FOREST AND STREAM 
341 
A Beaver Dam. 
When Passenger Pigeons Were Plenty 
By Tacitus Hussey. 
weighted by the trap and chain, he is soon 
drowned. 
The Indian returns the next morning, pulls on 
the chain and drawing the trap from the pond 
finds its jaws closed on the fore-paw of a dead 
beaver. The trap is again set in the notch, and 
this is repeated day after day until every beaver 
in the pond has sacrificed itself to its anxiety for 
the integrity of the dam, or until a remnant of 
the colony, sensing a disaster that lies beyond 
their comprehension and with which they are un¬ 
able to cope, takes fright and deserts the pond, 
never to return. 
Another method of setting a trap for the 
beaver—one that is more generally adopted by 
the white man—is placing the trap on a slide. 
The beaver always leaves and returns to the 
water at the same place, and his frequent passage 
over the mud at the water’s edge in time wears 
away the silt, and leaves a more or less deeply 
marked channel or groove. This is called a 
“slide” and here the trap is placed, but always be¬ 
low the water. If the creek is navigable it is bet¬ 
ter to set the trap from a canoe, as the danger of 
leaving scent is avoided. Otherwise the water 
must be waded along its margin and the trap set 
without putting a foot on dry land. Any cutting 
or chips that may be lying around must not be 
touched with the hands, or the beaver would 
abandon the slide. 
When a beaver is caught in this manner it is 
useless to set the trap again on the same slide. 
Another must be found, and the superiority of 
the skilled trapper lies in his ability to distinguish 
a recent slide from one that has been abandoned 
and is out of use. This cannot be done by an in¬ 
spection of the slide itself. The trapper looks 
for what he calls the beaver’s work. If a tree is 
cut into but the felling not completed, or if felled 
and the cutting up into portable lengths is not 
finished and the pieces not removed to the water, 
the work is said to be unfinished, and a slide lead¬ 
ing from the water to the tree is reasonably sure 
to be used by the beaver each night until the work 
on that tree is finished. Here is the place to set 
the trap. If a beaver is not found in the trap on 
the following day something is wrong, and the 
trap may be taken away. 
There is no known bait which will coax a 
beaver into a trap. The only way is to place the 
trap where it is known that the beaver will put 
his foot. 
BOY SCOUTS AS PROTECTORS. 
The game interests of Tacoma, Pierce county, 
Wash., recently received the official aid of the 
Boy Scouts of America, when the county com¬ 
missioners decided to issue special commissions 
and badges to such Scouts as pass the examina¬ 
tions. Each Scout qualifying as a game pro¬ 
tector will take an oath to serve the State of 
Washington truly and conscientiously as a mem¬ 
ber of the Fish and Game Patrol and to aid in 
the protection of the fish, animal and bird life in 
accordance with the game laws of the state. 
When game law violators are apprehended by 
the Scouts, half of the fine will be turned into 
the troop treasury. The scouts individually gain 
nothing for their labors but regard it as good 
turns for the community. 
A delegation of western Massachusetts far¬ 
mers and fruit growers appeared before the 
committee on fisheries and game recently to fa¬ 
vor legislation that would allow the killing of 
deer for six weeks instead of one week as at 
present. 
Des Moines, la., Feb. 14, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I was much interested in your correspondent’s 
article regarding the disappearance of the “Pas¬ 
senger Pigeon,” and feel inclined to add a chapter 
in regard to their plenteousness in my boyhood 
days. At the time I was born Indiana was a vast 
wilderness of beech, oak and such trees as 
bore nuts suitable for pigeons, and our forests 
used to be the feeding grounds for countless 
numbers of them. In fact the killing of them 
was considered very tame sport. After a week or 
ten days of steady diet people grew tired of them, 
and while they did not cease their slaughter, they 
fed them to their hogs. It was a very indolent 
family who did have all the pigeons they could 
eat during the season of their migration. A 
myriad of them would alight in a beech forest in 
the autumn and strip a portion of the forest in 
a day. The sound of their wings would make a 
noise like the coming of a great rushing wind, 
and while feeding they would cover a beech tree 
so completely that all the branches would be cov¬ 
ered. Then when one tree was stripped they 
would settle on another and not leave it until 
stripped clean. Farmers in the new country 
looked upon them as despoilers, for it took away 
the “mast” upon which they expected to fatten 
their hogs, in lieu of their scanty crops of corn. 
Sometimes they would settle on a freshly sowed 
wheatfield and when they departed, if there was 
a crop expected, new seed would have to be sown 
and the field guarded by men with firearms dur¬ 
ing the seasons of their flight across the conti¬ 
nent. The birds were slaughtered by the thous¬ 
and, dressed and sent to market; but at a cent 
apiece were hardly worth the time it took. I 
have in some neighborhoods, seen wash tubs filled 
with these dressed birds carted off to village mar¬ 
kets and sold at a price which would not pay for 
the time taken, if time was worth anything at all! 
In an obscure part of Indiana, on Eel river, 
about twenty miles from Terre Haute, Indiana, 
there was a “Pigeon Roost,” where they assem¬ 
bled in such numbers as to break with their 
weight the trees on which they roosted. The 
“sportsmen” who assembled there at night, did 
not waste powder and shot to bring down their 
game; but with torches, clubs and poles, killing 
wagon loads of them, leaving the maimed to die 
as they made their escape in a helpless condition. 
There were four brothers in our family, rang¬ 
ing from 18 to 12 years. Our parents were not 
able to furnish ammunition for the larger game- 
so plentiful at our primitive home. We made our 
own bows and arrows and joined in the slaughter 
so far as we were able. When the great flocks- 
of wild pigeons flew across the country so thick 
that you could not see the sky, we would send' 
our arrows among them, and if it did not hit one 
going up, it would surely hit one coming down; 
and we would gather up the dead and wounded 
with that heroic feeling of boys who have been 
out “and killed something!” I always imagined 
our pigeon pies had a better taste than those of 
our neighbors who went to the slaughter at the 
“pigeon roosts.” The birds were the prettiest 
game birds which ever flew the air, and your pic¬ 
ture in the Forest and Stream brought to my 
remembrance the glossy coat and the elegant 
poise assumed by them when at rest. The last 
wild ones of this species I killed was in 1865 
while guarding a field of newly sown wheat. 
Eight were killed out of the flock of twelve and 
they made an excellent pot pie to regale some 
wounded soldier friends who had just returned 
from the front, and who made a statement with¬ 
out reservation that it “beat hard tack and sow 
belly” about a hundred per cent. Perhaps we 
were too prodigal as a people with our abund¬ 
ance; and a kind Providence took it away to teach 
us wisdom for the coming years in regard to our 
game in the west! 
