One man’s pigeon-shoot war: A concerned Steve Hindi pleads, bullies to halt senseless killing

One man's pigeon-shoot war: A concerned Steve Hindi pleads, bullies to halt ‘senseless killing of birds’

September 2, 1990

The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)

By Susan Todd

Steve Hindi has one vivid recollection of the Fred Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot last Labor Day. He remembers the laughter, a wicked laughter.

“It was like a drunken laughter. It’s the most horrendous thing,” said Hindi, an animal rights activist from Plano, Ill. Hindi, who traveled across the country to view the event last year, has waged a two-month campaign against the annual pigeon shoot in the small Schuylkill County town of Hegins.

It was the laughter of grown men participating in an event that Hindi cannot comprehend as anything but a senseless killing of birds. It was the laughter, he said, of “sweet-faced” boys who collect the surviving birds and snap their necks.

“I guess it’s different if you’d grown up in the situation. I guess it’s something like people who had slaves,” Hindi said recently. “When you grew up with it, you didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

In a departure from the practice of most animal rights activists, who prefer peaceful protest and nonviolent tactics, Hindi, the 36-year-old owner of a company that makes tubular rivets in Carol Stream, Ill., has bullied an organizer of the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot, challenging him to a fistfight, calling him a “wimp.” Late last month he targeted the clergy in Hegins, asking them to use their influence to stop the shoot.

“The lesson of ‘as you sow, you shall reap’ should scare you and your congregation to death, for their seeds have been those of lies, hate, fear, and suffering and death,” he wrote in a letter to one Methodist clergyman. “It is time for you to tell your people the truth…tell that that life is God’s gift, not to be wasted by cruel men.”

James Diehl, a Pottsville attorney who grew up in Hegins, represents the Hegins Park Association an organization that plans and sponsors the shoot to raise money for the upkeep of Hegins Park, 30 acres of open land owned in part by the association.

Diehl, who received a letter challenging him in a fistfight or a debate, has restrained from countering Hindi’s emotional arguments against the shoot.

The association, he said, considers the shoot a sport and the event a tradition. The shoot generates an average of $15,000 each year for the park. Some of the money, Diehl said, is contributed to local organizations, including the Little League.

People have been coming to this in the face of protest (by animal rights activists) for five years, Diehl said last week.

The pigeon shoot was started in 1934, in the mid-1980s, it became the focus of controversy when animal rights activists showed up.

Several hundred people descend on Hegins each Labor Day and pay for an opportunity to shoot pigeons. The pigeons are released from small coops, and often flounder, or simply fall to the ground, before they are shot from 80 feet away.

Meanwhile, other people stroll through the park, picnicking and munching on the food for sale at concession stands. Diehl has attended the event since he was a boy, although he says he has never participated.

He said there is a carnival like atmosphere in a town that is known largely for its coal mining and agriculture. It is a homecoming for some.

“I know it’s a chance for me to go back and chitchat with people I haven’t seen since high school,” Diehl said.

Officials with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in Washington, D.C. and Animal Rights Mobilization are predicting that hundreds of protesters, including some who belong to the Lehigh Valley Animal Rights Coalition, will demonstrate against the pigeon shoot tomorrow.

Two activists said last week in a meeting with an aide to Gov. Casey they would throw themselves between the shoot participants and the pigeons in a drastic attempt to save the birds.

Diehl said contrary to what the activists say, pigeon shoots do occur in other states, including Illinois. Several animal rights activists, including Hindi and Leisel Wolff, an office manager for Animal Rights Mobilization, have disputed that, saying pigeon shoots are prohibited in Illinois.

However, Terry Musser, a program manager in the Illinois Department of Conservation, confirmed that organizations may obtain a permit from the state to hold a pigeon shoot. “We have several organizations that sponsor live pigeon shoots during the course of the year,” Musser said. “Some are very small. Some are very large.”

Musser refused to identify the shoots because they could become subject to the controversy that surrounds the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot.

“You could argue very effectively,” Musser said, “that it’s a way of utilizing a bird that is often considered a nuisance. Generally, the pigeons are caught in urban areas. That’s how they get the majority of them. It’s a sport and it happened that the pigeons are shot.

