A Feathered River Across the Sky
Page 18
The professional netters soon followed, at least six hundred of whom registered at local hotels. Area farmers and their families were recruited to further increase the ranks of pigeon catchers. It was estimated that during the nesting season over one hundred thousand people from all parts of the country visited. A few of these came just to observe, but most sought some sport or the opportunity to procure some extra income. One merchant in Sparta sold sixteen tons of shot over the season, and the same amount of powder. This amounted to about 512,000 rounds. The pigeon dealer H. T. Phillips said that his shipping operation consumed three floors of ice from a capacious icehouse.11
Journalist Hugh Kelly made his own inspection of the pigeon city. He and his party started from Kilbourn City and the first woods they came to consisted of trees that, without exception, were covered with nests, some having as many as thirty. But the nests were all vacant, for the pigeoners had already worked the sector. Smashed shells littered the forest floor. Occasionally they encountered dead pigeons, those that had eluded their slayers even though mortally wounded. Traveling on, the party did find throngs of healthy pigeons, enabling them to spend all afternoon and dusk “waging war against the birds.” They brought back 250.12
It pays to cultivate the local media. The editor of the City Mirror thanked Frank Hills for dropping off a batch of pigeons. He continued with this endorsement: “Frank is the pioneer of the pigeon business, knows all the grounds, and has teams ready, with careful drivers, to take hunters or trappers to the pigeon grounds. His terms are reasonable.”13
One visitor who engaged Hills to take him on a tour of the nesting was an unnamed writer from the Fond du Lac Commonwealth. As the journalist made his way to Kilbourn City from Fond du Lac by train, he found hunters boarding at every stop. By the time he reached his destination, there were twenty-seven of them. Kilbourn City itself was described as consisting of “innumerable coops of pigeons,” evidence of the live-pigeon trade.14
The guide’s “wholesome voice” woke the writer and his party so that they could reach the pigeons well before dawn. Having ten miles to cover, Hills forced the wagon team to roll at maximum speed. It was still dark when they arrived, so their perception of the pigeons was exclusively aural: “The indescribable cooing roar produced by uncounted millions of pigeons, as arousing from their slumbers they saluted each other and made up their foraging parties for the day, arose from every side, created an almost bewildering effect on the senses, as it was echoed and re-echoed back by the mighty rocks and ledges of the Wisconsin [River] bank.”
Hills sent the men stumbling almost blindly through the brush to spots that afforded superior shooting. But the sounds made by the eruption of many millions of tom pigeons as they embarked on their morning feeding foray rattled the novices into near paralysis. It took the would-be shooters a bit to retrieve their nerve, by which time the first few flocks had passed unscathed. Then the enfilade commenced:
Hundreds, yes thousands, dropped into the open fields below … The slaughter was terrible beyond any description. Our guns became so hot by rapid discharges, we were afraid to load them. Then while waiting for them to cool, lying on the damp leaves, we used, those of us who had [them], pistols, while others threw clubs, seldom if ever, failing to bring down some of the passing flocks … Below the scene was truly pitiable. Not less than 2,500 birds covered the ground.
When the morning flight subsided, the writer and a few others continued several miles until they reached the actual nesting place. The squabs were as plentiful “as counterfeit currency at a circus door.” Most of them were not yet adept at flight and could easily be obtained. The hens also provided easy targets, the only limitation being the time it took the marksmen to load, aim, and shoot. Then there was the collateral damage that would never appear in any of the official tallies: “Many of the young pigeons were dead in their nests, the mothers probably having been killed, and her young starved.”
