Animal rights groups protest live pigeon shoot near Reno

Sandra Chereb

Wednesday, May 6, 1998 | 9:02 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Animal rights groups are incensed over a planned pigeon shoot just across the state line and are calling for a halt to the invitation-only event that could end with thousands of dead birds.

The shoot, which will be held on private land in Sierra County, Calif., is legal in California, officers say, although it may be distasteful to some.

"These events are billed as sport but where is the challenge in shooting down dazed pigeons only seconds after they have been catapulted from cramped cages?" said Deanna Soares, executive director of the United Animal Nations in Sacramento.

"Live pigeon shoots aren't sport," she said. "They are barbaric avian massacres."

The four-day shoot, scheduled for next Thursday through Sunday, is being organized by Jim Champion, of El Sobrante, Calif., according to flyers advertising the event.

It is scheduled to take place on private land two miles from Bordertown on U.S. 395, about 15 miles north of downtown Reno just over the Nevada-California line.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Champion were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at his home on Monday said he was in Mexico, although animal control officers said they met with him that day near the site.

He did not return other messages left on his home answering machine or pager.

Dan Olsen, animal control supervisor in Truckee, Calif., whose jurisdiction includes Sierra County, said animal control officers will be on hand to ensure wounded birds are killed quickly and not left to suffer.

Olsen met with Champion and other organizers on Monday.

"My role in this is just to enforce the laws that are on the books," Olsen said Tuesday. "The event itself is not illegal, as long as their using the right type of birds, which they are, and as long as they basically follow the fish and game code in California."

Among other things, the code requires that all birds killed or injured by shooters be retrieved without delay, and that injured birds be immediately "dispatched," or killed.

"They're going to use teen-agers to ring the necks of wounded birds to kill them," Olsen said, adding that it's apparently a common practice at pigeon shoots.

"When we met with them ... we asked for an open invitation so we can come and go as officers," he added. "They totally agreed to all requests made.

"An officer will be at the shoot each day ... (and) have the authority to stop the shoot for the purpose of dispatching a bird," he said.

"We can't stop the shoot because we don't like it," he added. But "we want to make sure there's no criminal cruelty or neglect while we're there."

Shooters will stand near a ring, 30-40 yards in circumference, outlined on the ground. When a shooter yells "pull," a pigeon is released from one of several traps within the ring. A bird must land inside the ring for a shooter to score points, Olsen said.

"The birds are shot before they're 10 yards in the air," said Olsen, who has never been to a pigeon shoot but said organizers explained the procedure to him.

"I know there's going to thousands of birds killed at this thing," he added.

Unlike an annual public pigeon shoot in Hegins, Penn., that draws thousands of observers, this event is by invitation only, no spectators allowed.

Flyers for the event also listed the Silver Legacy Resort in downtown Reno as a co-sponsor, though that contention was vigorously denied by Silver Legacy General Manager Gary Carano.

"We are not co-hosting it," Carano said.

Carano said the arrangements made with the shoot participants are the same offered to any other large group wanting a banquet and a block of rooms.

"We are selling them rooms, offering a banquet and a belt buckle. All that is built into the cost of their rooms," he said.

"We did not proof the invitations," he said, adding, "We are not going to have our name on anything having to do with any pigeon shoot in the future."