What about pigeons attracts the worst sorts of people?
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania; CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas; BRUSSELS, Belgium––Pigeons and disreputable human conduct appear to go together like statues and guano, with the most and rankest guano accruing to the high and mighty.
Investigative reporters including Stephen Caruso of Spotlight PA, Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post, and Peter Barth for The Texas Observer have been exploring the association of pigeons with disreputability lately, a link already infamous in the annals of crime since the origin of the term “stool pigeon” to denote an informant, at some point before 1808, and the reported debut of the “pigeon drop” swindle circa 1850.
Pigeon shoots emerged between stool pigeons & the pigeon drop
Pigeon shoots in recognizable form, never really reputable despite the participation of monied “gentlemen of leisure,” were first documented circa 1830, about halfway between the first appearance of “stool pigeons” and the “pigeon drop,” and were deplored as unsporting almost as early.
First banned in 1879, in Massachusetts, pigeon shoots were by the early 20th century prohibited in most U.S. states.
Pigeon shoots were even once banned in Pennsylvania, scene of the notorious Labor Day public pigeon shoot held annually at Hegins from 1935 to 1999, and of frequent private pigeon shoots conducted at the Philadelphia Gun Club.
“Offense against public morals”
Women’s Humane Society and American Anti-Vivisection Society founder Caroline Earle White (1833-1916) in 1890 successfully prosecuted Philadelphia Gun Club pigeon shooter A. Nelson Lewis for what Judge Harman Yerkes termed an “offense against public morals.”
(See SHARK puts “Pennsylvania humane organizations” on list of “10 worst animal abusers of 2014”)
Pennsylvania courts subsequently allowed pigeon shooters to flout the law by holding that pigeons are not animals, until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the Hegins shoot organizers could be prosecuted.
Despite that ruling, the Philadelphia Gun Club shoots and other pigeon shoots held at private clubs continued, as local district attorneys repeatedly refused to prosecute the politically prominent participants.
Humane societies throw pigeons to the dogs
Then “Libre’s Law,” pushed by the Humane Society of the U.S. (now called Humane World for Animals) and Humane Pennsylvania, in 2017 specifically exempted pigeon shoots from prosecution for cruelty to animals, in trade for a seldom invoked and mostly symbolic extension of cruelty law applicable to dogs and cats.
(See Did HSUS & Humane Pennsylvania sacrifice pigeons to NRA demand? and Is burying pigeons alive legal in Pennsylvania?)
American SPCA founder Henry Bergh, who had earlier successfully prosecuted pigeon shoots, did almost the same thing in 1875 to win passage of a law enabling the ASPCA to prosecute cockfighters and dogfighters.
Bergh in consequence could only wring his hands when in 1881 the New York Sportsmen’s Association held a 10-day shooting tournament that annihilated more than 16,000 of the more than 20,000 passenger pigeons who were reportedly trapped for the event in Oklahoma.
This was the last great passenger pigeon flock ever seen.
(See How Henry Bergh threw pigeons to the dogs for the next 150+ years.)
Money kills bills to stop pigeon shoots
Humane World for Animals and Humane Pennsylvania pledged to promptly undo the “Libre’s Law” exemption allowing pigeon shoots, but it has yet to happen.
Bills to ban pigeon shoots have been introduced in almost every Pennsylvania legislative session, but––even after at least once clearing the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee––have yet to be brought up for a floor vote.
The most politically prominent members of the Philadelphia Gun Club are Republicans, but since 2023 the bills to ban pigeon shoots have been stalled by Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, a Democrat elected from Montgomery.
“A spokesperson for Bradford did not answer questions about why he decided to table the pigeon shoot ban [in 2024],” Stephen Caruso reported for Spotlight PA on April 7, 2025.
Follow the money
But, Caruso continued, the spokesperson “did disclose that Bradford’s staff met with the Pennsylvania Flyers Association, which supports pigeon shooting, a few days before the bill’s committee consideration.
“Campaign finance records,” Caruso found, “show the group’s political action committee cut checks totaling $4,500 to five key legislators at that time, including $1,000 to Bradford and $1,500 to state Representative Tim Briggs,” also a Democrat elected from Montgomery.
