By Audie Ayer
Arkansas Farm Bureau

Think “pigeon.” What comes to mind?

“Stool pigeon,” as in those classic ’30s and ’40s gangster films?

The pigeon lady, whose birds overwhelm the bumbling villains in the second “Home Alone” movie?

Could be.

Darrin Jackson loves pigeons. What comes to his mind is the homing pigeon.

For most of us, pigeons are just a dirty part of the urban landscape and almost never intrude into our conscious world — except, perhaps, when we’re looking at statues.

Darrin, though, is one of a relative handful of individuals in the United States and around the world fascinated by the bird. He wants to race them, but as his pigeon experience goes, he’s only in the starting blocks.

To him and other pigeon fanciers, young or old, rich or poor, male or female, here or abroad, the bird is not just a nuisance. It’s a noble, feathered thoroughbred with an uncanny ability to find its way home; capable of extreme flights of endurance and of amazing feats of heroism.

Darrin lives with his older brother Seadon and parents Chris and Victoria near Brewer Lake/Cypress Creek WMA, north of Plumerville (Conway County). The family has three dogs and several head of Senepol cattle — and Darrin has six racing homers.

“But I’m not racing yet,” says the 14-year-old eighth-grader. “I got interested in them about five years ago when I read a story in the paper on racing pigeons.

“Dad and I tried to research on the Internet for a long time, but couldn’t find very much. Finally, we were able to call Bob Hambuchen (of Conway), the man in the article, and he helped me.”

Hambuchen races pigeons and owns Healthy Pigeons Naturally feed dealership in Conway.

“He gave me a pair to raise some of my own,” Darrin says. Hambuchen had explained to the youth that homers would return only to where they were born. Therefore, for Darrin to get into racing, his pigeons had to be hatched at the Jackson’s place.

“The (pair) had two babies,” Darrin says, “but before we could finish building the loft — their ‘coop,’ sort of, but off the ground — a snake got in and ate one.”

After several tries and some success, Darrin now has two birds born at his home. They’re nowhere near ready to race yet, but he cares for them and flies them around the property.

Today, Darrin obliges a photographer by taking his only banded pigeon from the loft and “tossing” it, releasing it by throwing it into the air, about 100 yards from its loft. It makes a beeline home. That will probably be as close to racing as Darrin gets for a while.

John Wagner says the youth probably will need a minimum of 25 birds before he can race. John should know. At 61, he’s been a pigeon fancier more than 50 years and racing since 1986. He also is president of Arkansas Racing Pigeon Klub.

“A loft of 25 is about the minimum you need to enter most races,” he says. “Some of the big ones require a loft of 200.”

The Air Force veteran lives in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) with wife Barbara, and they own a small full-line pet shop, Pets & Things. John began keeping “wild” pigeons as a boy in Illinois.

“We moved to Kankakee, Ill., when I was about 10, and there were only 13 other boys in town,” he says. “They all had pigeons. They’d go out and catch ’em wild and keep them.”

When his mother found out about their pastime, she quickly laid down the law to young John.

“She said I absolutely could not keep any pigeons.

“Of course, in about three days, I had a whole bunch of them.”

It didn’t take him long after that to want to raise racers, John says.

“There was a man who lived nearby … who had nine kids. He had a bunch of pigeon lofts, and that’s where I learned there was something besides wild pigeons.

“Then I saw a copy of the American Pigeon Journal in the mailbox one day, and I read it.”

The magazine, not published since 1994, was the pigeon enthusiasts’ bible. It opened up to John a world where a person can race inexpensive homers just for the fun of it, or can pit thoroughbred birds worth thousands of dollars against each other in $1 million-plus races.

John said he and his father soon struck a deal that apparently pleased his mother, too.

“My dad said I could buy a pair from our neighbor if I got rid of all the wild pigeons. I did. They cost me $5 a piece.”

Belgium is the “hot spot” for pigeon racing, John says. “At one time, four out of five people in Belgium raced (pigeons).

“And that’s where almost all the high-quality pigeons, the elite racers, come from.”

The sport also is very big in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with a host of other countries following.

Pigeon racing in Europe is significantly different from the U.S., and Wagner says the birds must be trained differently.

“In Europe, they race for time. The races are shorter, as short as 10 miles, and almost never over 100.”

They’re almost sprints, he says. “Here, we race as far as 500 miles, although 200 is one of the most common distances.”

Therefore, U.S. racing homers must be trained more for endurance.

The training is more for conditioning, like an athlete, John explains.

