YOU REALLY GOTTA BE NUTS TO
FLY PIGEONS
FIRST STEEL VALLEY SECTION
2009 OHIO-PENN FEDERATION
400
By Coop Kohli (coopkohli@yahoo.com)
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| Lee Kohli, AU Lakes Zone Director |
Another Crazy Pigeon
Flyer over 80!
“Anybody that has raced pigeons since 1948 (62 years),
ought to be declared a mental case shouldn’t they,” I thought to myself. “What’s with these eighty-year-olds
anyway?” Interviewing this new crop of
80-somethings is different than I thought it would be. They have a lot of ambition and lots on their
minds. They talk fast. They are busy. They can hear more than me. (I rely on hearing aids!) They are coherent, energetic, and almost
ornery. They don’t act old. Some of them I catch on extension
ladders. Others are making meal
deliveries to “shut-ins.” At the time of
this interlude, old Bud was on his hurried way out the door to choir practice
at church: had to leave in 10 minutes - time was short - get to the point, was
the tone, gently made. (Wow, you mean
Bud can still sing, I thought!) At 57, I
was off guard; and found myself fumbling like a rookie corporate salesman late
for a Monday morning tiger meeting. But
“I’m no rookie”. I caught myself,
collected my composure, and fired back.
“How bout I just call you later, when you have more time, Mr. Bud,” I
humbly requested.
Patty Keeps Bud
Winning
And, so went my introduction to the octogenarious, Mr.
Lloyd “Bud” House, of Vienna, Ohio, a determined and dedicated old sportsman
that hadn’t missed shipping an old bird pigeon race since 1961, and who is
the reigning Steel Valley Section Champion of the 2009 Ohio-Penn Federation
400, flying against 1615 birds and 133 lofts. Bud’s big, rust-belt tough, blue cock-bird
(481 LCF IF 05), was a four year old, two-time race winner, bred by OPC
President Fred Roscoe, scoring previous wins for Bud in 300 and 400 mile old
bird combine races. Bud clocked the
cantankerous alpha cock at 18:27:58 (06:27 P.M.), flying at 1034 ypm, for 422
miles. Every good pigeon flyer needs
competent assistance at one time or another, and it can mean the difference
between success or failure for the season, since weekly racing schedules
provide no quarter for lofts making mistakes.
Providing that service for Bud is his daughter, Patty, who lives only
three miles from the lofts, and can do nearly everything the good old Champion
can do, from answering E-mail, to banding babies and training young birds. She loves the birds dearly, and has been
known to shed tears on their behalf when she thought it would help influence
the decisions of our incorrigible, managing Champion. It is, apparently, almost commonplace for
exciting events of one sort or another to overtake the pigeon operation
whenever Pigeon Patty oversees while Bud and Gerri are away. Papa Bud knows he couldn’t race like he does
without the participation and moral support of his daughter, Patty.
All the residents of the House loft race on the natural
system. “It is difficult to get the
timing perfect, but to max the hormones and really hype performance,” the old
strategist’s favorite nest position is with 13 day old eggs, and, as we saw
with the very motivated “481”, “it is also very hard for competitors to beat a
seasoned cock-bird feeding a big youngster, who is also just beginning to drive
his hen.” (The window of opportunity for
pulling off this effective psychological drama is very, very slight though, for
as we know, a hyped-up, twister cock can go from “just calling” his hen to
“hard driving” very quickly, burning off that limited race energy in the
process.) Like many of his long distance
peers, as the races get longer, the wise, old man with the pigeons, Mr. House,
changes his feeding routine; up to 40% corn is supplemented, to which he also
adds black sunflower seeds (liking the oil as fuel) and peanuts, feeding all
birds in the protected turf of their box.
“Putting Lipstick on
Pigs”
I would never lump every breeder into just one category
because I know there are some very legitimate, well intentioned, hard
laboring providers of outstanding genetics out there, that we should
continue to support with our dollars.
We have all dealt with them. We
need them. We are thankful to them for
their service to the sport in uplifting the overall quality of our birds, and
we take pleasure in seeing their monthly ads.
Our racing fortunes have improved because of them. They also have lots of my money in their
pockets.
However, there are, also, scallywags in the racing
universe that “strategically enhance” the appearance of what they are selling,
providing the fancy with pedigreed birds that aren’t as good as they say they
are. These frauds hurt us all, and
should not be supported. They can
delay your genetic improvement for years, and that’s time you don’t have to
lose! They insult us with pedigrees
that include little current performance data, providing only generalities like
“has produced hundreds of winners”. They
expect you to get excited because a great-grandfather, or two, each
representing 12.5% of the total gene pool, had a good futurity race. Forget it.
They’re “putting lipstick on pigs.”
Buy breeding stock supported with current, specific
performance data that has relevance to the races you intend to participate in. (Look for information providing for who, what,
where, when, and how many). If old bird
long distance racing is where you want to excel, look for stock from fanciers
that are good at long distance racing. Expect
good information that can be verified.
Good historical data takes discipline, time and energy to assemble and
maintain. It is also hard to format that
information on pedigree forms, but progressive breeding operations will find a
way to provide what is demanded of them by serious, inspecting, well informed
customers. Every long surviving
businessman in America has these instincts.