Then, Caruso added, the Philadelphia Gun Club, “two weeks after the bill to ban pigeon shooting passed out of committee, launched a political action committee that quickly raised $88,000.
$150,000 buys inertia
“A day later, the club also hired lobbying firm GSL Public Affairs & Communications, to which it paid $57,000 throughout 2024. The firm is filled with onetime top staffers to former Democratic governor Tom Wolf,” Caruso noted.
“In May 2024 the club’s political action committee, the Pennsylvania Shooting Sportsmen’s Alliance, sent out a first round of checks to legislators, including $10,000 to Bradford.
“All told, the two political action committees gave almost $150,000 to Pennsylvania legislators in 2024 alone.”
The bill to ban pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania was reintroduced on April 1, 2025, with 38 cosponsors, but has again failed to advance.
Troy Link
Pennsylvania is scarcely the only state in which pigeon shooters buy political favor.
Citing investigative work by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, Seeking Rents blogger Jason Garcia, and John McCracken of Investigate Midwest, ANIMALS 24-7 on August 28, 2025 detailed how Jack Link’s Meat Snacks chief executive officer Troy Link got caught hosting the massacre of as many as 15,000 pigeons used as live targets at his Quail Creek Sporting Ranch, near Okeechobee, Florida, over the weekend of February 24-25, 2024, and how Link responded by hiring lobbyists to pass legislation meant to suppress such exposure,
(See Is bird shooter Troy Link the jerkiest of Donald Trump’s megabucks donors?)
But Troy Link is far from the only individual with evidently more money than any sense of ethics, sportsmanship, or humanity to dabble in the pigeon business.
“Pigeon bowling” & pigeon racing
For example, there is “pigeon bowling,” which is almost exactly what it sounds like.
(See Don’t know pigeons from bowling balls? Among pigeon rollers, you’ll fit right in.)
Pigeon racing has also long attracted all manner of chicanery.
Some of it comes from pigeon racers who protect their investments in high-priced pigeons by killing hawks, owls, eagles, and other pigeon predators.
Most, though, is in connection with high-stakes gambling on pigeon races, for the most part a relatively recent phenomenon.
(See Pigeon racing is animal abandonment!)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Targets of organized crime
“Beginning around 2019,” Washington Post investigative reporter Kevin Sieff recounted in “The pigeon heist: How racing birds became the target of organized crime,” published on September 4, 2025, “wealthy Chinese industrialists started spending millions on Belgian pigeons. That year, a pigeon named Armando sold for $1.4 million at an auction outside Brussels. In 2020, another bird named New Kim sold for $1.9 million.
“Pigeon races in major Chinese cities became opulent symbols of China’s economic boom, with purses over $100 million — exceeding most of the world’s major sports.”
Coinciding with the influx of Chinese gambling money, Sieff explained, “A rash of pigeon thefts swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in 2024 and 2025. Dozens of pigeon lofts were raided; hundreds of pigeons were taken.”
The thieves, Pigeon Boss blogger Jan de Wijs warned followers, “target top pigeons who can be sold for astronomical sums abroad.”
“Pigeons who can be sold for astronomical sums”
This went on, Sieff wrote, until the Chinese government under Xi Jinping “began cracking down on conspicuous displays of wealth and illegal gambling. Pigeon racing thrived at the intersection of both.”
Already, by 2023, Sieff said, “China’s Ministry of Public Security began prosecuting cases of illegal gambling on pigeons.
“Then,” in 2025, “the country’s biggest pigeon club, the Tianjin Pioneer Club, in northeastern China, became embroiled in a high-profile embezzlement case. Members accused a club shareholder, He Bin, of stealing millions of dollars meant to be allocated to race winners.
“State media picked up the case as an example of corruption and theft that needed to be excised from Chinese culture.
“The China Racing Pigeon Association began suspending races and the sport began moving underground.”
Will stolen pigeons fly home?
Despite the Chinese crackdown, Sieff noted, “Hundreds of birds remain missing. Two suspects remain at large. The thefts have expanded across Europe: in April 2025, nine racing pigeons were stolen in eastern Germany.
