WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney is drawing criticism from a rival Republican presidential contender, Michael Huckabee, who said it was a “major mistake” for the former Massachusetts governor to portray himself as a lifelong hunter when he had hunted only twice.

“It’d be like me saying I was a lifelong golfer because I played putt-putt when I was 9 years old and I rode in a golf cart a couple of times,” Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said yesterday.

Mr. Huckabee is running well behind the GOP leaders in fund raising and in the polls. Even as he took Mr. Romney to task, he praised Mayor Giuliani for making what he called “a really gutsy move” in sticking by his support for federal funding for abortions, even while campaigning in South Carolina.

“I thought it was at least a statement of extraordinary honesty and candor on the part of Giuliani that he would go into South Carolina, a very pro-life environment, and just say, ‘Look, this is who I am. I’m not going to change just to get your votes,'” Mr. Huckabee said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Huckabee’s compliment also served as a reminder of Mr. Giuliani’s position on abortion, which is out of step with many conservative Republicans; he prefaced the statement by saying he disagreed with the former mayor and would not support federal funding of abortion as president.

For Mr. Romney, the criticism highlights the divergent paths his campaign has taken. Despite his success in fund raising — he pocketed more than any other GOP candidate in the first quarter — he has struggled to cast himself as more conservative than his better-known competitors, Mr. Giuliani and Senator McCain of Arizona.

Speaking to a crowd in New Hampshire last week, Mr. Romney described hunting as a teenager and then most recently last year, saying: “I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life.” Yet the next day, his campaign told the Associated Press that, in fact, those two occasions were the only times he had ever hunted.

Mr. Romney clarified his hunting history again later in the week, saying that he had shot rabbits and rodents for many years in Utah. In a statement, he said he was “not a big game hunter” and joked that he was “more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt,” the AP reported.
A spokesman for Mr. Romney did not return messages seeking comment yesterday.

The flap comes as Mr. Romney has tried to win the support of gun rights advocates. While he supported strict gun control measures when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, he joined the National Rifle Association months before launching his presidential campaign. He has also acknowledged changing his position on abortion in recent years; he formerly supported abortion rights, but now says he is “pro-life” and was “wrong” on the issue before.

Those shifts may provide an opening for another GOP hopeful, such as Mr. Huckabee or Senator Brownback of Kansas, to lay claim to the social conservative mantle, which has been influential in previous elections. “He’s certainly wanting to appeal to a lot of the voters that I think I naturally appeal to,” Mr. Huckabee said of Mr. Romney yesterday.

Two other GOP candidates seen as more conservative than Messrs. Giuliani and McCain are also considering getting into the race: a “Law & Order” star and former senator of Tennessee, Fred Thompson, and a former House speaker, Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Huckabee, who left office as Arkansas governor after two terms in January, has gotten off to a slow start in fund raising, taking in only about $500,000 in the first quarter. Mr. Romney raised $23 million, including a $2.35 million personal loan.

Also yesterday, Mr. Huckabee repeated a challenge to Christian evangelical leaders to scrutinize the personal lives of candidates in the same way they spoke out about President Clinton’s behavior in the 1990s. “If those same standards don’t apply to Republicans, then it’s just a matter of sheer hypocrisy,” he said. “Principles have to be applied to all of us, and it shouldn’t be applied differently to Republicans or Democrats.”

Asked whether he was referring to Mr. Giuliani, who has been married three times, Mr. Huckabee said he was “not calling out the candidates. I’m calling out the Christian leaders.”