Pigeon shoot host John Waldrop fined $900,000 for dead bird trafficking

Waldrop “preserved” birds stuffed & mounted

BROOKLYN,   New York–– Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Rachel Kovner on April 9,  2025 fined orthopedic surgeon John Waldrop,  76,  of Cataula,  Georgia,  $900,000 for conspiracy to smuggle wildlife and Endangered Species Act violations.

Kovner also ordered Waldrop,  who pleaded guilty to the charges in August 2024,  to serve three years on probation.

At that,  Waldrop was prosecuted and penalized for only fraction of his total mayhem against birds.

“Dr. Waldrop’s Zoo”

“Waldrop has turned parts of his 220-acre property into a wildlife preserve,  his lawyer,  Paul Fishman, said,”   reported John Annese for the New York Daily News.

“And,  according to court filings,”  Annese said,  “he kept his collection in a lake house that he’d often open up to school children,  who called it “Dr. Waldrop’s Zoo.”

Google Earth images tell a different story,  revealing as many as five shooting ranges surrounding Waldrop’s Cataula home,  at least two of which appear to have been built specifically to accommodate competitive pigeon shoots.

Ugly history

The vicinity,  33 years before Waldrop was born,  became briefly notorious for the September 1916 lynching of Pete Hudson,  an African-American man who had allegedly killed Randolph County sheriff W.S. Taylor and also killed several of the bloodhounds used to hunt Hudson during a three-day pursuit through the Cataula swamps.

What became of “two escaped convicts,”  also African-American,  who accompanied Hudson “could not be ascertained,”  according to local news accounts;  they too were probably lynched.

1,401 mounts & 2,594 eggs

“According to court documents and statements made in court,”  detailed a Department of Justice media release,  “Waldrop amassed an extensive collection of 1,401 taxidermy bird mounts and 2,594 eggs which included:

•  Four eagles protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act;

•  179 bird and 193 egg species listed in the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; and

•  212 bird and 32 egg species covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

“This included incredibly rare specimens like three eggs of the Nordmann’s Greenshank,  an Asian shorebird with only 900 to 1,600 remaining birds in the wild.  No North American museum has any Nordmann Greenshank eggs in their collection,”  the Department of Justice statement said.

“I hope you can appreciate the beauty”

“Waldrop’s gigantic and rare bird collection was bolstered in part by illegal imports,  where he and his enlisted co-conspirators intentionally avoided permit and declaration requirements,”  explained acting assistant U.S. attorney general Adam Gustafson of the Environmental & Natural Resources Division of the Justice Department.

“Prosecutors set up three birds from Waldrop’s collection on a table in the courtroom — a Roseate spoonbill,  a Eurasian eagle-owl,  and an imperial eagle,  native to eastern Europe and parts of Asia — positioning them so their eyes pointed directly at the judge,”  recounted New York Daily News reporter John Annese.

Continued Annese,  “’I hope that you can appreciate the beauty,’  Waldrop drawled.  ‘I look at them as pieces of art and not as mounts.’”

Actor Jim Carrey was unfortunately not present in his Ace Ventura role to appreciate the “Lovely room of death.

Forfeited collection to zoos & museums

“Waldrop has forfeited his entire collection,”  Annese said,  “handing the birds and eggs over to the Smithsonian Museum,  Cornell University,  and other zoos and museums,  Department of Justice attorney Ryan Connors said.

“That collection includes herons,  a Muscovy duck,  and an Elenora’s falcon from Italy,  a great gray owl and a boreal owl from Russia.”

Sentenced with Waldrop was Toney Jones,  55,  of Eufala, Alabama,  who was sentenced to serve six months on probation for Endangered Species Act violations,  after pleading guilty in August 2024.

Waldrop and Jones were initially arraigned on the federal charges in October 2023.

Pigeon shoots

While Waldrop was convicted of offenses costing more than 4,000 wild birds’ lives,  his pigeon shoots are believed to have killed many times as many.

Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness became aware of the Waldrop pigeon shoots,  exposed by ANIMALS 24-7 on May 11,  2024,   through their February 2024 investigation of a similar pigeon-shooting complex in south Florida.

The Florida pigeon shooting complex was and is still “run by Troy Link, chief executive of Jack Link’s Meat Snacks,”  Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness jointly announced in a May 11, 2024 joint statement.

“The organizations suspect,”  they said,  “that the Georgia shoot is part of a network of such operations in the South and in Mexico.”

(See Jack Link’s beef jerky CEO pigeon massacre jeopardizes bald eagles too.)

Many birds “suffer on the ground”

At both the Waldrop and Troy Link pigeon shoots,  as at others in the suspected covert pigeon shooting network,  “thousands of live pigeons are flung from box cages and then blasted by participants in high-dollar contest kills to see who can claim the most shot birds,”  explained Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness.

“While many of the birds are killed outright,  others suffer on the ground until contest workers can snap their necks or bludgeon them to death,”  as Showing Animals Respect & Kindness drone videos have often documented.

“Still others,  maimed,  fly just out of range and are eaten alive by predators,”  as videotaped by SHARK drones at the Troy Link complex in Florida.

Lead poisoning

“The predators then suffer the effects of lead poisoning from ingesting the embedded fragments of lead that will speckle the carcasses. Eagles and other rare and protected migratory birds will be at acute risk,”  together charged Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness.

Both Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle and SHARK founder Steve Hindi rose to national prominence in animal advocacy through stopping the Fred C. Coleman pigeon shoot held every Labor Day in Hegins,  Pennsylvania,  from 1935 to 1999.

Hegins shoot turned Hindi into animal advocate

Pacelle,  then national director for the Fund for Animals,  organized a series of mass protests at Hegins in 1990-1992.

Hindi,  then a prominent shark fisher and trophy hunter,  attended the 1990 Hegins pigeon shoot,  strictly as a spectator,  on his way to go shark fishing off Montauk,  Long Island.  Hindi was so appalled by the lack of anything resembling sportsmanship he saw there that within a year he sold his guns,  buried his hunting and fishing trophies,  and became an animal advocate,  eventually a full-time animal advocate after selling his business,  Allied Rivet.

Forming Showing Animals Respect & Kindness in 1992 as the Chicago Animal Rights Coalition,  Hindi subsequently “knocked pigeon shoots out of Illinois entirely,  and stopped them in Alabama and Oklahoma.  Our video footage of a shoot site in Maryland was instrumental in passing a law to ban pigeon shoots there,”  Hindi recalled in a 2020 ANIMALS 24-7 guest column.

Georgia law already prohibits pigeon shoots

            The Waldrop pigeon shoots should also have been stopped as illegal under Georgia law,  according to Scott Edwards,  general counsel for the Center for a Humane Economy.

Specifically,  a joint Animal Wellness Action and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness media release about Waldrop’s activities explained,  “Georgia is one of eight states where court rulings or attorney general opinions have suggested that live pigeon shoots are covered by state anti-cruelty laws.

“Fifteen states have statutes that specifically prohibit keeping pigeons and live birds to be used as targets,”  Edwards added.

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