THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 179 



Stump fence in his father's buckwheat field. It was 

 a wonderful sight, he says, to see them come rolling 

 over the field, the birds behind literally tuml)ling the 

 ones in front of them over and over. The pigeons 

 flew low, just above the tops of the trees, when pass- 

 ing over a forest, and when flying over cleared fields 

 on hills never varied their altitude, but sometimes 

 almost flew level with the ground. Clemuel R. 

 Woodin, chairman of the vast American Car and 

 Foundry Company, tells of how^ in his boyhood days, 

 in Columbia County, with his brother-in-law to be, 

 Charles H. Dickerman, he used to wait on the hill-tops 

 during the flights of the pigeons, armed with shingles, 

 and knock the birds down by the hundreds. The 

 writer's father, the late Henry F. Shoemaker, who 

 spent his boyhood days in Schuylkill County, told of 

 his father driving ofi^ with a spring wagon during the 

 great flights over the Blue Mountains, and returning in 

 the evening with the wagon box heaped high with dead 

 pigeons. Coleman K. Sober, world-renowned rifle 

 shot, states that passenger pigeons were used at all 

 the live bird shooting matches thirty-five years ago. 

 They were rapid fliers, full of erratic swoops and dives 

 and furnished better sport than the tame pigeons of 

 later days. In the summer of 1890 the writer, as a 

 small boy, was present at many live bird shoots at 

 Hollywood, New Jersey. It was in the hev-dey of 

 Edgar Gibbs Murphy, Fred Hoey and Dr. Gideon Lee 

 Knapp. Tame pigeons were used, but they were not 

 altogether satisfactory. Herbert K. fob, author of 



