Pigeon shoots have passionate detractors among animal rights advocates, who call it a cruel and unnecessarily bloody pastime.
But it also has dedicated fans, who argue it’s the ultimate marksmanship test. Despite steady opposition to the practice, Pennsylvania remains one of 30-plus states that allow target shooting of live birds, and one of the only states where shooting competitions are regularly held at a handful of private gun clubs.
A new Spotlight PA analysis shows supporters donated thousands to key lawmakers’ campaign accounts and spent big on lobbyists in 2024 in hopes of winning access to people in power and defeating the ban.
“I can’t get CEOs and doctors and lawyers to take a day off and go march up the halls of the Capitol and bang on the doors of legislators,” Paul Perlstein, a pigeon shooter and Bucks County attorney who has defended the sport for decades, told Spotlight PA. “But I can raise money and get a legislator to listen and talk and say, ‘Hear me out.’”
Ultimately, Democratic leadership in the state House did not bring the proposed ban up for a vote, and it expired at the end of 2024.
Spotlight PA identified the donations as part of a series that examines the role that campaign money plays in access and influence. Pennsylvania lacks nearly all the campaign finance restrictions that other states have, like donation limits or public funding of campaigns. These big donations can lead to access to critical decision-makers, according to lobbyists versed in the way power works in Harrisburg.
Whether money influences lawmakers is much harder to trace. Pennsylvania lawmakers don’t have to disclose their emails or daily schedules, so the public does not have access to information about who they meet with or what they discuss behind the scenes.
It’s up to the state House majority leader to decide whether to allow all lawmakers in the chamber to vote on a bill or to let it die without consideration. Since 2023, that person has been Rep. Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery).
A spokesperson for Bradford did not answer Spotlight PA’s questions about why he decided to table the pigeon shoot ban.
They 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 show the group’s political action committee PAC also cut checks totaling $4,500 to five key legislators at that time, including $1,000 to Bradford and $1,500 to state Rep. Tim Briggs (D., Montgomery).
“They made a contribution. I accepted it. It didn’t influence me,” said Briggs, who chaired the committee through which the ban passed. “Outside sources like that don’t influence my core values.”
Then, a new group entered the debate, according to state lobbying and campaign finance records: the Philadelphia Gun Club, a more than a century-old private organization that regularly holds pigeon shoots on its grounds just outside of the city.
Just two weeks after the bill to ban pigeon shooting passed out of committee, the gun club launched a PAC that quickly raised $88,000. (Perlstein, who spoke to Spotlight PA on behalf of both the Flyers Association and gun club, said the timing is coincidental, and that plans for the PAC were brewing before the bill advanced.)
A day later, the club also hired lobbying firm GSL Public Affairs and Communications, to which it paid another $57,000 throughout 2024. The firm is filled with onetime top staffers to former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.
In May, the club’s PAC, the Pennsylvania Shooting Sportsmen’s Alliance, sent out a first round of checks to legislators, including $10,000 to Bradford. More checks from pigeon shooters' two PACs flowed into state legislator’s committees ahead of the November election.
All told, the two political action committees gave almost $150,000 to Pennsylvania legislators in 2024 alone.
Humane PA, a PAC that opposes pigeon shoots, spent $23,000 during the same period. That includes a $200 donation to Bradford; his spokesperson said staff met with the animal rights group in June.
Despite their relatively lower spending, animal rights groups have clout in Harrisburg. They pushed for a comprehensive rewrite of the state’s animal cruelty statute in 2017. Known as Libre’s Law, it restricts how long dog owners can tether their pets and stiffened penalties for cruelty. (It also includes a carveout to ensure the law isn’t used against pigeon shooters.)
The quiet end to last session’s ban bill doesn’t mean shooting pigeons is popular, said Kristen Tullo, Pennsylvania state director of Humane World for Animals, formerly known as the Humane Society. Instead, it illustrates how Harrisburg works.
“The best way to prove it's not about the money is to run the bill and let the members have their vote,” Tullo said.
Perlstein didn’t know who lobbyists for the pro-pigeon shooting cause had met with, but said that they “pay little attention to party affiliation.”
“We’ve talked to legislators who are antagonistic to our position. Some of them have turned out not to be zealots and are at least willing to consider what we have to say,” Perlstein said. “We make clear that the pigeon issue is not about elephants and whales; it is not about puppies and kittens. It is about field sports and bird hunting. All legislators have appreciated that we are truthful.”
