Animal-rights activists trying to disrupt an annual pigeon shoot raced onto the field, freeing some of the caged birds and gathering up wounded ones. Police arrested at least 85 people.
"I think this is such an atrocity that it is worth almost anything to stop it," Patrick Sullivan of Dallas said after posting $5,000 bail Monday.Each year shooters from the region and Canada come to this eastern Pennsylvania town to fire at 5,000 pigeons as they fly out of holding boxes. Boys run onto the field to gather the wounded pigeons and break their necks.
On Monday, activists rushed onto the field past state police barricades. Charges included trespassing, theft and disorderly conduct. A man was accused of assault for tackling one of the trapper boys hired to break the birds' necks.
No serious injuries were reported.
During the daylong shoot, protesters and shoot supporters taunted each other, and some activists waded into crowds of spectators to debate the shoot.
Others waved signs and shouted slogans at people entering the park where the event was held.
Animal-rights activists said they will protest the event until it's stopped. Supporters said the shoot is a tradition.
"It's something that built Hegins," said James McMasters of Cambridge, Ohio, one of thousands of shooters who turned out for the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot, named after a local marksman. The shoot began in 1934.
Hegins Township Police Chief Mel Stutzman estimated the crowd of protesters, shooters and spectators at 12,000, about the same as last year.
Animal-rights activists, who began protesting the shoot in the mid-1980s, said 1,000 demonstrators turned out.
Protest organizer Steve Hindi of Plano, Ill., said the demonstrators will return. "Every year we fight another battle in the war," he said.