By the end of May, the largest documented nesting of all time disbanded as many of the huge flocks headed toward Minnesota. How many birds came together in the sandy oak barrens of central Wisconsin in the spring of 1871, and how many failed to survive the onslaught? As to the first question, Schorger took great pains in defining the size of the territory occupied by the pigeons. He then multiplied that by the number of birds per acre (twenty-five trees each with five nests or ten adults). Two hundred fifty birds times 544,000 acres (850 square miles) equals a total of 136 million nesting pigeons. This would not include non-nesting adults or the squabs, most of which were probably short-lived given the thoroughness with which they were collected.15
To answer the second question, Schorger accepted as his basic data that a hundred barrels of pigeons (each barrel held three hundred birds) were shipped each day over the forty days of the season. This gave a total of 1.2 million dead pigeons, which he acknowledged was a conservative total. Given that the number of barrels sent out daily varied between one hundred and two hundred, the figure seems to be woefully low. And as he acknowledged, an accounting based on the number of barrels does not include birds shipped alive and birds that were never shipped at all because they were consumed locally, left to rot, or were squabs that starved.16
Schorger believed that “virtually” all of the pigeons that still survived in 1871 nested in Wisconsin that spring, most of which were part of the big nesting. Depending on what constitutes “virtually,” he may well have been right, but at least three other large nestings were reported that year: one in Cochrane County, Ontario, which was said to involve millions of birds, and two in southeastern Minnesota, the largest and best documented of which occurred near Wabasha. A contemporary newspaper dispatch stated that the pigeon city at Wabasha was thirty miles long, though a resident many decades later said it was only seven miles long by a half mile wide. But even at only two thousand acres, a colony where every oak had multiple nests likely held several million birds.17
Schorger may have glossed over the Wabasha nesting, but the hunters did not. The Wabasha Herald of May 11, 1871, provided this profile of local pigeon happenings:
There is an electric something about these clouds of birds as they wheel and circle about here in countless myriads that sets every sportsman’s blood bounding. All the guns in the country have been brought to bear on the game … Powder and shot is a scarcity in the market, butchers are thinking of suspension, dry goods clerks have taken unceremonious leave of absence for indefinite periods. Immense numbers are slaughtered. Large quantities, alive and dressed, are shipped daily to market.18
SHELBY, MICHIGAN: 1874 AND 1876
Little has been recorded about the large nesting at South Haven, Michigan, in Van Buren County in 1872. One old pigeoner recounted that they had located their operations in Bangor, ten miles to the southeast, and caught many birds during some heavy snowstorms. A local paper reported at the time that over a forty-day period a total of 7.2 million birds were shipped out in barrels by the railroad. No mention was made of the trade in live pigeons.19
The major nestings of 1874 and 1876 formed in roughly the same place: Shelby, Michigan in Oceana County. Perhaps nowhere else did the pigeons create a more profound effect. Some said their appearances were acts of Providence.
The principal city in Oceana County was Pentwater. Situated on Lake Michigan, it was endowed with streams, a superb harbor leading to a small lake, and two branches of the Pentwater River, which provided easy access to inland timber and farming regions. Another up-and-coming municipality was Hart, founded on the banks of the south branch of the Pentwater River. The river provided the power for the county’s first gristmill, which anchored the town’s economic growth and probably led to its selection as county seat. Bereft of these advantages, Shelby seems to have been founded as the halfway point between Pentwater to the north and Whitehall to the south. It was a place where travelers could spend the night. Later, an artificial tributary in the way of railroad tracks was completed. Being connected to the larger world boosted
morale and commerce, and growing prosperity seemed inevitable. But the novelty of the train wore off, and the surrounding farmland, though promising, was too hilly to be fully utilized. An 1890 history says that “a period of decline was becoming painfully manifest … as the little village was sinking into the slough of despond.”20
Then, in the early spring of 1874, the pigeons arrived. They congregated near the Lake Michigan shoreline, in woods of hemlock and pine twenty miles long and from four to seven miles wide. Nesting began in early April, and the first chicks hatched after another two weeks. As the males and females took their turns pursuing beechnuts and worms that might be twenty-five miles away, the birds passed without break over some locations for hours at a time. Here hunters would gather to shoot pigeons until they became bored or dusk intervened. Those who spent the entire day routinely bagged 250 to 300 pigeons.21