Faced with protesting animal rights groups, Perlstein added that legislators would likely vote for a pigeon shooting ban to “get these people out of my fucking hair,” and “that’s exactly what will happen unless someone can get the lawmakers to listen.”
“Isn’t that the legislative process?” he asked.
Pigeon shooting’s origins can be traced to Europe, but it took off in the 1800s in America as a hobby of the rich and famous that soon became a national craze. The sport consists of captive pigeons being released for a shooter, who must hit them before the birds are out of range. The shooter gains a point for every pigeon they drop.
“It’s like the home run derby,” Perlstein said.
It was also dogged from nearly the beginning by opposition from animal rights activists, who called it “butchery, and pretty coarse butchery at that,” according to an 1879 book published by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Live pigeon shoots were increasingly out of fashion — and illegal — by the early 1900s.
Massachusetts passed the first law outlawing the shooting of captive birds in 1879. As of 2024, at least 16 states have restricted releasing live pigeons or other birds to be immediately shot at for sport, according to an analysis by Perlstein shared with Spotlight PA.
While other states’ animal cruelty laws have been interpreted to ban pigeon shooting, an 1891 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found the opposite.
A lawsuit in the 1990s took aim at that precedent by challenging an annual shooting festival in Schuylkill County that had attracted years of nationally noted protests. The organizers canceled the festival for good in 1999 and put an end to the legal proceedings to avoid giving their opponents a win.
At the time, one animal rights activist told a Schuylkill County paper that with “more and more members of the Legislature finding pigeon shoots repugnant and cruel, there’s no way this is going to continue.”
The observation proved premature.
The last serious attempt by state lawmakers to ban pigeon shooting came in 2014. That year, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill that proposed banning the eating of cats and dogs. The state Senate amended it to add a pigeon shoot ban and sent it back to a lower chamber’s Rules Committee for consideration.
That panel is run by the chamber’s majority leader. It considers all House bills that return with amendments from the state Senate.
That fall, as the ban bill sat in the Rules Committee, the Flyers Association PAC donated a combined $20,000 to then-House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, a Republican, and members of the panel. Turzai never brought the proposal up for a vote, to the widespread disgust of animal rights advocates.
“We’ve had success,” said Perlstein. “There’s no question if you can get the legislators' attention, you hope that they are leaning more towards you."
Spotlight PA contacted all of the sitting lawmakers who took money from the pro-pigeon shoot PACs last year.
Just one, Bradford, specifically said their office had a meeting about the ban. Five more said they were aware of the pigeon shooters and their interests.
Other lawmakers maintained they didn’t solicit the donations, were only generally supportive of hunting rights, or some combination of the two.
Of the nearly $150,000 in donations in 2024, 85% went to Republicans. Former House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County was the biggest recipient, taking $46,500 from both pigeon PACs.
A PAC established by state Rep. Josh Kail (R., Beaver), who led House Republicans’ campaign efforts last cycle, took $45,000 from the gun club in the lead-up to the election. The money the PAC collected went toward caucus members’ reelection campaigns, and Kail said donations were all about shared values and not any particular policy position.
“Our caucus has strong support of the Second Amendment and for sportsmen,” Kail told Spotlight PA. He added, “There’s no, ‘Hey guys, this guy gave this and that and that’s why we should vote this way.’”
Committee chair Briggs told Spotlight PA that he “didn’t ask for” the check, which arrived a few days before his committee voted on the bill. “It appeared,” he said.
He added that he didn’t meet with the pigeon shooters but has an open-door policy to anyone with business before his committee.
The PACs also donated money to lawmakers in the state Senate, where any ban would need to be considered to get to Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. Among the recipients were state Sen. Lisa Baker (R., Luzerne), chair of the Judiciary Committee. She received $2,000 from the Flyers Association PAC.
In a statement to Spotlight PA, Baker said she is “meticulous” about separating her official legislative duties from her political activities.
She added that the president of the Flyers Association is a constituent, small business owner, and longtime acquaintance for more than 40 years, with whom she shares “a deep respect for sportsmen’s activities.”
“To single out a contribution as a potential indication of influence peddling is essentially to indict every contribution, whether from a PAC or from a friend or neighbor,” Baker said.
Warren, who plans to reintroduce the ban, told Spotlight PA that he hadn’t been aware of the pigeon shooters’ spending to oppose his bill, but that he isn’t against their actions in principle.
"I think citizens of Pennsylvania have the right to advocate for the positions and to lobby,” he said.
But, he added, the state House has certain responsibilities.
“I would hope,” he said, “that here in the House, we do the right thing and run the bill.”
