May 8, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
757 
ing them and curing them over beds of hard¬ 
wood coals, ‘jerking’ them, as it was called. To 
make the harvest of squabs larger the squabbers 
went about thumping' the trunks of the trees 
with heavy lengths of timber, using them as 
battering rams. This would fetch the squabs 
tumbling from their nests like ripe chestnuts. 
“But the human squab gatherers were not 
alone sharers in that harvest. At night foxes, 
raccoons, wildcats, porcupines, skunks and other 
four footed prowlers could at almost any time 
be seen sneaking in among the tree trunks 
watching for an opportunity to get an easy feast 
on the squabs as they tumbled from the nest, 
and the howl of an occasional wolf too wary 
to venture close to camp—and the whole forest 
seemed to be one great camp—was frequently 
heard. Not a few of the campers had driven 
their swine in with them and droves of hogs fed 
on the young pigeons. 
“When we arrived at the roost there were 
only a few scattering pigeons to be seen as they 
fluttered about their nests, but just before sun¬ 
down we heard a sound in the distance that 
rapidly became a roar and the sky began to 
darken. The pigeons were returning from their 
feeding grounds in the bush to their roosts and 
nests. Immediately following the first rush of 
returning pigeons and until long after dark a 
closely packed and unbroken flight of birds 
poured in, alighting in great masses, often one 
on top of the other, upon every spot to which 
they could cling, producing by their own flut¬ 
tering calls and the constant breaking and 
crashing to the ground of boughs giving way 
under the great weight of the birds a noise so 
tremendous that the loudest shouts of men 
standing side by side could not be heard from 
one to the other, and the firing of a gun a few 
yards away would only be known by the flash 
it made. 
“The pigeons paid no attention at all to the 
fires that gleamed everywhere nor to the men 
who with long poles swept them in heaps from 
the low lying branches. Frequently the whole 
upper part of some brittle and overladen tree 
would snap off and come down with a crash, 
carrying with it not only its own mass of living 
freight, but crushing to death countless num¬ 
bers of young and old birds on the lower 
branches. Those of the disturbed pigeons that 
were unhurt would struggle blindly upward 
again, trying to get a foothold somewhere 
among the trees. If they could not regain a 
roost in the tree from which they had been 
hurled they would huddle together on the 
ground beneath it and fall victims to the clubs 
of the slaughterers. 
“From daylight until near midnight the 
slaughter of pigeons and squabs was continu¬ 
ous. The old pigeons would be off to the feed¬ 
ing grounds at dawn. The roost had been there 
over a month, and thousands of pigeons had 
been killed before the nesting had begun. The 
squabs had just come into condition for gather¬ 
ing. For eight weeks the birds were shot, 
clubbed, netted and killed in every known man¬ 
ner, and taken by the wagonload to the local 
markets. The spring rafting freshet was on, 
and every raft that pulled out from the upper 
Delaware was loaded high with pigeons, which 
were taken to markets all along the river, where 
they found ready and profitable sale. Some 
pigeon hunters cleared as much as $1,000 during 
the time the birds were in the woods, and be¬ 
sides that pigeon roost saving a great deal of 
trouble and suffering in the valley it laid the 
foundation of more than one family fortune. 
“That was the greatest wild pigeon roost and 
nesting of which there is any record in the East. 
It was more than fifteen miles long and seven 
wide.” 
The last flight of wild pigeons in the East 
was in 1888. In the spring of that year they 
filled the forests of western Pennsylvania for 
miles and miles along the Allegheny River. In 
1888 they nested in the wilds of the great Michi¬ 
gan oeninsula. They were then in as enormous 
number apparently as they had ever been, for 
they occupied an area of forest ten miles long 
and five wide. The usual period of slaughter and 
netting inroads were made upon the colony, 
but when it rose for departure aftw the nesting 
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THE NARRATIVE OF A SPORTSMAN 
lnter>Ocean Hunting Tales 
—= EDGAR r. RANDOLPH —= 
A series of hunting reminiscences of rare charm for the sportsman and for die 
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He covers the field of sport with the rifle, east and west, drawing a vivid word 
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This book will strike a sympathetic chord in the memory of every big-game 
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Cloth, 170 Pages. Richly Illustrated. Postpaid, $1.00 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO., NEW YORK CITY 
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FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY, NEW YORK. | 
