Target Practice for Animal Activists
Protesters Taking Aim at State-Sanctioned Peoria `Pigeon Shoot'
March 24, 1991
The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
By Kevin McDermott
PEORIA -- The videotape shows a dozen small boxes, each about a foot square, lined up in an open, sunny field. From each, a rope extends back out of view of the camera. A large, chatty crowd can be heard milling nearby.
One rope tightens, and the box at the end of it flips open. A live pigeon springs from it and flutters about 10 feet off the ground.
A tinny shotgun blast echoes from somewhere off-camera, and the bird seems to explode.
It drops quickly to the grass, a cloud of feathers settling slowly behind it. The pigeon lands on its back, wings extended and twitching. Later it will die under the foot of a boy who appears to be about 10 years old, as he runs into the grass to collect the dead pigeons and finish off the live ones.
It's called a "pigeon shoot."
Essentially, it's just like skeet shooting, in which clay disks are catapulted into the air for marksmen -- except that in pigeon shoots, the targets are alive.
Illinois reportedly is one of only a handful of states in the nation to allow live pigeon shoots. About 20 shoots are conducted here annually. All are on private property, with permits obtained by the Illinois Department of Conservation.
One of Illinois' largest shoots is to be conducted next month at a gun club near Peoria. That's what brought Steve Hindi to Peoria on Friday, presenting his graphic, "undercover" videotape of a 1990 Pennsylvania shoot as if it were evidence for a murder trial.
"It's like cockfights, or dogfights, or bullfights," said Hindi, a former hunter turned animal-rights activist. "This is not just an animal-rights issue. Anyone should be sickened by it."
Participants in the practice insist it is a sport, and one that doubles as pest-control. The pigeons, proponents have said in press reports, are gathered from cities and farms, where they are considered a nuisance, and would have been killed anyway.
Hindi disagrees. The 36-year-old Plano resident and Chicago-area business owner now stalks hunters in his spare time -- pigeon-shooters, specifically.
He was instrumental in creating national embarrassment for Hegins, Pa., last year, when that small community's annual pigeon shoot (reportedly the nation's largest) was crashed by protesters who tried to free the pigeons. Hindi was one of 27 arrested in the melee.
By some published estimates, the confrontation cost that state more than $40,000 so far because off-duty state troopers had to be called in and because an internal investigation into their conduct still is under way. Hindi, who faces misdemeanor charges in Pennsylvania, is promising more of the same for the organizers of Holford's North American Flyer Championship.
The 13th annual outing on April 18-21 is expected to draw about 100 shooters (by invitation only) to the property of Donald Holford, off Illinois 78 two miles north of Canton. Some 10,000 birds will be targeted, with the shooters paying a $150 daily entry fee for a chance to win a $5,825 grand prize. The winner is determined by counting the dead pigeons, which are discarded afterward.
Hindi and other activists -- including representatives from the Humane Society of the United States and other national animal-rights organizations -- plan to be there in force.
"This has been around since firearms have been used in this country," said Wayne Pacelle, national director for the Washington-based Fund for Animals, which claims 200,000 members nationwide. "Most states today have banned (caged) bird shoots. I'm sorry to say Illinois is among a handful of states which still allow this atrocious behavior.
"We definitely will have a presence" at the Holford shoot, Pacelle said.
Neither Hindi nor Pacelle could say exactly which states allow pigeon shoots, although Pacelle said they are most prevalent in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas. Illinois law specifically sanctions caged bird shoots, as long as the sponsors of such events obtain a free permit from Conservation.
Hindi -- who makes repeated, matter-of-fact references to the "Holford slaughter" and "the cowards" when discussing the upcoming shoot -- is particularly incensed by the state's passive role in the event.
"This is a four-day kill-fest, sanctioned by the Department of Conservation and Governor (Jim) Edgar," Hindi said earlier last week. "It's mainly for the affluent (because of the high entry fees). It's an inhumane spectacle of death. And they treat what they do with all the openness of a drug dealer or a pedophile."
Hindi said he learned of the Holford shoot only because a participant in the Hegins, Pa., event sent him information about it, hoping it would convince him to keep his activism in Illinois rather than exporting it to Pennsylvania this year.
In fact, for a sport that has been around for decades in Illinois and other states, pigeon shoots have surprisingly low visibility. Several state and national wildlife organizations contacted last week said they had never heard of the practice.
State Rep. Mike Curran, D-Springfield, commented that "it sounds morbid," but had no other information about the shoots. The state legislature apparently hasn't had cause to address the issue in recent years.
Firearms and hunting organizations quietly endorse the right to conduct pigeon shoots, although even the powerful National Rifle Association issues that endorsement at arm's length.
"Our position is that we don't object to it," said Alan Krug, an NRA spokesman based in Pennsylvania, which has become the focus of anti-pigeon-shoot activists. "But we don't conduct any of them ourselves (through the NRA)."
However, Krug, a wildlife biologist, said the protesters are engaging in "emotional responses without the facts." Pigeons don't suffer any more than birds killed during open hunting, he says, and there is an element of sport to pigeon shoots.
"The people who say it's easy are the ones who haven't done it," he said.
A call placed to Holford's residence last week wasn't returned.
The Department of Conservation declines to reveal locations or details of pigeon shoots, citing privacy rights for the people conducting them. DOC spokeswoman Carol Knowles said the agency is only following the law in issuing permits for the pigeon shoots.
"It's not up to us to take a position on what is state law," she said, adding that, under the terms of the permit, the sponsors of the shoot must post their rules for participants, and must "make an effort to retrieve the wounded birds and `euthanize' them."
That part of the sport is one Hindi called special attention to on Friday, accusing participants of "child abuse" for getting young boys involved in killing the pigeons. He said most of the birds are mortally wounded, rather than killed instantly, and "trapper boys" around the age of 10 are sent onto the field after the shooting to finish off the dying birds. As shown on the videotape, the euthanasia often is accomplished by stomping or wringing the birds' necks.
There also were scenes on the videotape in which the heads of the birds appeared to be ripped off by the boys.
The videotape Hindi displayed Friday was taken at last year's Hegins shoot by an observer who, unknown to the participants, was an animal-rights activist. Hindi became involved in the issue a year earlier, when he stopped to watch the annual event while on his way to the East Coast for a fishing outing.
"It was the most barbaric, senseless act of cowardice I've ever seen," he says now. "The bird just gets catapulted out -- it can't even huddle in a corner . . . while these cowards blast them with shotguns from 20 or 30 yards away. Most of the birds aren't dead, they're just wounded. And they call this a sport.
"It forced me to reconsider what I've been doing. Hunting was something that was very near and dear to me . . . and a hunter should be more outraged by this than anyone else. Right now, hunters are trying to gain some respectability in the public eye."
In addition to showing up at the Holford shoot next month, Hindi says he plans to lobby Edgar and legislators to ban pigeon shoots in Illinois. He said he also intends to sue the Department of Conservation for refusing to disclose specific information about the permits it has issued.
