At Racine, Wisconsin, during September, the pigeons would pour south in dense flocks along the Lake Michigan shoreline until they reached the Root River and followed its course inland. Often the birds would fly just a few feet above the ground and not higher than forty feet. Enterprising residents took advantage of the situation in several ways. Slightly more sophisticated than sticks, garden rakes and pitchforks enabled many to harvest their fall crop of pigeons. Two brothers preferred fishing for their birds. They stretched a hundred-foot-long seine and secured it to the tallest branches they could reach. The mesh proved invisible to the birds as they sped along, and large quantities became entrapped, while others fell to the ground stunned. The net would be released and fall to the ground heavy with entangled pigeons. More effective still was the “pigeon killer,” as the operators called it, erected on an elevated bank of the river. The simple design consisted of a “long hickory pole in the ground” with cords stretching from it in opposite directions. When the birds “passed over the bluff the boys would vibrate the pole rapidly by pulling the cords alternately, the top of the pole knocking hundreds of them to the earth.” The kids would work in teams, some manipulating the pole while others gathered the bounty.5
A similar pigeon killer was employed during the early 1800s to take birds that roosted at the celebrated Bloody Run or Pigeon Roost swamp in the Buckeye Lake area east of Columbus, Ohio. As the pigeons piled into the swamp at dusk, a long pole placed at the edge was waved around to bat all the birds desired out of the air. Over the decades, though, the effectiveness of this method waned as the birds became more wary: they no longer headed directly into the swamp but ascended beyond the range of poles and guns and dropped into the roost in a more abrupt trajectory.6
Bows and arrows rarely figured in pigeon hunting by white people, but if used, it was usually as a cost-saving measure over guns. One participant from the Timiskaming area of Ontario said guns were preferred only when it seemed certain that a single shot would bag five or more pigeons. Otherwise, the cost of powder and shot became prohibitive. Boys too young to have guns or the money to afford ammunition composed another group of bow-and-arrow aficionados. C. A. Fleming of Grey County, Ontario, wrote a long memoir of his experiences in the 1860s. He and his friends chose eighteen-inch-long shafts of cedar and hammered a nail into one end of each. The protruding nail head would then be ground to a fine point. Rock elm provided the wood of choice for the bow. The shooters armed themselves with twenty-five or thirty arrows, knowing that no more than one out of twelve shots was apt to puncture a pigeon.7
The Hussey boys grew up near Terre Haute, Indiana, during the Civil War. They, too, relied on bows and arrows for their pigeon sport: “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.”8
Where the birds roosted or nested, killing as many as one wanted was usually a cinch. Some hunters used their bare hands, while others bludgeoned their prey with clubs. Mark Twain recalled the roost near his childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, and how all the pigeoners relied on clubs. Adults and squabs fell from their nests as they were slammed by poles. More profitable still, men cut trees loaded with nests that would in turn knock down other trees equally endowed. It was a simple matter to gather the fallen fruit.9
A TEMPTATION TOO STRONG FOR HUMAN VIRTUE TO WITHSTAND: SHOOTING PIGEONS
In their passage the People of New York and Philadelphia shoot many of them as they fly, from their Balconies and Tops of Houses.
—MARK CATESBY, 1731
What a shame that passenger pigeons became extinct. Future generations would be denied the near euphoria that apparently accompanied raising a gun toward a flock of pigeons and firing. Anne Grant said of the spring and fall flights that ascended the Hudson River and passed over Albany in the first years of the nineteenth century, “This migration … occasioned … a total relaxation from all employments, and a kind of drunken gayety, though it was rather slaughter than sport.”10
A couple of decades later in York, Ontario (now Toronto), the arrival of the pigeons triggered another outburst of orgiastic firing. For several days, the city took on the character of a war zone, with the nonstop cacophony of discharging firearms resounding everywhere. Police attempted to enforce the ordinance banning the use of guns within the city, but it proved impossible given the sheer numbers of transgressors, including those of such high status as city council members, crown lawyers, and even the county sheriff. The forces of law and order capitulated: “It was found that pigeons, flying within easy shot, were a temptation too strong for human virtue to withstand.”11
Urban pigeon shooters in Quebec City became so vexatious that municipal authorities appeared resolute in their 1727 enactment of a ban on such activities. A translation of the ordinance, written in the formal, breathless style typical of legal prose of that period, is too entertaining not to quote at length (to make it easier to read I have added a few words and a little punctuation):
On account of the complaints which we receive daily from many people who spend their days here in various parts of the city of Quebec and as much as they trust in the security which accords with being in a city closed and policed they have nevertheless received blows from shot which have reached them. Others have gone into their yards and have wounded fowls and ducks which happens only because whenever there is a flight of pigeons and because of the eagerness to have them without taking the trouble of going out [of town] and going to those places where hunting is permitted, everyone takes the liberty of shooting thoughtlessly from his windows, the threshold of his door, the middle of the streets, [and] from their yards and gardens. [They do so] without thinking not only of the danger in which they place the passerby, old people, and the children who cannot take shelter sufficiently quickly from the danger to which they are exposed by indiscreet and clumsy people of whom the greater part know nothing about the handling of guns but more to the danger which they run for themselves in setting fire to their own homes and to other houses of the city as has happened several times from the wads of the fire-arms which have fallen all lighted upon the roofs of the houses. We now make express prohibitions to the day laborers and apprentices against leaving their work on workdays to go shooting at all either within or without the city under penalty of a fine of fifty livres for those who are in a condition to pay and a fine of ten livres and fifteen days in prison for the others.”12