“First, you let them fly around your place; let them get familiar with their home. Then, you take them out about a mile and turn them loose, and they come back.

“Then, you gradually increase the distance.”

On race day, John says, the dozen or so members of his club gather in one spot — usually his place in Pine Bluff, since it’s pretty much at the club’s geographical center — and “basket” their birds. That is, they each put 20-25 of their racers into special pigeon cages for transportation.

“The ‘puller’ — that’s usually me because I have the van — takes the birds to the release point, waters them and tosses them. I can toss 200 birds in under five minutes.”

John says cold and weather fronts seem to be racing pigeon’s biggest enemies. In fact, few of them will go through a front.

At a visit to Wagner Farms and Pets & Things, Wagner shoos a loft out so the birds can be seen. Most of the younger ones fly only a few yards from the loft and resettle on the roof. The rest seem to gather in a small cloud of birds and climb and circle as a unit.

As they dive and swoop, a hawk that a few minutes before had been circling high above, glides and hovers just under the line of sight behind some nearby treetops.

“It won’t bother the birds as long as there is so many of them. If he comes in, they’ll fly above him and drive him away.

“It’s looking for a new flyer to pick off.”

Darrin knows about that. Early on, he was flying one of his pigeons at home when a hawk hit it from above.

“They came down and hit the ground right over there,” he says, pointing out in the yard. “We ran over and chased it away, and my pigeon got up and flew off.”

Darrin says the bird had blood spots all over him when he returned the next day, but has since recovered.

“Now, whenever I fly the birds, we watch for hawks.”

Homing pigeons’ urge to return to their loft is instinctual; it just happens. But it’s not guaranteed.

“When they’re released,” John says, “you don’t really know what they’ll do. If they climb and circle and circle, they’re lost.”

“If they shoot away over treetop level, they’re going home.”

There have been cases where a homing pigeon may be gone as much as a year.

“I’ve had 50 birds take off and 25 come back,” John says. “That’s just part of it.”

His club’s birds all wear bands containing a tiny computer chip that aids in timing them.

“All of our members’ birds are chip-banded,” John says. “Each loft has an electronic scanner pad that measures the time when the bird gets back to the loft and walks across it.

“The first to make it home may not be the actual winner. The winner is the pigeon with the fastest yards-per-minute time.”

John often is both the puller and a racer. After he lets them loose, say, 200 miles away in New Boston, Tex., John takes off.

“I jump into my car and try to beat (my pigeons) home. If I don’t, somebody else wins. If they’re waiting for me, I’ve probably won.”

For a race to be official, at least five lofts must participate. In the majority of amateur club races, racers race for points and receive diplomas.

“First gets 100 points, for example,” John says, “second gets 90 and so on, down to the first 20 finishers.

“There are futurity races that can be up to $500,000. Oklahoma City has one.”

Such events are way beyond young Darrin Jackson’s ambitions for now. He just wants to be established in the hobby and get to know some other pigeon fanciers.

“My friends think (my pigeons) are pretty cool,” he says, “but they don’t want to get into them.”

He says it has been hard to find very many in his area who share his interest.

“There’s a local club, but they never hold meetings or anything.”

He’s not giving up, however.

“I’ll keep my pigeons,” he says, “and eventually, I’ll see if I can scrounge up somebody around here that actually races, I guess.”

A ‘homer’ is anything but a dirty bird

There are more than 300 pigeon breeds in the world. They have been domesticated and trained for centuries, and racing them is a passion for millions.

History says the Greeks were first to use homing pigeons, “homers,” to carry messages, sending one around 800 B.C. from the Olympics to Athens to announce victory. Additionally, in both world wars, homers served as couriers, and a number were decorated.

One named “Belle Ami” even received France’s Croix de Guerre in World War I — and in World War II, the British created a special animal Victoria Cross to honor several homers that served with distinction.

Incidentally, the U.S. Army Signal Corps used homing pigeons to carry dispatches until 1955.

In the United States, tame or wild, pigeons are descendants of the Old World’s rock pigeon, brought here early in the 17th century. Those we see fluttering under overpasses and bridges or walking around on city sidewalks are the feral descendants from those early domestic birds.

A homing pigeon is totally domestic, stronger in stature and in the instinct to return to where it was hatched. To pigeon fanciers, calling their homer a “flying rat,” as some urbanites are wont to do, may be fighting words.

To those immersed in the world of pigeon racing, a homing pigeon is a valued pet, a hobby and quite often an obsession.

So be careful how you talk about them.