Article by Sby C Richter
Article Published: 11/10/2006

It is bedtime on the 9/10/06; I switched off the lights in my loft. The same old question the whole season long keeps haunting me---Why pigeons, why go through all the effort of racing them.

Since childhood pigeons fascinated me and for forty years I’ve been the keeper of these wonderful and gutsy feathered friends of ours. All these years with a few wins now and then I kept on caring and breeding with the never ending hope of creating a family of birds that will stand back for nothing.

Where I am racing you see the old faces that were there for as long as you can remember getting fewer and fewer. Is it the same passion that kept them going? With all the odds
stacked against them they keep on caring and hoping until they are no more.

New faces arrive on the scene----I get the impression it’s about winning BIG---MONEY, MONEY. After a few seasons they’re gone—more new faces----the same. The same old faces prevail, what is it that keep these old folk in this wonderful pastime. These old veterans of the sport of pigeon racing, what is it that drives them on, hoping against all hopes of that one bird, that one champion pigeon that will make all the years of sacrifice worthwhile.

Surely a true pigeon man is somebody special. For all you would be pigeon fanciers out there go and speak to the veterans in your area and try to understand what makes them tick.

GRIZZLE.