Notes of a Vanished Industry 109 



time is money, and the netters could save many more 

 dead than alive. 



I knew of a man paying $300 for the privilege of 

 netting on one salt spring near White River. It was a 

 spring dug for oil, boarded up sixteen feet square. He 

 cut it down a little and built a platform, and caught 

 once or twice each week. He got 300 dozen at one 

 haul in this house. He said they were piled there three 

 feet deep. 



I once pulled a net on a bait bed and we saved 

 132 dozen alive, but many got out from underneath the 

 net, there being too many on the bed. The net used 

 was 28x36 feet. I have lost 3,000 birds in one day 

 because the railroad did not have a car ready on the 

 date promised. I threw away what cost me $250 in 

 eight hours, fat birds, because the weather was too 

 hot. I have bought carloads in Wisconsin at 15 and 25 

 cents per dozen, but in Michigan we usually paid from 

 50 cents to $1 a dozen. I have fed thirty bushels of 

 shelled corn daily at $1.20 per bushel, and paid out 

 from $300 to $600 per day for pigeons. 



I never allowed game to be shipped to me out of 

 season; if it came, I never paid for it. 



About two years ago I was told by a man who just 

 got back from the Northwest, Calgary, that the birds 

 were so thick in the north that they darkened the sun. 

 They were probably nesting, as he said they were seen 

 every morning. . . . Up to ten years ago I was 



