Over the holidays I got a phone call from a fellow I had as a friend back in the early 1970's, in fact, this guy introduced me to pigeons, it was him that taught me how to climb the local bridge to get our top of the line pigeon supply.
It has been over 40 years since we last seen or talked to each other, after 15 minutes it was as if time had never passed.
Back then, I don't think there was a kid in the neighbourhood that didn't have a pigeon or two in the backyard, this brought on many hours of great reminiscing, as we talked our conversation turned to what has changed from then to now, why is our hobby on the decline.
We tossed around many reasons, some valid, some not so, but in the end we found it boiled down to one thing, lack of personal communications.
Back then, there was 7 of us kids that hung together because we all had world class street pigeons, each one of us met the same way, walked up and asked what they were doing, Dez and I met first, I was riding my bike past the school yard one weekend morning and I seen him letting birds out of a box, I rode over to ask what he was doing, this started our friendship, we lived about 4 blocks apart, him living 2 blocks from the school, it was like yesterday remembering riding back that day to see if he was BSing me that these wild birds would fly back to his house, he wasn't, and I was now starting my life as a pigeon hobbyist, the other 5 friends were met the exact same way, curiosity and talking.
Today times have changed, most people walk by each other not even acknowledging each other is alive, we train our pigeons mostly out of the way of the public, we don't share the excitement of our sport with strangers, over the years we have be taught and teach our kids to not talk to strangers, so how do we expect them to know what we are doing.
My friend Dez was telling me of how in the past 4 years he has brought 8 new fliers into the sport, of the 8, 7 still race, I asked what his secret was, no secret, did the same thing we did when I first met you, walked up and said hi, from there it took off.
Now when he takes his birds out for short training tosses, he does it later in the morning or earlier in the afternoon, always in places people are, he does warn, if you have a tight schedule on a certain day of training, go to a less populated place, sometimes it's hard to get away from all the questions.
Not every person you talk to will get into pigeons, but you can bet your boots, everyone will walk away with a much more healthier respect for the pigeons.
I know from my own experience when with a group of non pigeon people, and if I bring up my hobby of racing pigeons, most will look at me like I'm from another planet, letting a bird out up to 500 miles from where it lives and it comes home to you, come on, I was born in the morning, but not this morning.
So maybe something as simple as learning to step up to the plate and start talking to the public, educating them about our sport, maybe, just maybe we can help build our sport back up, or at least educate the public so keeping pigeons in our yards will be easier to do in the future.
Just a thought |
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Promoting our sport