“If it’s conducted properly, people shouldn’t be concerned that the pigeons are being treated inhumanely.”

Hindi maintains that coming from another state should have no bearing on his strident effort to fight for the lives of the pigeons.

“The Hegins people are united with the NRA (National Rifle Association). They’re united with shooters who come from outside the state. Their pigeons come from Kentucky. If they say I have no business being there because I’m an outsider, that’s a cop-out,” Hindi asserted.

In his campaign against the Hegins shoot, Hindi has worked independently of any organized animal rights activist group, although he has conferred with officials at ARM. Dana Stuchell, ARM’s national director, said the 32,000-member organization is providing no financial support to Hindi.

Stuchell said she had spoken with Hindi, and he has won a kind of silent support. “I think what he’s doing is admirable,” she said recently. “I think it shows a tremendous amount of courage. It’s a horrible event, and I suppose he feels strongly for the 7,000 birds that are killed or maimed each year in Hegins.”

Stuchell said the organization would not, for philosophical reasons, ally itself with Hindi.

“We’re a non-violent organization. What he’s proposing is a violent contest, but at least what he’s proposing is a fair fight,” Stuchell said several weeks after Hindi challenged Robert Tobash, a Hegins businessman, to a fistfight.

Under Hindi’s terms, the two men would fight until one was incapable of continuing. If Hindi was victorious, the shoot would be cancelled. A win by Tobash would force Hindi to contribute $10,000 to the coffers of the Hegins Park Association.

Hindi started contributing to ARM about three years ago, which is when he started reading the organization’s account of the Hegins pigeon shoot, touted as one of the largest of its kind in the world.

He went to see the shoot for himself last summer. “I’ve seen some bad things in my day,” Hindi said. “I’ve never seen such an utter lack of pity. I’ve never seen such a hunger for blood. There’s no point to it. I thought about it for about a week afterward, and I knew something had to be done.”

Hindi is a husband and father, who left the down-and-out life as a struggling rock musician to concentrate on the business of being a shipping and receiving clerk at Allied Tubular River, the company he acquired from his father-in-law five years ago.

In Plano, a rural area with a population of 4,664 residents in Kendall County in northeast Illinois, Hindi is known to be outspoken. “He is known to be politically involved.” The local police chief said. Roy White, former vice chairman of the Kendall County Board, groaned slightly at the mention of Hindi’s name. “I have nothing good to say about him.” White said. “I think nothing he does is well thought out.”

Hindi has been active with a coalition of residents who call themselves Concerned Citizens for Responsible Growth, a group that is credited with ousting White and three other incumbent officials who supported a proposed residential development before the primary election in April.

The development was proposed on land that had been zoned for agriculture. Hindi says part of the tract is considered wetlands.

White said that while Hindi zealously wrote letters to the local newspaper and attended some meetings, he was not a leader among the residents, who did succeed in pressuring officials to reject one development plan.

White and his running mates were defeated by a slate of Republicans who were supported by the “anti-growth people,” White said. “They like to look at themselves as having ousted the good ol’ boys,” White said of Concerned Citizens for Responsible Growth.

Hindi has shown interest in more than animals and land preservation, though. In April, after reading a newspaper series on the homeless, he started an ambitious project. He hired several homeless people to work at his company. The project failed.

Mike Hernandez, a newspaper reporter for the Beacon-News, who covered the event, said fundamental things like public transportation doomed the effort. “It was my impression that he was a normal guy who tried to do a good thing,” Hernandez said.

Marie McNelis, who won a seat on the county government body when White was defeated, has a different view of Hindi.

McNelis said she knew of Hindi before she met him formally during the primary election. “Not knowing him that well, he has impressed me as someone who is concerned and caring.”

She said she has seen him attend to motorists injured in a car accident and regularly sees him guiding wandering pets off the busy road that passes in front of her mother’s home.

It didn’t surprise her when she read of Hindi’s fervent opposition to the pigeon shoot in her local newspaper. “A lot of people say Steve Hindi is a radical or an activist. Maybe that’s because they don’t agree with him. I think he’s concerned and compassionate, and I can’t knock that. More people should be like that.”