Fistfight suggested to decide pigeon shoot

Thursday, August 2, 1990

The Hazleton Standard-Speaker

By Chuck Gloman

An animal rights activist said Wednesday he is awaiting a response on his challenge to the organizer of the annual Hegins live pigeon shoot to a fistfight to determine whether the controversial Labor Day shoots will be stopped.

Calling the shoots "cruel and pitiless," Steve Hindi, of Carol Stream, Ill., has offered to put up $10,000.

If Tobash wins, Hindi's $10,000 would be donated to the Hegins Community Park.

If Hindi wins, Tobash's $10,000 would be donated to the park and the live pigeon shoot would be cancelled.

Hindi noted Wednesday he has received no response from Tobash.

When contacted by the Standard-Speaker, Tobash said he is ignoring the fistfight proposal.

"I didn't respond to Hindi's letter because his challenge is crazy in the first place," said Tobash.

"He can't call off the shoot and neither can I, because neither one of us has control of it."

According to Tobash, the shoot is run by the Hegins Labor Day Committee of approximately 200 people.

Hindi said his challenge is "dead serious." To prove its authenticity, he said, he has deposited $5,000 in the Meridian Bank, which has a Hegins branch.

Under Hindi's challenge, the fistfight – "without time limit, rules, officiating, or any protective gear whatsoever" – would take place "in a public place in the Hegins area" before the scheduled date of the shoot.

The confrontation, Hindi said, "would end only when one of the parties submits, or is unable to continue beyond any shadow of a doubt."

Each combatant, he told Tobash, would have one person designated who could also stop the fight "if you or I were unable to submit on our own."

"Violence is generally against my personal beliefs," said Hindi, a mild-mannered, 35-year-old father of two, who is president of an Illinois corporation that manufactures industrial fasteners.

Attacking the annual Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot as "a perverse concept of entertainment," he suggests it be replaced this year by "a fair confrontation between two consenting sportsmen."

Tobash has been quoted as saying that, although he has organized the shoots as a community fundraising project, he should not be challenged because he personally does not shoot the pigeons.

"How can an individual who has planned the terrorizing, suffering and death of over 100,000 innocent lives make such an absurd claim?" Hindi responded.

He termed the pigeon shoots as an "un-American, un-Christian display of bloodletting."

"Are all the other communities in this country who have wholesome entertainment on Labor Day that much smarter then the community of Hegins?" Hindi asked Tobash.

"Last year (at the Hegins shoot) your people were calling the animal rights people 'wimps' because we were non-violent. And this year one 'wimp' has the 'macho men' running scared."

"Let this offer be a lesson to those in your community, especially the young, that feeling pity for others is not a sign of weakness. Quite the contrary, it is considerably more difficult to turn the tide of cruel and outdated attitudes in favor of a kinder and more gentle society.

"However, if you will not teach the lessons of peace and humanity, then I trust that you now will accept this opportunity to show your people that you are as much of a sportsman when the odds are even as you are when you stand behind a gun and shoot a trapped and defenseless bird."

"In fact, to do otherwise would be an extreme show of cowardice."

Hindi urged that 1990 be remembered as the year that the people of Hegins buried the shoot.

He termed the shoot a relic of a less-evolved society.

"In truth," Hindi wrote Tobash, "There is no desire on my part to do harm to you, or to risk possible injury to myself. But if necessary, I am prepared to risk the welfare of both of us to stop the bloodshed of the helpless victims of your shoot."

Hindi blasted Gov. Robert Casey Wednesday, charging the office of Pennsylvania's leader with disseminating false information about the Hegins shoot.

Hindi said that when he asked a woman on Casey's staff how Pennsylvania tolerates the shooting of live pigeons at Hegins, he was told that the Hegins area has a "pigeon overpopulation problem."

"This is a total falsehood, devoid of any truth whatsoever," said Hindi, who contends that many pigeons are raised especially for the shoot.

"And the vast majority of the rest are transported to the event from other area," he said.

"And to make matters worse, the percentage of birds which manage to escape the pitiless fate planned for them escape into the local environment. One shoot participant recently put the number at 10 percent."

With 7,000 birds used in last year's shoot, Hindi reasoned, approximately 700 escaped.

"Therefore," he said, "the (shoot) does nothing to decrease the area's pigeon population, and in fact it drastically increases it."

He accused Casey's office with answering inquiries with "totally false information."

Hindi said the governor's office told him its personnel are taking comments and opinions form callers about the shoot and passing them on to Casey.

Noting that the shoot has be held every year for 56 years, Hindi told Casey he questions his truthfulness and leadership.

"I would submit that these vital qualities appear to be lacking in the Pennsylvania governor's office," he said.

Hindi said he was told by a number of people at last year's shoot that pigeons are "diseased pests."

"If they are diseased," asked Hindi, "why do they allow boys to handle them, wringing the necks of birds who fall to the ground, wounded?"

"If they are diseased pests, why did they release about 700 into the environment last year?"

If this year's Hegins shot goes on as scheduled, said Hindi, efforts to ban the "wholesale slaughter" will not stop.

"The pressure will continue," he said, "because we'll have to assume that they intend to hold another shoot next year."

"I think one of the mistakes that animal rights groups have made is that they come and protest on the day of the shot, and write a few letters or make a few phone calls.

"But they haven't treated this like the fight for life it is. When you're involved in a fight for life, you don't stop."