TRAP-SHOOTING. 291 



The most rapid way is to use five traps, in single- 

 bird shooting, and employ five boys with a relay 

 of five others when the first are exhausted to set 

 them ; boys are naturally more active than men, and 

 are buoyed up by an excitement that the latter do 

 not feel. The five birds are shot at before the traps 

 are refilled ; and by the time the last bird is released 

 the boys stand armed with a fresh one apiece, ready 

 to reset the traps in a moment. In this mode, with 

 good luck in not having too many birds that have 

 to be retrieved, and with regularity, fifteen hundred 

 birds may be shot at in ten hours. 



The difficulty of obtaining pigeons in our seaboard 

 cities has been so great of late years, as advancing 

 civilization has reduced the number, and driven 

 westward the migratory hosts which once visited 

 the Eastern States, that not only has the expense 

 enormously increased, but the practice of trap-shoot- 

 ing has diminished. The ordinary price along the 

 Atlantic coast is from twenty to thirty dollars a 

 hundred, and the supply is so small, that the collec- 

 tion of any considerable number, even at that rate, 

 is extremely difficult. 



As skill in the act of shooting birds released from 

 a trap, where the sportsman stands prepared, gun in 

 hand and nerves disturbed, if at all, only by the 

 presence of spectators, does not imply ability to 

 acquit oneself well in the field, and tends but little 

 to that end ; so it is pursued not for improvement 

 so much as for temporary excitement during the dull 

 months of the year. Pigeons nest in June, a season 



