Efforts to Check the Slaughter 8i 



dozen birds per day per net and some trappers will 

 not spring a net upon less than ten dozen birds. Higher 

 figures than these are often reached, as in the case of 

 one trapper who caught and delivered 2,000 dozen 

 ^ pigeons in ten days, being 200 dozen, or about 2,500 

 birds per day. A double net has been known to catch 

 as high as 1,332 birds at a single throw, while at natural 

 salt licks, their favorite resort, 300 and 400 dozen, or 

 about 5,000 birds have been caught in a single day by 

 one net. 



The prices of dead birds range from thirty-five cents 

 to forty cents per dozen at the nesting. In Chicago 

 markets fifty to sixty cents. Squabs twelve cents per 

 dozen in the woods, in metropolitan markets sixty cents 

 to seventy cents. In fashionable restaurants they are 

 served as a delicious tid-bit at fancy prices. Live birds 

 are worth at the trapper's net forty cents to sixty cents 

 per dozen; in cities $1 to $2. It can thus be easily seen 

 that the business, when at all successful, is a very profit- 

 able one, for from the above quotations a pencil will 

 quickly figure out an income of $10 to $40 per day for 

 the "poor and hard-working pigeon trapper." One 

 "pigeoner" at the Petoskey nesting was reported to be 

 worth $60,000, all made in that business. He must 

 have slain at least three million pigeons to gain this 

 amount of money. 



For several years violations of the laws protecting 

 pigeons in brooding time have been notorious in the 



