67 



killed in Michigan that year. 1 It is generally believed, how- 

 ever, that this was an overestimate. But Mr. Sullivan Cook 

 says that in 1869 for about forty days there were shipped from 

 Hartford, Michigan, and vicinity three carloads a day of 150 

 barrels each; at 55 dozen pigeons to the barrel, this totals 

 880,000 birds for the season. He estimates that in two years 

 15,840,000 were shipped from Shelby, Michigan. Again, five 

 years later, Mr. C. H. Engle asserted there were shipped from 

 Petoskey, Michigan, five carloads a day for thirty days, with 

 an average of 8,250 dozens to the carload, or 14,850,000 birds. 2 



Hunters and netters followed the pigeons to every known 

 roost and nesting place until the species was nearly extinct. 

 The destruction of the golden plover, upland plover and Eskimo 

 curlew was brought about by the market demand, but the 

 birds were mostly shot. Audubon asserts that on the sixteenth 

 day of November, 1821, he was invited by some gunners to 

 accompany them to the neighborhood of Lake St. John, near 

 New Orleans, there to observe the flight of thousands of golden 

 plovers. The gunners were familiar with the route that the 

 plovers ordinarily took. The men gathered in parties of from 

 20 to 50, and sitting on the ground, equidistant from each 

 other, imitated calls of birds so that the plovers came within a 

 few yards. Audubon, having reckoned the number of gunners 

 in the field, and estimating the average number shot per man 

 during the day at 20 dozen birds, calculated that 48,000 golden 

 plovers were killed there that day. Two men on the Island of 

 Nantucket in the decade between 1840 and 1850 killed for 

 market enough plovers and curlews in one day to fill a tipcart 

 two-thirds full. 3 From Audubon's time until the approach of 

 the extinction of the passenger pigeon in 1888, golden plovers 

 and Eskimo curlews were shot by sportsmen both east and 

 west in enormous numbers. 



When the passenger pigeon became so scarce that it was 

 difficult for the pigeon netters to find employment for their 

 men, the marketmen turned to the supply of Eskimo curlews; 

 golden plovers and upland plovers, that were still numerous in 



American Field, Vol. X, pp. 345-347. 



Merehon, L. B.: The Passenger Pigeon, 1907, pp. 171, 172; see also Game Birds, Wild-Fowl 

 and Shore Birds, Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1916, p. 454. 



* Game Birds, Wild-Fowl and Shore Birds, Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1916, 

 p. 344. 



