Pigeon-shoot Showdown Protesters Home In On Canton Area Event

April 21, 1991

The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

Kevin McDermott Staff Writer

CANTON -- To passing motorists, it must have been a confusing sight: dozens of angry protesters at the roadside, waving signs and screaming through bullhorns (something about pigeons) toward a seemingly serene farmhouse.

"Come on! Take a shot! I'm a bigger target! You don't like me, do you?" shouted Greg Hindi, as he paced along the orange rope that marked the boundary to the sprawling rural property. He carried a large piece of cardboard with a target drawn on it, and addressed a small group of men watching him silently from inside the property line. "You're scum! You're scum!" Shots echoed from a low knoll at the back of the vast yard, out of sight of the protesters. Then a pigeon sprang into the sky, apparently unharmed, and darted away through a grove of trees. A cheer went up among the protesters.

For most of the day on Saturday, only the scores of parked cars and the sporadic echoes of shotgun fire gave clues to the controversial "pigeon shoot" taking place on the property of Donald Holford, just north of Canton on Illinois 78. About 40 protesters and close to a dozen journalists spent the afternoon at the side of the road, between the traffic and the marked property line. The depression at the back of the land shielded from view most of the event, in which live pigeons are catapulted from boxes into the waiting shotgun fire of the participants.

The protesters of the four-day event included animal-rights activists from around Illinois, Indiana, and as far as Pennsylvania. They were "professionals," as one annoyed Canton resident put it. Although this is the 13th year Holford has conducted his "North American Flyer Championship," and although it isn't the only one in Illinois, it recently has become a focus for animal rights groups, who claim pigeon shoots are akin to the now-outlawed cock fight.

"It's just a despicable activity," charged protester Harold Schessler, a computer programmer from the Plano area. "Hunters even despise this sort of thing -- it's almost a sure shot." "They're killing for pleasure," said Kathy Roberts, a homemaker from East Peoria. "It's not sport."

Journalists weren't allowed onto the Holford property Saturday, and shoot participants declined to be interviewed. Other proponents of the practice have maintained it is a sport, and that it helps control often troublesome pigeon populations. About 10,000 pigeons reportedly will be targeted during the four days of the Holford shoot.

Holford himself has consistently declined to comment on the event in recent weeks, and he couldn't be reached Saturday.

"The principle of this protest is to draw attention to this activity," said Frantz Dantzler of South Bend, Ind., director of the five-state North Central Regional Office, Humane Society of the United States.

"It's to let people know that this sort of thing exists. It's absolutely going to stop -- I have no doubt about that. It's just a matter of when."

Dantzler said his organization might file suit over pigeon shoots in Illinois, one of a handful of states that in its statutes specifically sanction the events. He claims that sanction violates the state's anti-cruelty laws. However, a suit might prove unnecessary, as legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives this year to ban the sport completely.

Although Saturday's protest didn't lead to the violence and arrests that marred a similar event in Pennsylvania last year, the highly confrontational style of the activists apparently jarred the nerves of Fulton County Sheriff's police. Worried about accidents as well as violence, they parked near the protesters, cruised back and forth in front of the Holford property and occasionally walked into the crowd to caution the activists away from the passing traffic.

"We really haven't had any problems here yet," said Sheriff Dan Daly, who spent much of the day lingering near the crowd. "So far, the protesters have been pretty good about staying back from the road."

The real confrontation of the day was verbal rather than physical. Led by Plano activist Steve Hindi (Greg's brother), who has spent weeks calling public attention to the shoot, protesters hurled insults at cars entering and leaving the property and chanted "Cowards, cowards, cowards" toward the shooting area. Some drivers who began to pull into Holford's private road backed out and drove on when the protesters approached; others made angry gestures, or simply smiled and waved.

About 100 people were expected to participate in the shoot, which runs Thursday through today. Although most of Saturday's shooters weren't visible from the highway, a small group of them stood in plain view, and appeared to be trading shifts to guard against intrusion by the protesters. As the activists insulted the shooters through bullhorns, the shooters fired back blaring music; each group kept video cameras pointed at the opposite sides of the orange property line, like armies facing each other at a border.

But in Canton -- which consists mostly of people who are neither pigeon shooters nor protesters -- the standoff drew mostly annoyance at the out-of-town attention focused on their community.

"I really got no opinion one way or the other," said Howard Chenoweth of Canton, as he hung around the Jeep Junk parts shop. "But the protesters they have out there ain't from here. They must do this for a living." "I don't think it's necessary to protest (the pigeon shoot), because I don't think it hurts anything," said John Kovachevich of Canton. "It has drawn a lot of attention. They've had this out there more than 12 years, and I can't get over all the attention it's getting now."

Other residents had stronger opinions.

"I think it's time to start shooting protesters," quipped Terry Watson. "You can't do anything anymore without getting protested."

Pennsylvania, home of the nation's largest pigeon shoot, has come under the heaviest attacks from animal-rights activists in recent years, but national organizations recently have begun targeting Illinois, Texas and the handful of other states in which the practice still is specifically sanctioned.

In Illinois, shoot organizers can obtain a free license to conduct the events from the Illinois Department of Conservation, and that agency was prominently mentioned in the angry slogans on the protest signs ("Saddam Holford -- Adolf IDOC," read one). The protesters became particularly vocal on a few occasions, when wounded pigeons strayed out of the hidden shooting area and into plain view, followed by teenage boys sent to retrieve them. Under law, the participants are required to put wounded pigeons out of their misery, a task accomplished by the "trapper boys" -- kids who run onto the field and stomp or behead the birds. That aspect of the sport probably has drawn the heaviest criticism.

Shooters pay a fee to enter the event and compete for cash prizes, the points being determined by the number of dead birds. The shoot is scheduled to continue today, and Steve Hindi said he and others plan to be back, as well.