Purebred Pigeon Sept/October 2025

9 – Purebred PIGEON Again, Congratulations to all the winners.T he friendly joking and kidding that goes on at the banquet is all part of the fun that makes the banquet and fellowship so enjoy- able. For about the last decade Grace Biedermann has gifted the wives and sigrnficant others with beautiful jewelry items, each item selected for the individual. Thank you, Grace, your kindness and thoughtfulness is appreciated. The food and service was excellent and just a great tone for the conclusion of a great fantail show. Our 2026 show will be the 100th Anniversary of the Central Fantail Club and will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel located at the St Louis, Missouri Airport; the Anniversary Committee is working hard on the program for the show and more information will be forthcoming in future club bulletins. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the shows this fall.• Let’s Consider the Numbers By Pat Stuart I was recently looking at the NPA 100th year anniversary book better known as the Centennial History of the NPA and the American Pigeon Hobby. If anyone reads this article and does not have this book you don’t know what you are missing. Nothing but great information plus pictures all about the history of our great hobby. When I turned to page 582, I found a list of all the Na- tionals starting in the year 1920 and ending with 2020. The list includes the year of each show, the location of each show by city and state, plus the bonus of how many birds were entered at each National. The number of entries is as close to being correct as the writers of that book could get. I think we all understand record keeping is not always exact. After looking at that information and thinking about how, over the past number of years, I kept hearing that the entry numbers are down, my curiosity got the best of me. So, I started doing some math. First, I added up the total number of bird entries over those 100 years. Actually, there were only 97 Nationals during those hundred years because there were no Nationals held in 1943, 1944, and 1945 due to World War II. I found there was a grand total of 406,078 entries. If you would take an average of birds entered at those 97 Nationals it would average out to be 4,186 entries at each show. Then I tightened up my timeline to include only the past 25 years from the year 2000 up to and including 2025. That gave me a total number of entries of 120,268 which when averaged over those 25 years would be 5,229 entries at each National. My final math project then took me to the past five years. In 2021 no show due to covid. 2022 there were 5200 entries in Amarillo Texas. 2023 no show due to the Amarillo National being canceled. 2024 there were 5,863 entries at the Louisville Kentucky National and our latest National in 2025 there were 5,033 entries in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The average for the past five years is 5,365 entries at each one of those Nationals. A summary of my math project: 100 years (1920 to 2020) average entries – 4,186 25 years (2000 to 2025) average entries – 5,220 5 years (2020 to 2025) average entries – 5,365 Now let’s look back at the first 100 years. Between 1920 and 1950 there were about two dozen Nationals that had entries at or below 2500. We must consider what pigeon breeders had to deal with during that time period. The depression, limited transportation and communication, just to name a few hardships those Nationals had to deal with just to get their National shows off the ground. So if you really look at the beginning numbers, those Nationals were not too bad. However, those low numbers did bring the average number of entries down compared to go- ing into the beginning of the NPA National next 100 years. Comparing the past 25 years to the past 5 years we are holding steady at about 5,300 entries per National. So, the con- cern of entries at the NPA Nationals being down doesn’t seem to hold true. Yes, there will be a show here or there with lower entries and yes there will be a show here and there with higher entries. But all in all, the numbers don’t lie. For now, I’d have to say we are still holding our own in our great pigeon hobby.• Reserve Champion Fantail Yellow OH - Larry Berndt Earl Helmer - 2nd Reserve - White OC