Pair heckle pigeon shoot participants

April 18, 1991

The Journal Star (Peoria, IL)

By Lori Timm

CANTON – Activists Steve and Greg Hindi heckled competitors who arrived Thursday for the Holford Pigeon Shoot, calling the participants "camouflage barbarians" and "slimy cowards."

The brother yelled insults at people in vehicles entering Donald Holford's property, and the pair decried the event to drivers on Illinois Route 78.

"Your neighbor is a killer," Greg Hindi shouted to passing motorists.

Steve Hindi, 36, of Plano paced along Holford's property line as he carried a homemade sign that read "Stop the Slaughter" on one side and "Big Guns, Small Minds" on the other.

The first day of the four-day competitive shoot at Holford's farm near Canton passed without incident, but Steve Hindi said more protesters will arrive this weekend in objection to a contest involving live birds.

Steve Hindi, who was arrested in Pennsylvania at a similar protest last year, has said pigeon shoots are inhumane and has expressed concern that wounded birds will suffer before dying.

Holford has repeatedly declined to comment on the protesters and the event, which he has organized at his farm for the lat 12 years.

The Hindis spent part of Thursday morning yelling at a cameraman who videotaped them from a van parked inside the Holford property. Steve Hindi believed the camera operator was from the Illinois Department of Conservation and referred to him as "Big Brother," shouting insults at Gov. Jim Edgar and state agencies.

The tape actually is being made by Fulton County police, said Sheriff's Lt. Bill Arndt.

"It's a typical police procedure so we would be able to have a record of what happened here. The tape could be used for training and evaluation purposes," Arndt said.

The tape also could be reviewed by State's Attorney Joan Scott if there is a confrontation, he confirmed.

Bout Fouts, a friend of Holford who was taunted by the Hindis as he visited the farm early Thursday, said, "Everybody's got a right to their opinion, and I have a right to mine … I don't like to be called a coward because of my opinion."

Fouts, who is not participating in this year's shoot, said the protesters paint a distorted picture of the event.

"It is well-run, and it is humane," he said. "I was born and raised on a farm. To me a pigeon is a disease-carrying bird, and what Mr. Holford is doing is far more humane than using poison, which prolongs their deaths eight to 16 hours," Fouts said.

A Canton man who was hired to retrieve dead and wounded pigeons at Holford's shoots in the late 1970's said the birds suffer little, if at all.

"Most are put out of their misery fast," said Doug Manock, 29. "If any were still alive, we would kill them as soon as we came back in (from the competition ring)," he said.

That does not console some Fulton County residents who joined the Hindis for brief periods Thursday.

A Farmington couple approached Hindi in mid-morning to thank him for staging the protest, and a Western Illinois University biology student spent the early afternoon carrying an anti-shoot sign.

The protesters will be allowed in a 25-foot space between the highway and Holford's property line, designated by a red cord. No-trespassing signs along Holford's frontage land, and a sheriff's car will be parked on Route 78.