BIRDS AS FOOD 225 



it was inconceivable that the supply should ever 

 be exhausted. 



But the first settlers did not bother to kill birds. 

 The forests and plains teemed with large four- 

 footed game whose meat was delicious. The cost of 

 ammunition was too high to waste it upon smaller 

 stuff. The hardy professional hunters of pioneer 

 days were killers of deer, bear, and bison ; grouse 

 and ducks were beneath their notice. 



However, as the years passed, the time arrived 

 when, late in the eighteenth century, large game 

 grew scarce in the more settled regions. Market 

 hunters were forced to seek deer so far from the 

 cities that it no longer paid to haul them back to 

 market. Bear were scarce and bison had been ex- 

 terminated throughout all the territory east of 

 the Ohio. Then it was that birds actually began 

 to suffer. 



Throughout the last century, and the first dec- 

 ade of the present one an internecine slaughter 

 of game-birds fed the markets of this country. 

 In the earliest days, when the birds were most 

 numerous and less likely to take fright in the pres- 

 ence of men, nets proved the most profitable means 

 of securing them. Ducks could be driven or 

 decoyed into the toils without difficulty. The net- 

 ting of quail took no great skill; heath hens 

 proved docile and stupid ; and nets were the only 

 method by which it paid to kill wild pigeons. 



