G.I. Joe’s legacy

Donnie Zehr Dec 26, 24

Organized pigeon competitions began in Belgium in the early 1800s, and the first races in the United States were held decades later, in New Jersey and New York, where by 1883, pigeon racing news would appear as prominently as Page 3 in The New York Times.

During World War I, the U.S. Army began training pigeons at Fort Monmouth, on the Jersey Shore, to deliver battlefield messages. In the Second World War, a pigeon trained at the base, G.I. Joe, saved the lives of 1,000 Allied troops by carrying an order to cancel a scheduled bombing.

The birds use a well-researched yet still mysterious set of skills to find their way home. In unfamiliar territory, scientists have found that the birds are guided by smell, the earth’s magnetic field and the angle of the sun; over familiar turf, they rely on the landscape.

The sport remains most vibrant in Europe, where in 2020 a 2-year-old hen, New Kim, sold for $1.9 million and premier races in Barcelona draw more than 17,000 birds. In the United States, so-called one-loft races — where birds compete only against pigeons housed in the same professionally managed coop — advertise winning pots as high as $1.2 million.

At the Lyndhurst club, prizes are drawn from entry fees, and a premier long-distance race can net a first-place winner about $6,500, said Mr. Torre, who sold his salvage shop and used-car lot and retired years ago, giving him the flexibility to train his 80 birds most mornings at sunup.

He drives the birds a little farther away each week, building strength and navigational prowess during training runs known as tosses.

Immigrants from countries including Portugal, Poland and the Philippines have infused the sport with new energy. But modernity has taken a toll.

At 56, Wesley Wilczewski is the youngest member of the Queen City Pigeon Club in Piscataway, N.J.“It’s shrinking like crazy, year by year,” said Mr. Wilczewski, a plumber who learned the sport from his father in Poland. “Nobody wants to spend any time in the coop cleaning. They want to play on the phones.”

Hoboken, a mile-square commuter city across the Hudson River from Manhattan, was once home to hundreds of rooftop coops, a tradition memorialized in the classic 1954 movie “On the Waterfront,” starring Marlon Brando. But many communities in New Jersey, including Hoboken, have outlawed coops, bowing to concerns about rodents, the demand for luxury apartment buildings with rooftop decks and pressure from animal rights organizations.

The birds are exposed during races and training tosses to the elements and to predators like hawks. Not all of them come home. Groups that include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have condemned the pastime as cruel, saying it exploits animals for prize money and encourages illegal gambling.

“They don’t want to think of themselves as monsters,” Hannah Schein, vice president of investigations and research at PETA, said of pigeon racers, some of whom cull slow birds and separate mates to incentivize them to fly home quickly. “But to us it’s monstrous.”

“You’re using emotional manipulation to get them to come home faster,” she added, “so you can have a winning moment with your friends.”

New Jersey pigeon racers say they take pride in treating their animals well.“They come home,” said Steven Costa, 34, a member of a racing club in Perth Amboy, N.J. “That means I’m making them happy.”