22 THE? A UD B-OsN BU ll eee 
as their numbers decreased, starting during the middle of the 19th century. 
While many pigeons were killed by individual hunters, even more 
were captured and killed by the use of nets. Netting the pigeons for 
slaughter and then sale to markets in the eastern United States had become 
a full-time profession for an estimated 400 to 1,000 persons by the year 
1860. It is not known even approximately how many Passenger Pigeons 
were sold in commercial markets. It is known, however, that the New York 
City market alone sold about 100 barrels a day, with about 30 dozen pigeons 
per barrel. Many more pigeons were killed than were ever sold or eaten, 
because of wastage. 
The development of the railroads by 1860, and the introduction of the 
telegraph, made it possible for full-time netters to follow movements of 
the flocks of pigeons throughout the country during the entire year. The 
netter could learn of the arrival of a flock in a given area by telegram, and 
move to the new location in time to kill vast numbers of the birds for 
shipment to the east by rail. 
All sorts of nets and traps were used by the netters. In most cases, 
a “bed” was prepared in an open field which could be baited to attract the 
birds. Both live and stuffed pigeons were used on the beds as decoys. The 
netters would generally wait in a hut or “bough house” for enough pigeons 
to alight on the bed. The net was usually thrown over the bed by the action 
of spring poles. During the 1870’s, the birds were often lured by beds of 
grain or mud beds that had been salted, and then taken in huge nets, some- 
times 2,000 to 3,000 pigeons at one time. 
The pressure from hunters became so great that the Passenger Pigeons 
were dispersed into small flocks. The last truly great nesting area, which 
covered some 100,000 acres, was near Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878. The 
pigeons in this nesting were largely slaughtered by the hunters. The pigeons 
tended thereafter to gather only in small flocks where least molested by 
man. 
A number of Passenger Pigeons probably could have survived to this 
day had it not been for their communal breeding habits. The pigeons laid 
only a few eggs a year. They depended on the mutual protection of the 
great nesting areas to insure that a large percentage of the young survived 
to replace those adults that died. If an adult died while it still had young 
in its nest, other adult members of the community took over the job of 
feeding the orphaned young. This, again, helped to insure that a relatively 
large percentage of the young birds survived to reproduce. Once the large 
flocks and nesting areas were broken up, and the protection they offered 
lost, the doom of the Passenger Pigeon was sealed. The species could not 
reproduce enough to make up for those that died. 
It is believed that all hope of saving the species was lost by 1880. The 
pigeon was first seriously considered to be in danger of extinction in 1850, 
but legislation to stop the killing of the birds came “too little, too late.” 
Protective legislation was often defeated because it could be argued that 
thousands of the birds were still living. The few conservation laws that were 
passed generally protected only the nestings, and at that, stopped only the 
shooting in the nesting area, not netting. The laws protecting the Passenger 
Pigeons were poorly enforced and often completely ignored. Not a single 
arrest was ever made under a law in the state of Pennsylvania protecting 
the nesting areas. 
