What Became of the Wild Pigeon? 171 



nesting. In five or ten days the young birds will follow 

 in the direction of the old birds. 



When the young birds first come off the nest and 

 commence feeding on the ground, they are fat as 

 balls of butter, but in ten days from this time, when 

 they start on their northern flight to follow their 

 mother bird, they are poor as snakes, and almost unfit 

 to eat, while, when they first leave the nest they are 

 the most palatable morsel man ever tasted. However, 

 in about forty days from the time they began nesting to 

 the time they took their northern flight, there were 

 shipped from Hartford and vicinity, three carloads a 

 day of these beautiful meteors of the sky. Each car 

 containing 150 barrels with 35 dozen in a barrel, mak- 

 ing the daily shipment 24,750 dozen. 



Young men who are now hunting for something to 

 shoot and wondering what has become of our game, 

 must hear with anger and regret such reports as this 

 from western Michigan in the days gone by: "In three 

 years' time there were caught and shipped to New York 

 and other eastern cities 990,000 dozen pigeons, and in 

 the two succeeding years it was estimated by the same 

 men who caught the pigeons at Hartford that there 

 were one-third more shipped from Shelby than from 

 Hartford; and from Petoskey, Emmett County, two 

 years later, it is now claimed by C. H. Engle, a resident 

 of this town, who was a participant in this ungodly 

 slaughter, that there were shipped five carloads a day 



