Pigeon race has trainers’ eyes fixed on
the sky

Pigeon race has trainers’ eyes fixed on the sky
Image

Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Home News

Long-time friends visiting from Oklahoma and Washington, from left, Leigh Stewart, Kelly Burrows, Bonnie Stewart and Rhonda Burrows watch the pigeons arrive, hoping the Burrow’s pigeon is among the flock during the Las Vegas Classic 331-mile pigeon race Monday.

By Jeff Pope

Pigeon Racing

URL:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/videos/2008/nov/14/1139/
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About 150 pigeons showed up at Ed Sittner's home in Southwest Las Vegas for the Vegas Classic, a pigeon race that spans 326 miles across Nevada.
Pigeons take to the sky
An air race

To learn more about pigeon racing, call Ed Sittner or Debbie Powers at 497-8686 or visit VegasClassic.com/tvc on the Web.

If you looked to the sky above the southwest Las Vegas Valley on Monday, you may have glimpsed more than 100 pigeons descending on a home in Enterprise. The birds were not christening a new statue, but instead were racing in the eighth annual Vegas Classic Futurity.

Earlier that day, 155 pigeons were released near Snow Water Lake, just south of Wells — about 330 miles north of race organizer Ed Sittner's home on the 4200 block of West Cougar Avenue.

The first five birds covered the distance in about five hours, a new race record and about an hour faster than expected, Sittner said.

Pigeon racing uses the instinctive homing sense of the birds and has been a sport in the United States and Europe since the late 19th century.

The Vegas Classic is a one loft racing event, meaning all the birds are trained at their loft, or home, then are released a set distance away and race to find familiar grounds as soon as they can.

The lofts, capable of housing hundreds of birds, form an L-shaped compound in Sittner's backyard. Owners from several states, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain entrust Sittner and loft manager Debbie Powers to train their feathered athletes for them. The birds arrived in the spring only a month old and grew up in the camp.

The birds dodge predators, cars and trucks, wires, wind and weariness to find their way home. For the owners, watching their pigeons come home to roost is the best part of the day.

"It's just seeing your bird come back knowing that it's been 150 or 300 miles and that it's flown its heart out to be home," said pigeon owner Dennis Bedford. "Seeing them come in and knowing that they're happy to be home. They've done everything they could to be there."

Bedford, 57, received his first breeding pair of pigeons from a friend's father while in high school. He owns nearly 100 birds at his home in Spring Valley and is a member of the Silver State Racing Pigeon Club.

The club hosts about 16 contests a year in two seasons. Young bird season is in the fall and old bird season is in March and April.

A pigeon less than 1 year old is considered young. After that first year, they're in the senior circuit.

Bedford raised a bird that finished second in the Vegas Classic in 2003 and he wins one or two races in each of the club's seasons, he said. In Monday's race, his bird failed to crack the top 100.

No one can dominate the sport and build a dynasty, Bedford said. Just because a bird wins once doesn't mean it will ever again or that its progeny will either.

The first five birds arrived, or "dropped" in pigeon parlance, shortly before noon and 19 minutes ahead of the next few stragglers. The largest flock, of about 30, arrived about a half hour after the winners. The last bird of the day came in at 4:38 p.m. But a few more arrived the next day.

"That usually does happen," Sittner said of the small band faster than the rest. "They seem to sense that wind in the air and some of them could get on it easier."

As of Tuesday, there were 17 birds missing in action, but Sittner said he was sure they would return eventually.

The top 20 finishers earn their owners some decent seed money.

First place received $29,000; second took home $11,500 and third earned $9,000. The top 50 birds will be auctioned off on ipigeon.com to breed the next generation of fliers. The top five could sell for $2,000 each while the average price of the rest could be about $1,200, Sittner said.

The prize money comes from entry and perch fees.

The winning owner was Bill Tadlock, who lives on the East Coast, Sittner said. Tadlock has never been to the Vegas races but won three local races last year with birds from the same parents as this year's winner.

"It's really hard to win these things because everyone has a lot of good pigeons," Sittner said.

Jeff Pope can be reached at 990-2688 or jeff.pope@hbcpub.com.