CHARC tapes rodeo shocker
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:
WHEATON, Illinois––The calls became familiar: “Steve
here,” barked a hoarse voice from a highway telephone booth. “I went to
the [any town] rodeo last night. I caught ‘em shocking the bulls again in
the chutes and just coming out, right on the anus and testicles.”
Temporarily grounded by damage to his paraglider and lack of
funds to fix it, Chicago Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi
opened July by leading a fifth year of protest against the Wauconda
Rodeo, whose receipts have fallen 30% since the demonstrations began,
but Steve then fell uncustomarily quiet. Anonymous callers, possibly
spies, asked ANIMAL PEOPLE if he was maybe in jail somewhere.
But before Hindi et al were the Flying CHARCS, noted for flying
between birds and hunters, and for chasing deer away from hunters,
they were the videographers whose dramatic night footage stopped the
rocket-netting of deer in several Chicago suburbs, whose undercover
work won passage of an Illinois ban on horse-tripping as part of charro
rodeo, and whose penetration of the notorious annual Lone Pine turkey
shoot, formerly held in Middleport, Pennsylvania, shut it down as soon
as the organizers realized what Hindi’s camera had captured.