In both St. Louis and St. Paul the appearance of the pigeons brought out the shooters even though it was in violation of local law. A minister in Chicago during the 1840s complained that he could not write his sermon because the constant firing by his pigeon-seeking neighbors proved too much a distraction. While the college students of today have a plethora of things to keep them from their studies, they have been spared the allurement that tempted Samuel Cabot, who would later become a prominent physician and businessman. As he walked across the Harvard College campus one spring day in the 1830s on his way to a recitation, he was entranced by flocks of pigeons streaming across the sky. No doubt fidgeting throughout the duration of his class, when it eventually ended, he headed straight to his room, where he picked up his gun and joined shooters on a nearby ridge. In a brief time he shot eighteen birds.13
One cannot possibly evaluate the authenticity of claims for record shots. The big blunderbusses of those early times were very different from the guns of today—some of those old guns were so large they were fired from swivels. Even with that in mind, the claim made by a friend of Cotton Mather’s that he killed 384 pigeons in one shot strains credulity, although the nature of the gun is not known. A more modest figure, and more plausible, is that reported from the St. Lawrence River territory. During the heavy flight year of 1662 a hunter shot 132 birds in one blast. Another Canadian muc
h later told of killing 99 birds in one shot. He was asked why not 100, and he answered that he would not lie over one pigeon.14
Without question, the single discharge that killed more pigeons than any other occurred on the north shore of Lake Ontario sometime before 1846. The weapon was a cannon: “One of those prodigious flights came over Lake Ontario, in a direction for one of the garrisons, which being observed by the soldiers, a cannon was loaded with grape shot, and when the pigeons came within range, the contents were discharged amongst them, and made very great slaughter.”15
But killing the birds was a cinch even to the majority without ready access to heavy artillery. Pehr Kalm in his travels noted the huge targets presented by massing pigeons and concluded that so “poor a marksman as to fail to make a hit is difficult to find.” If one was in proximity to a roosting or a nesting, little effort was needed to shoot a lot of pigeons. One writer from New York provided instructions that pretty much came down to this: enter woods thick with pigeons, point gun muzzle up (that is, away from ground), blaze away, and, voilà, pigeons will fall at your feet and hopefully not on your head. Squabs were easy targets, too, although if the birds were too young and the shot too coarse, all that would remain would be gooey smithereens. But one team of young men working the nesting of 1860 in McKean County, Pennsylvania, managed, through trial and error, to get the technique down pat. Two of them carrying axes would pound a tree festooned with nests, and when the startled squabs extended their necks to peek out, the third would blow their heads off with his double-barreled rifle.16
Many hunters, though, sought to maximize the number of birds they could get per shot by converting the birds into better targets. During the 1770s, Canadian hunters would enter pigeon roosts during the day when the birds were feeding and install ladders on the sides of large pines. When the birds returned, they would take advantage and fill the new perches. After dark, the hunters would sneak back into the roost and begin shooting up the ladders, killing many more of the tightly packed birds than they otherwise could.17
Another account of nocturnal pigeon shooting comes from the early 1850s. After dinner and making sure their horses were secured, C. W. Webber and a friend entered an autumn roost that was over five miles in length in the Barrens of southern Kentucky. Though night, enough light seeped through the trees to provide this stunning description:
Here we are among them! Look at that huge, low black mass—it looks like a great wall, several acres wide. One, two, three, fire! in platoon. I hear no sound—surely our guns missed fire; stunned and amazed, it seems a wild dream—that black, heavy-looking wall springs up like magic, and a tall wood is there—while, with a noise of wings, that made the earth tremble, lifting themselves into the dusky air—filling it confusedly as snow-flakes fill the dimmed moonlight of a winter’s storm—the birds nearest us move off; but myriads take their places; and, while we rush in with lanterns, and with torches, to gather up the dead and wounded, the young wood is bowed again into our very faces; and, lifting our lights we can see the birds, clinging in the hundreds, to the limbs within our reach—their bright, black eyes dazzled by the glare, and they, uttering that soft, mellow cry, with a quick, incessant iteration.”18
The early residents of Connecticut called the first crisp mornings of early fall “pigeon mornings,” for those were the days when the flocks of pigeons would be expected as they migrated down the coast. In preparation for the birds, hunters climbed the low hills east of New Haven and secured long poles to the tops of the largest trees so they would jut out at a thirty-degree angle. On the forest floor, the gunmen constructed blinds where they could hide until the poles were filled to capacity with resting pigeons. During a good flight the withering fire dropped enough pigeons to fill a hay wagon before breakfast.19
