Rapid pigeon-shoot foe just an ‘easy-going guy’

August 8, 1990

Pottsville (PA.) Republican

By Karen Hube

From 800 miles away in his hometown of Plano, Ill., Steven Hindi is breathing down the necks of planners for the annual Labor Day Fred Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot.

He has no plans to stop.

“There is plenty of trouble at home, but the Hegins pigeon shoot is so heinous, so illogical – it involves not only non-human abuse, it involves human abuse too. I could not sit back,” he said.

Hindi, 36, is the president of Allied Tubular Rivet, in Carol Stream, Ill., a family man and a lover of good sport. A hunter by hobby, Hindi’s game land is the Atlantic Ocean. He is a shark fisherman who says he has a great respect for shooters who are sportsmen. “I’m a real easy-going guy, a father of two – almost,” said Hindi.

Number two is due to be born on Labor Day weekend, possibly even during the 56th annual Hegins shoot where the father-to-be plans to stand up and protest with a mass of other animal-rights supporters predicted to show up again this year.

Hindi was one of the estimated 500 animal-rights activists to cry out against the “massacre” of more than 6,000 birds at last year’s shoot and is committed to seeing the event ended. Supporters of the event, in which pigeons released from traps are shot from 30 yards away, call the shoot a sport that requires practice and skill.

A series of challenges posed by Hindi – one that stakes the future of the shoot and $10,000 on a physical confrontation and others that seek to milk some dialogue from the shoot supporters – still stand unanswered by organizers of the event.

Hindi, echoing activists protests at last year’s shoot, calls the shoot a “blood-letting” that kills harmless creatures for no reason. Men who shoot pigeons released from a cage are not sportsmen, he said.

“A hunter learns the way of his quarry, brings him down and uses him,” Hindi said. “They are not using the pigeons.”

So with the same determination it took to pull out of his tough childhood neighborhood in St. Paul, Minn., to find a “good life,” Hindi will cross hundreds of miles and perhaps miss the birth of his second child to fight the shoot.

The shoot is a fund-raiser for the Hegins Park Association. Each contestant pays $90 to enter the shoot, which has traditionally been accompanied by a picnic. The shooters stand about 30 years from pigeon traps and then fire when the traps are released.

Then, young “trapper boys” pick out the maimed birds and break their necks.

Hindi’s concern with the affairs in Hegins is rooted in what he calls “the lesson to live by,” no matter what someone’s religion is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or, in more basic terms reminiscent of childhood lessons, “It is not right to do bad to other beings, human or nonhuman.”

Respect for life and compassion were taught to Hindi and his brother by their mother while growing up in St. Paul.

Preyed on by gangs using the tool of intimidation, Hindi’s childhood neighborhood gave him the strength it took to break free of that world and to fight for a basic moral framework that upholds the lives of all beings.

Compassion, Hindi says, is a universal term that means to show sorrow for suffering, period. Not suffering only in humans, blacks, whites, Christians, birds or dogs, he said, but for every being.

Hindi has used compassion to fight trouble on his own turf as well.

In the midst of an over-whelming homeless problem in the Chicago area, Hindi circulated employment applications for positions in his company in a homeless shelter.

One out of five people hired remains at Allied Tubular, a ratio Hindi said is not bad.

Hindi has also been involved in fighting for animal rights where he sees injustices. He and other activists helped put an end to cruelty dealt to animals by an auctioning company near Plano. Hindi said after they filmed animals suffering from water deprivation and other ills, the Department of Agriculture intervened.

But Hindi says the struggle to stop the pigeon shoot is probably one of his toughest so far.

“It’s tough to fight because the logic is so obvious and yet they will fight you,” he said, referring to the shoot planner and supporters.

Also, there are no laws being broken, he said.

“I think there are some very active laws that could be put into effect, but the powers that be choose not to.”

Hindi has stressed repeatedly during telephone interviews that he feels no anger against the people of Schuylkill County or Hegins.

“It’s the leaders and the people who have the money. They have seen the rest of the world. They ought to know better and they’re showing these people the wrong way,” Hindi said.

“They should be taking a broader view and making the best judgments,” Hindi said, adding that he will not give up the fight for the lives of thousands of pigeons.

“I will see this shoot end…every day makes me all the more committed.”