Hegins fight offer repeated

Activist says cash deposit shows he's 'dead serious'

Friday, July 27, 1990

The Morning Call

By Susan Todd

Consider it something of a double dare.

An animal rights activist from Plano, Ill., wrote a second letter yesterday to one of the key organizers of the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot in Hegins Towship emphasizing "the dead serious nature" of his challenge to have a fistfight.

In his letter, Steve Hindi told Bob Tobash, a businessman in Hegins, a small community in Schuylkill County, he had deposited $5,000 in a Meridian Bank in the county as in indication of the seriousness of his proposition.

Two weeks ago, Hindi, who protested the annual pigeon shoot last year with more than 300 animal rights activists, challenged Tobash to a fight in a brute attempt to end the 57-year-old tradition known as the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot.

"The people of Hegins have been led to believe that blood sport is acceptable. Here, we're talking about an alternative blood sport," Hindi said in making the challenge.

In yesterday's letter, Hindi wrote, "… both you and I have been contacted by the media repeatedly. Through them I have read that you think this to be a mere publicity ploy. Think again."

Hindi has proposed that both men put up $10,000, meet in a public place and fight until one of them was unable to continue. If Hindi wins, he proposes that the shoot be canceled and Tobash's $10,000 be contributed to the Hegins Park Association, which receives proceeds from the pigeon shoot to maintain the town's 30-acre public park.

If Tobash is victorious, Hindi say his $10,000 would be forfeited to the park association and the shoot would continue.

"The millions of decent people across the country who have heard this story, and the many more who will, believe, as I do, that you are afraid." Hindi wrote in yesterday's letter. "Last year, 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."

Organizers of the shoot maintain that it is a sports activity. Animal rights activists have appeared at the event – missing only one year since 1986 – to protest what they say is the senseless killing of hundreds of pigeons.

Tobash said yesterday that he had not received Hindi's second letter, and he said he has no intentions of responding to the fistfight challenge. Tobash, who has been involved with the shoot for about 25 years, said, "We have neither the time, the patience, or the desire to trade insults with Mr. Hindi on this issue."

Tobash said the Hegins Labor Day Committee's position is in keeping with state legislators, who have repeated failed to pass a law banning the shoot, despite the lobbying efforts of animal right advocates.

"We feel that the sportsmen should have the right to carry on their activities, and we can assure you that any money raised by the event goes to a worthy cause."

"He isn't going to rest," Tobash said of Hindi. "The Labor Day shoot will go on regardless of what happens to him or to me if the people want it to go on."

Several hundred gunmen pay to participate in the shoot each year. When the pigeons are released from small coops, the gunmen shoot them from 80 feet away as the birds flounder about. Pigeons that survive the shoot are killed later when their necks are snapped by youngsters, who traditionally are recruited for the job.