“In late August 2025 another theft occurred in southern Spain, where three birds worth nearly $200,000 were stolen. Among the similarities to the Belgian cases: the thieves targeted only the best racers.”
Concluded Sieff, “It is increasingly likely, investigators say, that there will be only one way to reunite the birds with their owners,” namely that the thieves will open the cages and the stolen pigeons will remember how to fly home.
“Pigeon shoots & hitmen”
Peter Barth, writing for The Texas Observer, on May 27, 2025 examined “Pigeon Shoots and Hitmen: New Leads in a Texas Oilman’s Cold Case,” involving three related murders.
The first victim, 40-year-old William “Bill” Asher Richardson Jr., was shotgunned on August 1, 1971 in the driveway of his “upscale Corpus Christi home,” Barth recounted, in front of his 11-year-old stepson and his housekeeper, while “unloading his Winnebago RV” after returning from participating in a pigeon shoot in McAllen, Texas.
Richardson, after his oil business “dried up,” Barth said, filed for bankruptcy in 1969, “owing about $3.3 million (around $28.7 million today). Roughly half of those debts were owed to 125 unsecured creditors. Some were his enemies, business associates later told investigators.
Pigeon-shooting for dollars
“Richardson turned to Columbaire-style pigeon shooting for income,” Barth wrote. “A bloodsport popular in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina, it involves a skilled thrower—a Columbaire—pitching live birds who are difficult for the shooter standing behind him to hit.”
The money in it comes partly from prizes posted from the pigeon shoot entry fees, partly from gambling on the outcomes.
Richardson’s housekeeper, Mary Chavez, “When shown possible suspects’ photographs,” Barth wrote, “allegedly pointed to two men from Fort Worth: Odis Thomas Hammond and Sam Mena. Both of them were arrested for the killing.
“Hammond was a career criminal,” arrested more than 60 times in Fort Worth for a variety of offenses, mostly associated with pimping and burglary.
(From SHARK video)
Suspect already accused of two murders
“Richardson was the third person Hammond had been accused of killing,” Barth learned.
“Hammond confessed to killing a friend and fellow pimp in a shootout outside a bar in Fort Worth in 1957, but he was never prosecuted after a witness failed to appear. Two years later, he was convicted of the 1959 murder of a Houston car salesman during an armed robbery. But, surprisingly,” Barth wrote, “Hammond had done little prison time: He was sentenced to 30 years in 1962, but was paroled in April 1971.
“Sam Mena also had a significant criminal history,” Barth found, “including arrests for burglary and robbery, and a 1959 jail escape.
Tried to kill witness; suspect was killed
“While jailed for Richardson’s murder, Mena allegedly tried to use a cellmate to recruit a contract killer to kill” Mary Chavez “before she could testify as a witness against him and Hammond.
“According to Corpus Christi police officers’ testimony,” Barth summarized, “the contract killer was Paul Adams “Tommy” Gibbs,” another career criminal with a violent history dating to 1944, associated with car theft, armed robbery, and drug trafficking.
“But a cellmate tipped off police to the plot,” Barth continued.
The plot to murder Chavez thwarted, “Six weeks later, Gibbs was shot to death in Fort Worth. His murder remains unsolved,” Barth reported.
In & out of prison
Failing to convict Hammond, despite Chavez’s testimony, “Nueces County prosecutors never prosecuted Mena for Richardson’s murder. But, as a felon, Mena also had been convicted of illegal possession of a handgun and did time in prison. By 1974, he was accused of accepting a contract to kill Tarrant County District Attorney Tim Curry, a plot that failed,” Barth narrated.
“Ten years later, Mena, then 49, was arrested in Houston, this time for dealing cocaine to an undercover policeman.
“Both Mena and Hammond spent the rest of their lives in and out of prison before dying in the 1990s. Neither ever confessed to Richardson’s murder.”
Who might have ordered the hit?
“On June 6, 1972,” Barth continued, “almost a year after Richardson’s murder, a corpse washed ashore on Mustang Island, across the causeway from the mainland portion of Corpus Christi, chained by the neck to a concrete block.”
