JUNE 2, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

The Fate of the Wild 
(Concluded from page 828.) 
Pigeon. 
The Destruction. 
THE comprehensiveness of the destruction and 
the active forces which compassed it, are best 
presented in the following, taken from Forest 
Ee STREAM. This is from the issue of April 29, 
1880 : 
“Late advices from Shelby, Mich., announce 
the arrival of the wild pigeons. * * * A few 
seasons ago, your correspondent spent two weeks 
in the same locality, and saw one of the largest 
roosts and the business of pigeoning in full blast. 
The netters, buyers and pigeons generally arrive 
on the grounds at one and the same time, the 
course Of the birds being found out by use of the 
telegraph. The netters at once proceed to secure 
a good place to set their nets, often paying as 
high as $50 for a favored spot where the flight is 
good, or for some drinking place or salt marsh, 
where the birds are in the habit of going. The 
buyers erect coops for holding live birds or get 
together their stock of barrels and ice for ship- 
ping dead birds, though a good proportion of the 
trappers ship their own birds alive or dead to 
New York and Chicago. I saw dead birds sold 
at Shelby for 15 cents, and live for 30 cents per 
dozen, though the average prices are higher. The 
morning and evening hours are the best for catch- 
ing, as then the flights are on. I saw 287 taken 
at one spring of a single net, over a bed of muck 
to which the birds had been baited for some days 
by sprinkling salt over the mud. On these beds, 
no decoys are used, the baiting being sufficient. 
The pigeons would eat greedily of the salted 
muck. * * * With the first streaks of light 
we could hear the flutter of wings as they lit in 
the trees about the bed. As the light increased, 
they came faster and thicker, until some of the 
trees were alive with them, and the woods were 
filled with their calls. Soon a single pigeon 
dropped upon the bed, and’ had hardly folded its 
wings before others began to pour from the trees 
in a stream. When they seemed to be standing 
on each other’s backs and you could see nothing 
but pointed tails sticking up, and while they were 
still flying thickly down to the bed, we both 
jerked the line with all our might. There was a 
loud swish as the net sprang over, the lead line 
knocking feathers from those still in the air and 
in the way of the net. We rushed from our 
cover, and while I stood in astonishment at the 
boiling mass under the meshes, the netter pro- 
ceeded to fasten down the corners of the net and 
remove the birds to the coops. * * * I did 
not think then that there would be a pigeon left 
to lead the way to the woods of Shelby at some 
future season, but it seems there was, and their 
enemies are on hand to wage the war of extermi- 
nation, How long can it last?” 
Noy. 17, 1881, a writer of Champaign county, 
Ohio, stated: 
“T am a trapper; have followed it for years, and 
have taken a great.deal of pains to study the 
habits of wild pigeons, especially when on their 
nesting grounds. One gunner will do more harm 
at a nesting place than 100 netters, for this rea- 
son: The pigeons make but a very small nest, 
almost flat on the top, and the egg (as they only 
lay one at a time) is very easily rolled out. The 
hunter comes along and fires into them, and 
every bird in hearing of the gun gets off from 
its nest as soon as it can, and away goes the egg 
at the same time and the nest is abandoned.” 
If not a pigeon was killed by man, the preven- 
tion of reproduction thus enforced would in a 
very few years exterminate the pigeon species. 
The diminishing numbers, and total absence of 
the birds were now becoming apparent. In the 
following year there were inquiries about them. 
Nessmuk wrote from Wellsboro, Pa., in Forest 
AND STREAM May 11, 1882, as follows: , 
“I want to exhaust the list of objections and 
bitter anathemas on the ‘brutal heads of the 
featherless pigeon owls—begging the owl’s par- 
don—who are netting and slaughtering the parent 
birds on the roost about the head of Indian River, 
twenty-five miles west of Wellsboro, It is the 
same old criminal trick of heartless brutality that 
has pained and disgusted every humane sports- 
man and lover of nature for the past fifty years. 
Only in this instance the war of extermination is 
carried on with devilish skill and a deadliness 
that beats the old-time modes of chopping down 
trees, shooting and smoking with sulphur. On at 
least four occasions during the past thirty years, 
the pigeons have been driven from their nesting 
before the nests were fairly finished by the greedy, 
noisy onslaught of all the hoodlums who could 
beg, buy or borrow a $5 shotgun. They order it 
more wisely now. Before an egg was laid, there 
were 200 salt beds and nets ready for slaughter. 
But the roost was rather protected until the incu- 
bation was progressing; then the murder com- 
menced. Three hundred nets are daily spread in 
a pigeon roost only three miles long by about 
half.a mile in width. The guns keep up a con- 
stant fusilade, and there is a continuous fight go- 
ing on between gunners and netters. The latter 
cannot get the birds ‘down’ on their salt beds 
when they are scared by shooting, and the gun- 
ners make it a point to shoot with an eye to the 
foiling of netters. * * * Our game constable 
has just returned from the nesting in Potter 
county, Having no authority in that county, the 
best he could do was to note and report. Here 
are his words: ‘The nests are placed more thickly 
on the trees than I have seen them in previous 
nestings, but the roost is not extensive—three 
and one-half by one-half mile. The nets, netters 
and salt beds number 500 and more, with others 
constantly coming in, One package of ninety 
nets came in just as I left. No, they are not 
making it. There is not a netter there who is 
making expenses, for which the Lord be thanked. 
The birds are getting scared and wary, and some 
old netters fear they will leave in a body.’”’ 
The foregoing shows that, in 1882, the birds 
were still numerous, though in greatly diminished 
numbers as compared with the multitudes of prior 
years, and that the forces of destruction were 
better organized and greatly increased. With 500 
netters and salt beds, and a lot of shooters op- 
posed to such a small nesting, the possible and 
speedy extermination of it is obvious. 
Jacobstaff, in ForEST AND STREAM of May 17, 
1883, wrote as follows: 
“What has become of all the wild pigeons? 
The vast flocks almost hiding the sun as they 
passed over in their northern flight day by day. 
Why, I distinctly remember one flock that crossed 
over Chenango Valley that was nearly a half hour 
from their first appearance until the last of the 
many thousands swept by. The sun was veritably 
obscured for the time. * * * Talk about 
pigeons, why one spring there were so many, that 
is, they came in such myriads by platoons, 
brigades, whole armies, that the students of the 
university used to stand on the hillside and knock 
them down with poles as they swept up from the 
valley below. Pigeon stew, pigeon potpie, pigeon 
broils, etc., were the order at the college boarding 
hall. Such high living was never known in all 
the annals of any university steward, and this 
particular steward*.was a good fellow, and his 
jolly face rotunded in proportion. But where 
are all these birds now? * * * Instead of 
those vast nestings in Sullivan county, N. Y., and 
northern Pennsylvania, or even Michigan and 
Wisconsin, the birds have been driven for a safe 
retreat while rearing their young away beyond 
the Mississippi, miles beyond a railroad. The 
railroads have done it. When they opened up 
through central New York, it did not take long 
for the farmers to cut down their woods, for they 
had a ready sale; and when the groves with their 
beech nuts and acorns were gone, the birds soon 
went, too, never to return.” 
In 1888 there were importunate queries all sub- 
stantially in the words, “Where are the wild 
pigeons?” “Is it possible,” wrote L. H. Smith, 
of Strathroy, Ont. in Forest AND STREAM of 
May, 1888: ‘That the beautiful passenger pigeon 
is becoming extinct? He has left the East for 
good. I hope some of our friends who take an 
interest in bird life will let us hear from them. 

WELL FED ‘BEARS OF THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. 
