Live-pigeon shoots flying in face of controversy

Friday, June 12, 1992

The Chicago Tribune

By Maria Donato

Former Texas rodeo cowboy John McSweeney said all he wanted to do was hone his shooting skills. Clay pigeons weren’t challenging enough.

So the Will County electrician looked outside at an empty field that surrounds Carpy's Cove, the remote rural tavern and restaurant that he lived above, and decided to hold a live pigeon-shooting contest.

McSweeney said he bought pigeons from a broker who had trapped them in municipalities and industrial complexes. Then he invited about a dozen or two fellow shooters and charged each $100 for a go at 25 birds apiece. In the last two years, McSweeney said, he held about four shoots a year.

The winners walked away with a 14-carat gold pigeon pin, a local bird dog trainer got the dead birds and sometimes McSweeney had "a few extra dollars" in his pocket. Sometimes, because of costs, he had a few less.

As far as McSweeney was concerned, contestants were only shooting "rats with wings," and everything was going along just fine – until the end of the first season.

That's when animal rights activists showed up with their bullhorns and video cameras at the privately owned field, which is located down a series of gravel and dirt roads north of the town of Wilmington (pop. 4,743).

Now McSweeney's pigeon shoots have become a controversial topic at committee meetings of the Will County Board, where the animal rights activists have been screening the videotapes for board members.

The videotapes show how the live birds are catapulted by a spring mechanism from one of five box traps.

Shooters stand about 30 yards away from the trap boxes. They are allowed two tries to hit the birds. The birds must fall within a circular fence, whose diameter is about 50 yards, in order to score. High school boys retrieve both the dead birds and the fluttering wounded. They twist the neck of the injured birds to kill them.

David Petzal, executive editor of Field and Stream magazine and one of the magazine's shot-gunning columnists, said neck-twisting is the traditional way to kill small game birds.

He said although in the Untied States live pigeon shoots attract only a small number of participants, the contests usually are shrouded in secrecy for "all the obvious reasons."

Petzal would not delve into the ethics of live pigeon shoots, saying that "was a question for the individual, because shooting and hunting sports attract people with just about every viewpoint you can find."

That includes, he said, "most hunters who feel you don't shoot it if you can't eat it."

But Steve Hindi's objections go much deeper.

Hindi, a Plano businessman, said pigeons are "creatures of God" that are badly maligned. Because of their homing instincts, they can serve useful purposes as research subjects in experiments related to the Earth's magnetic field.

As president of the Fox Valley Animal Protectors in DuPage County, Hindi drives each Sunday to Carpy's Cove, a corrugated-steel tavern, to determine if a shoot is being set up behind the bar. If so, he sends out the alarm to about two dozen like-minded protesters.

"Killing anything for sport is cruel," he told the Will County Committee on Health, Education and Aging. "Most mass murderers started out by being cruel to animals."

After watching Hindi's videotape and hearing descriptions of the shoot from protesters, committee members said they were appalled by the shoots. But Will County State's Atty. Edward Burmila Jr. told them that non-home-rule counties were powerless to stop them.

Nevertheless, the committee said it intended to ask the full County Board to condemn the practice.

Further fueling the controversy is that last fall state legislators repealed a provision of state law that required a permit to hold a pigeon shoot. Proponents say that makes the shoots legal. Opponents contend just the opposite, saying that now the shoots are not exempt from state animal-cruelty laws.

Hindi has filed a complaint with the Will County Sheriff's Department alleging the pigeon shooters are violating the state's cruelty to animal law. That complaint has been forwarded to the state's attorney's office.

Meanwhile, McSweeney said he isn’t doing anything wrong and denied accusations by the protesters that he bred the birds or that his contests were big-stakes betting events.

McSweeney said he has held four shoots this year, most recently in April. HE said of the 600 to 1,000 birds he orders for each shoot, he loses about 20 percent to disease and handling and another 20 percent manage to fly out of the target range without getting hit.

According to the Illinois Department of Conservation, about 20 to 25 pigeon shoots are held annually across the state. But the department refuses to release the names of former permit-holders or locations of the shoots.

"There are public safety concerns," said department spokesperson Carol Knowles. "Guns are being used at these sites, … We don't want people out there who might get hurt."

Both protesters and shooters have brought their children to the events. Both sides have accused the other of using foul language. The clashes have left some of the workers and regulars at Carpy's Cove, which has nothing to do with the shoots, wishing everyone else would just go away and leave them in peace.

"Most of the shooters and protesters aren't even from here," said one of the bar regulars, who refused to be identified. "Until all this stated this was just a nice, quiet little spot."