66 



extended over the great west, and railroads spanned the 

 country, game birds became a great commercial asset, and were 

 pursued and exploited with such vigor that in time some of 

 them became nearly extinct and a few species wholly disap- 

 peared. Considering the vast supply of game formerly sold in 

 the markets of the United States, very few figures relating to 

 the game business are available to-day. 



Dr. D. G. Elliott asserts that a game dealer in New York 

 received 20 tons of prairie chickens in one consignment in 1864, 

 and that some of the larger dealers sold from 150,000 to 200,000 

 birds in six months. Professor Samuel Aughey, who gathered 

 statistics regarding the destruction of bobwhites and pinnated 

 grouse, or prairie hens, in Nebraska from 1865 to 1877, asserts 

 that about 450,000 of these birds were killed each year in thirty 

 counties of Nebraska alone. Game Commissioner John H. 

 Wallace, Jr., of Alabama says that before the present game laws 

 of his State were enacted no less than 9,000,000 bobwhites were 

 killed there in one season. In "Forest and Stream" of March 

 11, 1912, the assertion is made that on February 18, 9,000 bob- 

 whites in one illegal shipment were seized by a sheriff and a game 

 warden in Oklahoma. 1 



In 1909, when the sale of game was at its height, President 

 Frank M. Miller of the State Game Commission of Louisiana 

 was able to get rather accurate figures of the game birds killed 

 that year in that State. They totaled 5,719,214. The ex- 

 ploitation of the passenger pigeon, once on its roosting places 

 and on its nesting grounds perhaps the most numerous bird 

 ever known in any country, and now believed to be extinct, 

 will serve to illustrate the commercial value of game birds. 

 This bird was a great source of food supply to the early settlers, 

 who took large numbers in nets. With the growth and pros- 

 perity of cities, quantities of pigeons came into the city markets. 

 Audubon says that in 1815 he saw schooners at the wharves in 

 New York loaded in bulk with these pigeons, killed up the 

 Hudson River. From that time the trapping, netting and 

 shooting of the pigeons went on apace until 1878, when Pro- 

 fessor H. B. Roney estimated, after examining the ground and 

 the market shipments, that at least 1,000,000,000 pigeons were 



i Game Birds, Wild-Fowl and Shore Birds, Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1916, p. 514. 