The dead man, Barth wrote, was “32-year-old George Randolph ‘Randy’ Farenthold, a local millionaire,” who “had befriended Richardson through the high-stakes gambling and pigeon-shooting scenes. He was the stepson of Francis ‘Sissy’ Farenthold, a prominent state legislator.
“Randy Farenthold was also a key government witness,” against “four men accused of swindling $100,000 from him.
“Two of the men accused of defrauding Farenthold, Bruce Lusk Bass III and Tharel Smith, were partners in a Corpus Christi construction firm. Bass was part of the same pigeon-shooting and gambling clique as Richardson and Farenthold,” Barth reported.
Died like the pigeons
Bass eventually “pleaded no contest to Farenthold’s murder and was sentenced to 16 years on June 20, 1977. Smith, his business partner, also implicated, was never charged and died of a heart attack in 1985. Neither was ever charged in the Richardson murder,” Barth wrote.
Bass, however, “on the 12th anniversary of Farenthold’s body washing ashore, argued with the owner of a Corpus Christi club and was gunned down in the parking lot. The shooting death was ruled a case of self-defense,” Barth finished.
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
Richardson, Bass, and Farenthold, in short, all died somewhat like the pigeons they killed.
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Pigeon shoots in PA would not be an issue today if there was a functional animal protection movement. On the national level, The Humane Society of the United States, or whatever in the hell it is calling itself these days, along with PETA, made a lot of noise about pigeon shoots, but when noise didn’t cut it, they bugged out, while SHARK stuck around for years and amassed an enormous amount of video evidence that should have buried pigeon shoots ten times over.
Unfortunately, PA’s own organizations proved to be just a fickle as HSUS and PETA, which is particularly ironic given the self-serving rhetoric of the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania (FHSP):
“Formed in 1906, Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania is the nation’s oldest continually active federation of animal welfare organizations. Our non-regulatory member organization represents over 60 animal welfare organizations and individuals from around Pennsylvania.
Federated Humane uses the combined resources and influence of its member agencies to improve the lives and welfare of animals in PA, to implement legislation benefiting animals, and to promote a humane Pennsylvania.
Federated Humane leads the way in ensuring that Pennsylvania’s anti-cruelty laws are enforced and that its member organizations have the tools to continue to move their work forward in the 21st century by providing coordinated Humane Society Police Officer Training and continuing professional education programs.”
What a load of drivel. The only statement that should emanate from the collective mouths of these losers is an apology for their betrayal and literal abandonment of the pigeons, in the most heinous, organized animal abuse in the state. SHARK provided untold hundreds of hours of clear, graphic video evidence of abuse, and the lazy, spineless “over 60 animal welfare organizations” did nothing, to their enduring shame.
I have particular disdain for the Women’s Humane Society (or whatever the hell their rebranding calls them now), and the Bucks County Humane Society. Both organizations are very close (the Women’s Humane Society is about a five minute drive) to the Philadelphia Gun Club, but they couldn’t be bothered to communicate the PGC’s activities to SHARK, headquartered over 800 miles away.
That the FHSP would brag about “…over 60 animal welfare organizations…” and do nothing about live pigeon shoots would be embarrassing if these people had any dignity whatsoever, or even a sense of irony.
While PA’s orgs and the two national groups’ failures are shameful, the movement generally (to the degree that a moment even still exists) must also accept some responsibility. We have failed not just with pigeon shoots, but on so many fronts. We have allowed profiteers and scammers to first infect, and then overrun the movement, and convert it into an industry that produces hype and outright bullshit.
In addition to live pigeon shoots, the continued existence of widespread cockfighting and dogfighting in the US is outrageous, given that both are illegal throughout the country. SHARK and Animal Wellness Action are actively fighting these across the country on extremely limited resources. Steer tailing (coleadero), and other rodeo associated activities run unimpeded in most of the country, with only SHARK and the Humane Farming Association actively fighting against it.
There are hundreds of other issues, and very few active fighters, but throw a conference/party, and people will show up by the hundreds. It’s sickening.
*Absolutely,* Steve Hindi.
The only things all cultures seem to share in abundance are cruelty and greed. And they do go together.