Recollections of "Old Timers" 127 



the army of pigeoners (estimated to be about five hun- 

 dred) commenced taking them. Entering the woods in 

 which the nesting was located, they cut down the trees 

 right and left, cutting the timber over thousands of 

 acres. When a tree fell, bringing with it the squabs, 

 they picked the young birds up, sometimes getting as 

 many as two dozen from one tree. The large trees, 

 which might have yielded fifty or a hundred, were left 

 standing. Our company of five took in two days thir- 

 teen barrels of squabs, averaging 400 to the barrel. 



There were shipped from two stations on the Erie 

 road in one day 200 barrels of these young pigeons. 

 If they had been old birds, they would not have broken 

 the market, but this was too many squabs, and the price 

 dropped 25 to 45 cents per dozen. 



Osborn told me that he once caught 3,500 at one 

 catch. It was at a big nesting in the State of Wisconsin. 

 He had an enormous flock baited. He said that he put 

 out as high as forty bushels of shelled corn at one time 

 on the bed where he caught this large number. For 

 a trap, he had constructed a board pen built up from 

 the ground four or five feet high. This pen was about 

 one hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. He took 

 three large-sized nets, and, tying them together, set 

 them on this pen. He had feeding pens built by the 

 side of the trap-pen, so when he made a catch he could 

 drive the pigeons into the feeding pens and fatten them 

 for market, these "stall-fed" birds bringing much 



