Vice President Cheney’s visit Monday to Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in Dutchess County, about 70 miles north of New York City, was made under tight security that kept reporters and photographers well away from the vice president’s hunting party.

But after Cheney’s visit, a New York Daily News photographer snapped a picture of a Confederate flag hanging inside a garage on the hunt club property. In the photo published in Tuesday’s editions, the flag, about the size of a pillow case, is seen covering the top of the window on a door at the back of the garage.

The New York Post reported the flag hung in the garage attached to the club headquarters.

The Daily News photo was shown to the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, who issued a statement demanding that the vice president “denounce the club, and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people.”

Sharpton’s statement was issued hours after Cheney departed the club at 3:45 p.m. Monday for a flight out of Stewart Air National Guard Base. In a statement issued Monday evening, Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said neither Cheney nor anyone on his staff saw such a flag at the hunt club.

It’s not clear whether the front door of the garage that contained the flag was even open at the time the vice president was at the club, where well-heeled hunters shoot ducks and pheasants.

Daily News photograph Howard Simmons told the Poughkeepsie Journal that the garage’s front door was open when he snapped the photo and that the flag was plainly visible to those standing outside.