In the business world, it is commonly said that managers should inspect
what they expect! The same ethic will
work for you too. So, just demand it. Put the “snake oil” salesman out of
business. Don’t let a junk dealer
sidetrack your breeding program and waste your time.
The blood lines in the House loft, for many years now,
result from crossing Bud’s father’s battle tested, working class, old-line
Stassarts with the best of the OOA birds Bud has procured for the LCF (Land
Channel Futurity) race, and of course, the steady “481” is a perfect example of
what Bud chooses. (The Stassarts take me back to a visit to the great reputable
breeder, pigeon broker and baker, Charles Heitzman, in the early 1970’s. Stassarts were rugged individuals, athletic
and beautiful; a real man’s pigeon. It
is not surprising that Bud can frequently race these (beautiful) cracker-jacks
until seven years of age.
Bashful Seven Time
Section Winner
Not hardly!
Experienced old Bud is not bashful.
He’s been around too long to ever be uncomfortable with his own skill
level, I soon learned. “It’s awfully
hard to win in the middle,” he informed me, a nugget of truth I couldn’t
completely disagree with? “Face it, the
wind usually blows sideways to some degree across the field. When she rips from the left side, they arc to
the right; when she rips from the right, they arc to the left. Right?
Doesn’t that benefit the guys on the extremes,” he asked? (Didn’t the great, short flying Dickerson
just tell us this was a sport of straight lines over speed?) “How must the wind blow to help guys, like
you, in the center?” I asked. Bud just
shrugged his shoulders and didn’t answer.
“The truth, of course, is when the wind is in their face, or when it
blows them straight home,” I said, responding to my own question. “But, even then our fine feathered short guy,
or the determined long flyer, is helped more.”
Vienna, Ohio, the home of the OPC (Original Pigeon Club) is near
Youngstown. Youngstown, of course, is
ground zero for the Honorable James Traficant, now paroled; and lies right up
the gut on the Federation 400 as the birds fly from southwest to northeast on
their way to Cleveland, Akron, Erie or Buffalo. And, from this tough,
disadvantaged, centrist position, I learned, the unpretentious, ornery, baiting
old Champion, Mr. House, had won his Steel Valley Section seven times!
“This old boy handles himself like a man that knows how to
win,” I thought to myself. A quick check
of the Federation stats proved me right.
He’s been consistently aggressive in the 500, being in the 98th
percentile for three of the last four years, against an average of 1525
birds. That’s extremely good performance
for a “poor guy in the middle!” I
looked next, to his numbers for the Fed 400.
The shorter race has been a little less kind for the wily, old Bud; the
96th percentile against, an average of 1323 birds. In fact, over the last eight years, the
top one percent in the Federation 500 averages only eleven lofts (9% of the
average number of flyers), where-as, the Federation 400 averages 15 lofts (12%
of the average number of flyers), and so it appears, anecdotally, that the
last one hundred miles really does sort the speedy, girly, futurity type
pigeons from the race.
You Gotta be Nuts to
Fly Pigeons!
Bud likes to tell pigeon friends that “you gotta be nuts
to fly pigeons,” and so, the old, ardent nut, Mr. House, who retired in 1991
(19 years ago), has trained both young birds and old birds twice a week to any
place from Akron, or Canton, Ohio (about a 45 minute toss), that his beautiful
and glorious wife, Gerri, would like to date for breakfast. What’s more, the old stallion, we learn, as
he gets “younger,” has become technologically savvy, having recently converted
to an electronic timer that worked so well in the 2009 Greater Northeast Ohio
Futurity Race (GNEO), that he clocked a 17th position (against 1000
birds) without even realizing the hard flying bird had arrived home. “You miss out on a lot when you don’t even
see your prize pigeon come in,” explained the surprised Champion, Mr. House. What’s apparent to me from this true Bud
story is that our elder champion needs to find a way to bottle and sell as an
elixir, that magic, excess Stassart testosterone!
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| "Bud" House and his daughter, Patty. |
Learn and Adapt
If there is any one thing we should take away from our
older, erudite colleagues like Mr. Lloyd “Bud” House, it is that we should take
nothing for granted relative to the healthy continuance of our beloved
sport. Make every day count. ENJOY YOUR PIGEON RACING NOW. Don’t procrastinate, and think you will fix
your club problem next year. George
Allen, the great Washington Redskins Head Football Coach, kept a sign on his
desk to remind all comers that “The Future is Now!” (Winning sometimes requires a change in
mindset.) The OPC (Original Pigeon Club)
was once a proud member of the strong Steel Valley Combine, and a founding
partner and leader in the Ohio-Penn Federation.
In late 2009, the Steel Valley Combine was disbanded. What was once a thriving, healthy
organization of six clubs, with ninety eight pigeon flyers within twenty miles
of Youngstown, had been reduced to just one club and twelve flying lofts (with
five not flying). The old “do it my way”
or the “all or nothing” mentality regarding organizational issues in clubs and
combines is short sighted. It is hard to
imagine that some among us still can’t see that those self-centered approaches
are also self-defeating, perhaps hastening your own organization’s final
collapse. Learn to accept compromise.
Learn and adapt.
