednesday.