868 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
1900. 
[JUNE 2, 

Let us hear from Michigan, Wisconsin, Arkan- 
sas, the Indian’ Territory and from anywhere this 
fine bird may still be staying.” Alas! those States 
had been heard from many times in prior years, 
but it was a hearing in words of blood and de- 
struction, which clearly stated the doom of the 
wild pigeon. In the face of such obvious ex- 
termination it seems like a mockery of sports- 
manship to ask, “Where are the wild pigeons?” 
In Forest AND STREAM of June 14, 1888, a cor- 
respondent (Whitewater, Wis.) replies to L. H. 
Smith, as follows: ‘In your last number, a cor- 
respondent asks as to the whereabouts of those 
beautiful birds. the wild pigeons, which used to 
be so abundant a few years ago. It is thought 
here that the wholesale destruction of young and 
old at their nesting places has resulted in nearly 
exterminating them, A few years since there was 
a roost near Kilbourn City, in this State; and 
men, women and children, besides a large num- 
ber of Indians, spent a week or more in. shooting 
the old birds and clubbing down the young. The 
weather was intensely hot and nearly all that 
were intended for shipment spoiled; several tons 
of young birds which had been brought to the 
express office and were found to be unfit to send 
off, were thrown into the Wisconsin River, As 
this process is substantially repeated in every 
State or Territory where a roost is discovered, 
it cannot but soon result in wiping out the entire 
race of passenger pigeons, unless soon discon- 
tinued.” 
Ebeemee, Putnam, Conn., in 
STREAM of June 28, 1888, wrote: 
is at it I want to echo the question, ‘Where are 
the wild pigeons?’ In my boyhood in New 
Hampshire I used to see fairly large flocks and 
be able every year to secure a few, and that was 
but a few years after the great flights of which 
every one told when these birds were netted by 
the thousand. Now, I doubt if a wild pigeon is 
seen in New England.” 
A correspondent of Toronto, Ont., in Forest 
AND STREAM of July 26, 1888, stated: “Last fall 
while shooting in the northern part of Victoria 
county, my companion had the luck to kill one 
of these beautiful birds, it being the first one 
taken in that district for several years, although 
they may be seen occasionally.” 
Thus, whether the wild pigeon was the last 
of his kind, or in countless thousands, the im- 
pulse to destroy it was the same. Where was 
the wild pigeon? Dead in the roosts, fed to the 
hogs, consumed as food, shot at in the traps! 
Wilson, referred to before herein, wrote: 
“When these roosts are first discovered, the in- 
habitants, from considerable distances, visit them 
in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, pots 
of sulphur, and various other engines of destruc- 
tion. In a few hours they fill many sacks and 
load their horses with them. By the Indians, 
a pigeon roost or breeding place is considered 
an important source of national profit and de- 
pendance for that season, and all their active in- 
genuity is exercised on that occasion. The breed- 
ing place differs from the former in its greater 
extent. )* t= * VAs. soon) as ethess younlen were 
fully grown, and before they left the nests, nu- 
merous parties of the inhabitants, from all parts 
of the adjacent country, came with wagons, axes, 
beds, cooking utensils, many of them accom- 
panied by the greater part of their families, and 
encamped for several days at this immense nur- 
sery. Several of them informed me that the 
noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their 
horses, and that it was difficult for one person 
to hear another speak without bawling in his ear. 
The ground was strewed with broken limbs of 
trees, eggs and young squab pigeons, which had 
been precipitated from above, and on which herds 
of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards and 
eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and 
seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure; 
while, from twenty feet upward to the tops of 
the trees, the view through the woods presented 
a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering 
multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like 
thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of fall- 
ing timber, for now the ax men were at work, 
cutting down those trees that seemed to be most 
crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them 
in such a manner that in their descent they might 
bring down several others, by which means the 
ForEST AND 
“While my pen 
falling of one large tree sometimes produced 200 
squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and 
almost one mass of fat. On some single trees, 
upward of 100 nests were found,each containing 
one young only; a circumstance in the history of 
this bird not generally known to naturalists. It 
was dangerous to walk under these flying and 
fluttering millions from the frequent fall of large 
branches broken down by the weight of the mul- 
titudes above and which, in their descent often 
destroyed numbers of the birds themselves; while 
the clothes of those. engaged in traversing the 
woods were completely covered with the excre- 
ments of the pigeons. * .* * The nest of the 
wild pigeon is formed of a few dry, slender twigs, 
carelessly put together, and with so little con- 
cavity that the young one, when half-grown, can 
easily be seen from-.below. Great numbers of 
hawks and sometimes the bald eagle himself, 
hover about those breeding places, and seize the 
old or the young from the nest amidst the rising 
multitudes, and with the most daring affrontery. 
The young, when beginning to fly, confine them- 
selves to the under part of the tall woods, where 
there is no brush, and where nuts and acorns are 
abundant, searching among the leaves for mast, 
and appear like a prodigious torrent rolling along 
through the woods, every one striving to be in the 
front. Vast numbers of them are shot while in 
this situation. A person told me that he once 
rode furiously into one of these rolling multi- 
tudes, and picked up thirteen pigeons which had 
been trampled to death by his horse’s feet.” * * * 
Jan. 17, 1884, a correspondent, concerning a 
party of three, writes: “Near Augusta, Mo., the 
roost of pigeons was represented to us to be 
‘perfectly enormous,’ and to that point we hied us. 
* * * The trees were literally crowded with 
them, every limb being filled, and they would 
sometimes so overload small trees as to break 
them down. They were so thick that it was an 
easy matter to kill fifty at a shot. When they 
flew, the sound would resemble a train of cars 
near at hand. Their roost occupies a space of 
about five miles long and three miles wide, and 
when the pigeons come in at night and leave in 
the morning they actually darken the earth 
around. * * * At daybreak next morning we 
all started for Augusta. When our pigeons were 
counted (three wagons) we had 5,415.” 
In Forest AND STREAM of Nov. 26, 1885, in re- 
ply to a query concerning the growing scarcity of 
the wild pigeon, an editorial reply was as fol- 
lows: “There is no mystery about the disappear- 
ance of the wild pigeons. Their flocks have been 
depleted by market pot-hunters and by the trap- 
shooting game protective societies.” 
In Forest AND STREAM of May 13, 1886, was 
the following: “Wild pigeons have been nesting 
in the woods of Forest and Warren counties, Pa., 
this year, and the netters and gunners have been 
reaping an unexpected spring harvest. When the 
birds appear, all the male inhabitants of the 
neighborhood leave their customary occupations 
as farmers, bark-peelers, oil scouts, wildcatters 
and tavern loafers, and join in the work of cap- 
turing and marketing the game. The Pennsyl- 
vania law very plainly forbids the destruction of 
the pigeons on their nesting grounds, but no one 
pays any attention to the law, and the nesting 
birds have been killed by thousands and tens of 
thousands.” 
From Forest AND STREAM of July 14, 1894, de- 
scribing methods: “From 100 to 200 men have 
been engaged in netting these birds all the time, 
and this number is increased by a great many 
local netters wherever the birds happen to nest. 
These regular netters are located in almost every 
State in the Union, each new nesting seeming to 
develop a few new catchers, who make frantic 
efforts to get into the ring and find out the news 
away from home, and in return give the boys any 
local points they may discover. 
“In this very large country, there would seem 
to be every chance of losing a body of birds and 
not finding out where they are. But a very good 
system has been established for keeping track of 
them, which is specially looked after by the dif- 
ferent express companies and the shippers and 
handlers of live and dead birds, who form an- 
other section of those interested in the history 
of the wild pigeon, before the epicure meets him 
at the table. 
“When the body of birds leaves the South, the 
local superintendents of the express companies 
are instructed to keep their eyes out for indica- 
tions of a nesting, and the messengers generally 
are to report on their route. A correspondence 
of an inquisitive nature is carried on by every 
regular netter in order that he or his chums may 
strike the birds first. One may judge of the im- 
portance of the receipts to the express companies 
from the fact that a total of 4,000 to 5,000 barrels 
of birds are shipped from each nesting, averaging 
thirty dozen to the barrel, on which the charges 
are irom $6 to $12 per barrel, which sometimes 
includes re-icing on the trip. This does not in- 
clude the State fed birds for later market nor the 
live birds for the trapshooting, and on which 
charges are 75 cents per crate of seventy-two 
birds to $300 per carload, nor the squabs, so that 
it is of considerable importance that no nesting 
be overlooked. 
“The same flock of birds will be reported from 
ten or twenty different points, sometimes 200 or 
300 miles apart, on their first appearance in the 
State. Then the plot thickens and it becomes a 
question, ‘Where is there feed enough to hold a 
nesting?’ All probable points are then closely 
watched and daylight finds each netter out,. set 
and ready to try and hail any passing flock of 
scouts and see how well the eggs are developed, 
and by the contents of the craw to tell whether 
the birds wintered in Missouri on acorns or in 
Alabama on rice. In this way the small flocks 
are watched and if they form a roost they are 
not disturbed. Generally the birds pick the best 
feed possible in Michigan or Pennsylvania; beech 
nuts are their nesting diet, following as the nuts 
sprout by budding on the young elm buds. In 
Wisconsin and Minnesota acorns are their main 
food. 
“Describing a haul of the net, he writes: ‘At 
last we ripped into them and the net only got 
about half way over. When we got out the birds 
were pouring out of the net, so many there were 
that they held up the front line. Dropping flat 
on‘it we had the satisfaction of saving 159 birds, 
which was our best haul of the day. Now fol- 
lowed a repetition of the early morning pro- 
gramme, lasting until sun down, and when we got 
through we found sixty-one dozen and three birds 
to the good. * * * In every clearing within 
fifteen miles was a bough house, and each train 
was loaded with birds.’ ” 
On the matter of decreasing numbers, he wrote: 
“Much has been said and done in the way of 
criticism of the art of netting birds for trap and 
market, and it is the conviction of the ordinary 
sportsman that to the net belongs the credit of 
the pigeon’s extinction. Much more might be 
said on the same side, but this article may pos- 
sibly explain another way in which their num- 
bers have not been increased. While in many or 
all of the States where the pigeons used to nest 
laws originated by both netters and hunters were 
passed prohibiting the use of gun or net within 
a mile of the place of nesting, yet there are many 
States not sc protected where the gun reigns su- 
preme. Now, no provision is made in any State 
for the roosting birds, and thereby hangs a tale. 
It may show you one of the causes of the de- 
crease in numbers and the increased shyness in 
what pigeons we may now find in our land.” 
The aforementioned writer then recounts a 
night excursion into the roost by eight mén in 
line armed with shotguns and six youths with 
grain sacks to hold the dead birds. He continues: 
“In about a half hour a volley of guns sounded 
a mile or two away on our left, and the leader, 
saying, ‘Now, boys, come ahead; we'll get our 
share before them fellers take them all,’ we stole 
slowly along in line ten feet apart. No birds 
flushed, although we could hear their swish out 
of one shrub into another. We soon reached a 
small thicket from which so loud a noise came 
that a halt was called and ‘Aim level, one, two, 
three, fire,’ was quietly spoken by the leader, The 
deafening sound was quickly followed by the 
breaking out of a large body of birds which left 
the thicket only to pitch down again on the 
ground somewhere else in the roosting. The 
sound of flapping wings and struggling birds in 
the brush was the signal to stack the guns against 
a tree and with one or two lanterns and the sacks 
our search was commenced. ‘Don’t touch the 
