Shoot to Kill
September 16, 1991
U. S. News & World Report
By Michael Satchell
Hegins, PA – The town lads – called “trapper boys” and dressed in yellow T-shirts bearing a “Shoot Pigeons, Not Drugs” motif complete with drawings of a bird and a hypodermic needle – stuff live pigeons into tiny traps. When the gunners yell “pull,” a string is yanked and the birds are released. The livelier of them burst into the air, presenting an elusive target and sometimes flying to freedom. Most of them burst into the air, feeble and disoriented from lack of food and water, barely manage to flutter off the ground. A few waddle out of the box and stand still as the shotguns blast them away. When the boxes are empty, the boys collect the dead and injured birds, tossing them into 55-gallon drums hidden from the crowd behind wooden screens. The lucky avian cripples have their necks wrung. The others expire slowly in the trash-cans.
Welcome to the 58th annual Hegins Labor Day festivities. In this village of 750, some 40 miles northeast of Harrisburg, folks have gathered since 1933 in the local park to eat barbecue, drink beer and shoot pigeons. Thousands of them. Trapped in Philadelphia or bred for the occasion, the birds are targets for gunners who can win hundreds of dollars in prizes. The event is similar to skeet shooting, except clay pigeons are much harder to hit than the live variety. Supporters defend the event as a valued example of Hegin’s rural heritage (and a way to raise thousands of dollars for the town’s recreation programs). But to a growing throng of animal-rights activists, Hegins is squarely in the midst of the rancorous national debate over the abuse of animals.
The Hegins event used to go little noticed beyond central Pennsylvania, one of only four states that have not outlawed live-bird shoots. But five years ago, the animal-rights movement discovered it and began showing up to protest, trying to disrupt the shoot. Drawn by the increasing notoriety of the event, more than 10,000 spectators showed up this year, along with some 1,000 animal-rights activists from as far away as Seattle, Los Angeles and Florida. The protesters have promised to return in greater numbers each year until the shooting stops. This year’s angry confrontation ended with authorities charging 86 people with criminal trespass for running in front of the guns and trying to free some of the 8,000 pigeons. Those who succeeded in releasing birds, or who were arrested carrying crippled pigeons to a veterinary MASH unit, were also charged with theft. Pennsylvania state troopers returned the stolen property – wounded birds – to the shoot organizers to be killed.
Amid a cacophony of shotgun blasts, bullhorn slogans from protesters and hooted epithets from the crown, Robert Snyder of Ashland, Pa., leveled his single-barrel at a pigeon hovering barely three feet above the ground and hit it. Then he explained why he came to Hegins. “I shoot skeet, but live birds are more unpredictable,” he said. “This is a great sporting tradition, and these protesters have no right to interfere with our freedoms.” Wayne Pacelle, national director of the Fund for Animals and one of the protest organizers, watched Snyder’s performance and shook his head. “A cruel, pathetic, stupid anachronism,” he said. Pacelle then ran onto the field and free 12 birds before being arrested. Both men promised to return next year.
