June 6, 2018
DEAR FRIENDS,
This past Saturday, June 2, SHARK stunned pigeon shooters at what they thought was at an inaccessible shoot location in a remote area of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. As their license plates showed, shooters came from New Jersey, New York and Virginia and elsewhere. They thought they could get away with murder, SHARK proved them wrong.
As soon as the Angel drone took to the air and focused its high-powered camera on the pigeon shooters, the pigeon shooters hastily put up a tarp to cover the entrance to the shack where shot pigeons are dumped. That's because our cameras have filmed them dumping live pigeons in barrels and committing animal torture. Rather than stop the cruelty, the cowards instead turn to a literal cover-up. Our Angel drone recorded everything and held its position.
Like the violent psychopaths they are, one of the killers shot our Angel with a rifle. The PA State Police were called to the scene. They took a long time to arrive, but we must say they did an excellent job of securing the evidence and beginning an investigation. One of the officers acknowledged in front of our cameras that this was a criminal act. An inspection of the drone revealed it took two shots to bring it down. The Troopers spent considerable time questioning shoot participants.
That the State Police took this as seriously as they did left a dire impression with the shooters, so when we launched our second Angel, the shooters didn't try to stop our Angel drone. In the end, we were able to freely record hours of the shooters and the shoot itself. The State Police now have a criminal event to investigate serious violations of both state and federal law.
When we said this was a major pigeon shoot, this is no exaggeration. The shoot lasted almost 12 hours and the shooting was almost non-stop. Over a thousand beautiful birds fell to the blood-lust of these filthy people who take such extreme pleasure in killing. If SHARK had not been there, no-one would know about this cruelty, now the world knows.
PA pigeon shoots use to involve 3 - 6 rings, now only 1 is used. That is how far down we have beaten the pigeon shooters. They are psychotic and desperately trying to survive as an organized slaughter association and are fighting back. If we don't have the support to fight the challenge, we may lose the significant ground we have attained.
Steve Hindi legally piloted the drone from the public easement off of the road. We had a direct view of the shooting area
At this point, we have no choice but to once again talk about how groups that claim they are fighting for pigeons in PA once again totally failed them. At the end of 2017, when SHARK used the latest high magnification drone technology to document pigeon shoots held at both Thunder Ridge and Wing Pointe, the pigeon shooters publicly announced that they were cancelling their shoot schedule, while secretly rescheduling their shoot schedule so that SHARK would not be able to find and film them again.
Because of this, SHARK asked representatives of groups supposedly fighting for pigeons, such as HSUS, Humane PA and the Federated Humane Societies of PA, to help us by scouting out different locations and letting us know when shoots were occurring. We asked them because we are based more than 700 miles away, it takes many hours for us to get to these locations, while these groups have local members who could easily check locations without such hardship. In the end, not one of them did anything to help.
Because saving lives and exposing cruelty is SHARK’s only mission, we did the hard leg work to find the shoot and prepare for it. Our investigators were at the pigeon shoot for an exhausting 12 hours Saturday, and that doesn’t include the many hours and thousands of miles accumulated by our investigators to get to the where the shoot was held. Compare that effort to groups within PA who didn’t lift a finger to help these birds and you can understand why it is so necessary for us to continue to talk about this.
While there were some recognizable faces amongst the shooters, such as Peter Streletz, Joe Solana and former PA judge Adolph Antanavage, there were new faces in there as well. Calling the shooters furious at our arrival is an understatement. Take a look at the picture below, their hatred of cowardice and basic decency and their endless bloodlust are the traits of a pigeon shooter.
Our Angel drones captured a great deal of cruelty and we will begin to release that footage very soon. In the meantime, please understand that it is only by your generous financial support that SHARK was able to pull off this endeavor. Our $15,000 drone is demolished. This is a tremendous blow to our operation, but we will not be deterred. We need your help to recoup our loss for the animals.
The following day, an annual pigeon shoot was held at the Erdman’s Sportsmen Association in Lykens, PA. Unlike the shoot on Saturday, there was a news article about this shoot, so it was publicly known it was going to happen. Even with this foreknowledge, only SHARK showed up, which again speaks to the fact that while others claim to want to stop shoots, they won’t even go to ones that are announced.
In the article, Mike Romberger with Erdman's Sportsmen's Association states:
SHARK challenges Erdman's Sportsmen Association to release their tax documents to prove that the money goes to little leagues, fire companies, churches.
Interestingly enough, Erdman’s was prepared for SHARK as they had signs saying, “Drone Flying Prohibited.” As no other group uses Angel drones to fight pigeon shoots, this was clearly meant for us. It was also laughable as putting up such a sign had no legal weight as everything we do with our drones is 100% compliant with the law, so we flew our Angel drones without a problem. We gave their “policy” all the consideration and respect it deserved - none.
What that sign did prove was just how frightened the pigeon shooters are of our Angel drones. With the pigeon shooters witnessing decades of abject failure of lobbying the PA legislature, and even how so-called humane groups actually helped make pigeon shoots legal in PA (watch this video to learn more about that), shooters know they have nothing to fear from groups such as HSUS and FHS. But they are so fearful of SHARK’s efforts that they cancelled their entire shooting schedule and went into hiding - and we found them anyway.
This is also the answer as to why we continue to use Angel drones even though there have been a number of shoot-downs of them; time and time again, our Angel drones have proven to be the most effective tool in exposing the disgusting animal cruelty committed at pigeon shoots. It’s expensive and it costs SHARK a great deal of money, but without question the lives of pigeons, as well as pheasants, quails, lambs, dogs used for fighting and experimentation, cocks used for fighting, cownose rays, cormorants, cows, steers, bulls, horses and others are worth it.
When animal abusers acknowledge SHARK as being the greatest threat to their pleasure killing, you know we are effective and doing the work that needs to be done. Please remember this sign when you are considering what group to support and you want maximum results for your donation.
