Rosenberg: Your group, Shark [Showing Animals Respect and Kindness] protests hunting, rodeos, bull fights and slaughterhouses. I bet many people would be surprised that you were a hunter in the past yourself.
Hindi: I wasn't as much a hunter--though I did enjoy shooting and eating pheasants and ducks--as I was a fisherman and shark hunter. In fact my fishing successes were written up in magazines such as Fishing Facts and Midwest Outdoors, while my shark hunting was written up in the New York Daily News. I would go out in a 17 foot boat and get a seven-and-a-half foot mako shark while the guys in 30 foot boats got nothing.
Rosenberg: For the "fun" of it?
Hindi: Yes, for the sport.
Rosenberg: What happened?
Hindi: In the late 1980's I had heard about the Hegins pigeon shoot and thought the cruelty charges were propaganda. But when I saw it myself I felt like My God what are you doing? We hunters have enough bad press without something like this. These pigeons are captured from cities or purpose bred and put into shoe boxes which catapult them into the air to be shot. Sometimes they can't even fly when they come out. It is the ultimate canned hunt.
So I said to the guys I hunted with, we've got to go there and take their guns away. Here we believe in conservation and fair chase and these pigeon shooters are using live birds for target practice. They're so unsportsmanlike they won't even pick the birds up after shooting them.
Rosenberg: They have kids pick up the dead and dying birds at these pigeon hunts?
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