Animal-rights activists seek Casey’s aid to stop pigeon shoot

August 23, 1990

The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)

By Susan Todd

Animal-rights activists from across the state plan to meet with aides of Gov. Robert P. Casey next week to ask for an emergency injunction to stop the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot in Hegins Township because they fear violence may erupt.

Dana Stuchell, national director for Animal Rights Mobilization, an animal-rights activist group based in Williamsport, said a meeting with representatives from Casey’s office is a last resort by the activists to stop the controversial pigeon shoot.

“We have tried everything,” Stuchell said. “The courts, the Legislature. There’s a feeling that democracy was not served. People are upset. Many people are very frustrated.”

The governor “is the only one who can prevent the shoot from taking place again this year,” she said.

The activists have protested the pigeon shoot since 1984, stridently lobbying legislators and seeking court injunctions in an effort to have the event banned.

Members of Hegins Park Association, which organizes the 57-year-old shoot, say it is the most effective way to raise money to help maintain the community’s 30-acre park. The National Rifle Association has successfully countered the activists’ lobbying efforts.

Stuchell said the activists, who will represent groups from Reading, Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley, will argue that Casey should stop the shoot on the grounds that there may be a threat to public safety.

She said that while Animal Rights Mobilization is not advocating civil disobedience, some activists have vowed to put themselves between the participants of the shoot and the birds.

That, coupled with what Stuchell described as hostility on the part of people who attend the event in Hegins, could be enough to trigger violence, she said./P>

“Thus far, we have been lucky,” she said. “No one has been hurt. This year, we may not be so fortunate. The townspeople are belligerent and extremely hostile toward us. Liquor flows freely. Firearms and alcohol is a dangerous combination.”

James Diehl, Hegins Park Association’s solicitor, said he is unaware of any violence in the past. He said in two instances protestors were arrested, but not because of confrontations with participants of the shoot.

“We’ve had no problem,” Diehl said. “People who shoot take their sport seriously. They don’t drink and shoot. I grew up in Hegins, and basically, the townspeople are non-violent.”

Diehl and another organizer, Bob Tobash, have refused to counter much of the criticism that activists have aimed at Hegins Township and its traditional shoot during the past month.

One activist, Steve Hindi from Plano, Ill, working independently of an organized animal advocacy group, has waged a letter-writing campaign, challenging organizers to fistfights and urging local clergy to end the “blood bath.”

Stuchell said yesterday that she believed Hindi’s challenges have “made people mad.”

“I think its heated things up,” she said. “It’s made people in Hegins feel like cowards.”

Animal Rights Mobilization has not publicly supported any of Hindi’s efforts to ban the shoot, Stuchell has said, because his challenges to fight the organizers are not in keeping with the non-violent nature of the organization.

Stuchell said the activists are committed to demonstrating at the shoot regardless of concerns about safety.

“It is our freedom to protest,” she said. “We feel we have a right to be there. We can’t give up. This is a barbaric event that should not be taking place.”