But it wasn’t always easy to bag a pigeon, for they often proved surprisingly resilient. C. A. Fleming advised that it was a waste of ammunition to fire at a flock coming at you. The shot was unlikely to pierce the thick breast feathers, and it would be difficult to see a bird fall as it would already be past you. Better to wait until the birds were heading away. Others disagreed, feeling the best chance for success was in firing at the head of the flock.20
An anonymous writer from Wisconsin discussed the hardiness of the bird in detail, based on the week he spent at a nesting where he and others “carried out a wholesale slaughter, which, I confess, partook of the nature of sport to the extent of making enormous bags.” He found the pigeons to be “peculiarly tenacious”: despite their small size, shot finer than a No. 6 would unlikely prove fatal. Even with a large-size shot, the birds would probably fly a few hundred feet before landing in a tree and falling over dead. A close examination of the carcasses he cleaned revealed a host of wounds from “previous assaults”: “Broken and disjointed legs; bills that have been shot half away and grown curiously out again; missing toes or even a whole leg; and even healed up breast wounds.”21
A. W. Schorger concluded that of all the techniques used to kill passenger pigeons, shooting claimed more birds than any other. But gunfire also prevented the final score from being Homo sapiens five billion, passenger pigeons one. The earliest I know of such fatalities occurred near Mount Holly, Pennsylvania, in March 1740. “A young lad who had been shooting pigeons, hanging a parcel of them over the Barrel of his Gun, flipt down to his Trigger … and discharged the Piece against his Breast, and killed him on the spot.”22
A perusal of Wisconsin and Michigan newspapers reveals additional human casualties associated with the destruction of the pigeons. Only one does not involve firearms, and that came from an interview Schorger conducted with an elderly gentleman in 1936, who as a boy helped collect squabs at a nesting near Kilbourn City, Wisconsin. Groups of Indians used to work the nestings, including kids who climbed trees to reach squabs otherwise inaccessible. In this case, the branch broke and the youngster fell, breaking his back as he struck a log on the ground. He died almost instantly and was buried on the spot by grieving family members.23
But otherwise the injuries were mostly from errant shots. In 1844 near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Samuel Gilbert’s twelve-year-old son was part of a group running with guns cocked toward a flock of feeding pigeons when he was struck by the discharge of a friend’s weapon. An unusual fatality was the man shot while hunting pigeons in 1853 near Waukesha, Wisconsin. Frank Crandall out of the Baraboo area injured himself when his gun went off accidentally.
Many woundings occurred in central Wisconsin during the huge nesting of 1871. The Burlington Republican reported in its March 18 edition that Gregory shot at a flock of pigeons with one barrel but hit Hanrahan with the other. The March 29 issue of the Janesville Gazette highlighted two recent shootings: a youngster in Lafayette County inadvertently shot his friend, while in Wautoma, Frank Clay was the unintended victim. Later that year near Cedar Run, Chas Harting was also wounded by a hunting companion. The one Michigan report, from the Buchanan Record of April 27, 1871, tells of a young man out pigeon hunting who pointed his gun at his younger brother’s face, and it accidentally discharged. Fortunately Dr. Bell removed the shot and dressed the wound, preventing it from becoming serious.
Almost halfway between Racine and Kenosha in southeastern Wisconsin is the town of Somers. There in the fall of 1871 William Somers asked two young men to desist from shooting at pigeons on his land and was shot for his troubles. In late September of the following year, sixteen-year-old Frank Babcock suffered mortal wounds while hunting pigeons when he accidentally shot himself, according to the Platteville Witness. About the same time, a man was deemed to have committed suicide near Milwaukee. Next to him “lay a string of nine wild pigeons,” although the connection, if any, between the pigeons and the act was unclear. From Dodgeville, Wisconsin, in spring of 1873 came news that the fourteen-year-old son of Samuel Klegg was shot by his brother as they hunted low-flying pigeons. Severity of the injury was not stated. I find it surprising that given the numbers of armed pigeon pursuers over the
centuries, some not always sober, there were so few human casualties.
Hunting pigeons did exact one other casualty—the truth. Collectors of tall tales found some doozies. A hunter coming upon a row of pigeons perched on a low branch could carefully aim just so to split the limb, which when it retracted held the birds fast by their feet. All he had to do then was ascend the tree and cut the limb. Another time, a bunch of birds were feeding on wheat left by a thresher. A hunter carrying an 8-gauge shotgun crept up to the pigeons, and when they flushed, he fired. But to his amazement, not a bird fell. He examined the ground more closely and found numerous pigeon feet. He had fired too low!24
A minister from Christian County, Missouri, said it was a waste of ammunition to fire into a large pigeon flock: the birds were so densely packed as they flew, a dead one could not fall. Another hunter working a pigeon roost in Howell County, Missouri, was after a bobcat, one of the predators that often appeared at pigeon gatherings. He tied his horse to a branch weighed down by a huge pigeon flock, then began his search for the larger game. Following a track, the hunter spotted the cat and managed to get off a shot. With the report of his rifle, the pigeons took to the air, and the branch, freed of their weight, snapped upright, leaving the unfortunate horse hanging by its reins. The luckless animal dangled there until the hunter returned with an ax and felled the tree.25
A Feathered River Across the Sky Page 13