Shelby hotelkeepers and the railroad organized a weekend excursion for hunters. A special train originating in Chicago arrived on one Saturday night with a hundred pigeon hunters from various places along the line. One observer noted, “During the whole day, in and out of the roost, it was the most lively fusillade I ever heard. They set a large belt of woods on fire in the roost, and if it had not been for an opportune rain, great damage would have been done.”22
All the locals became pigeon hunters or agents, and they were joined by six hundred professional netters. One fortunate netter took 154 dozen pigeons in a day, while the record catch for a single haul of a double net was 140 dozen. It was estimated that on one day at the height of the nesting, forty-two thousand pigeons were either discarded due to spoilage or shipped from Shelby. Over four weeks, the same accounting arrived at an average of twenty-five thousand shipped per day. Another source, a dealer working the nesting, said he personally shipped 175,000 pigeons out of Shelby and that over the thirty days when activities peaked 900,000 pigeons left Shelby in barrels. Those catches were the heaviest he had ever seen in his decades in the business. Because of the abundance of the pigeons, prices at Shelby were low: dead birds brought thirty cents a dozen and live ones brought to the depot went for fifty cents a dozen. When all was said and done, the people of Shelby proclaimed the pigeons an elixir, for their slaughter pumped $50,000 into local coffers. By their deaths, the birds had breathed new vitality into the found ering village.23
In 1876 an even larger mass of the feathered manna nested near Shelby. This time they took up an area twelve miles long and three miles wide. The nesting site was described as “deep evergreen timber,” and some of the trees were so encumbered with nests they bent to the ground. Given the noise and bustle of the pigeon colony, resident A. S. Souter said, “A person had to speak at the top of his voice to be heard a few feet. The birds seemed to have no fear and the squabs were too young to know that man was their enemy.” Adults on their feeding flights would darken the sky from early morning to late afternoon.24
The nesting and Shelby both received national attention. Clearings and wet areas amid the hills were soon occupied by the five hundred professional netters who descended upon the town. “These locations netted their owners a good sum in rentals,” remembered Souter. “I rented my farm to many hunters, making a charge of ten dollars a hunter.” One estimate claimed that over seven hundred thousand birds were taken: 1,781 barrels, 1,928 coops of live pigeons, and 2,000 dozen kept for feeding and later slaughter.25
Edward T. Martin, a major game dealer from Chicago, would write two articles, one in 1878 and another in 1914, defending the pigeoners and absolving them of any blame in the extinction of the pigeons. Comparing Shelby to Petoskey, Martin wrote that at the former place, “the birds were more ‘come-at-able,’ easier caught, easier shipped.” Live birds were brought to pens in such volume, there was insufficient food and water to support them, and “half had fretted themselves to death, or else perished for want of food and drink.” The glut of pigeons on the Chicago market depressed prices so much that a barrel of pigeons could not even bring fifty cents. Surplus barrels were simply discarded as garbage. In Martin’s view, the huge number of birds that appeared at Petoskey two years later proved that nothing done at Shelby appreciably diminished the pigeon population.26
The blood of the pigeons did not go unappreciated. It was, in the words of the old history, “the golden shower thus poured upon the village” that allowed Shelby to invest in various improvements. Farming expanded and the population grew. Soon, Shelby was every bit the equal to its Oceana neighbors in stature and economic vitality.27
WARREN COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, AND PETOSKEY, MICHIGAN: 1878
Although well documented by the local newspapers, the large Pennsylvania nesting in Forest and Warren Counties has largely been ignored in the extensive literature of the species in this state. A pity, too, for the carnage at this late date was spectacular. Perhaps it was merely overshadowed by Petoskey.
The birds first appeared over Warren on March 7, flying at heights beyond the reach of firearms. But over the next two weeks, they settled in to nest, and the serious killing began: “Last week nearly 100 barrels of dead birds were shipped from Sheffield. At this rate the pigeon will soon be exterminated.” But, in fact, the numbers of dead pigeons just swelled.28
Shooters and spectators made it difficult for the netters to do their work, for they tended to move in too close and scare the birds. But some of the professionals persevered and were rewarded. “The gang near Balltown,” for example, “are scooping them in at a great rate. They took 80 dozen in 2 days.” They sent the birds to New York via Sheffield and received $3 a dozen. By April 20, the freight agent at Sheffield had tallied 291,741 birds shipped from that depot. It was estimated that nearly the same number left Tionesta, and forty thousand from Tidioute. For this total of over six hundred thousand birds, $75,000 was received.
For the next month and a half, the killing continued, with some shifting of locations as areas became denuded due to the hunters’ efficiency or the pigeons’ flight. On May 28, one of the papers reported, “The trappers are now operating near Brookston and also about Kane and altogether the pigeons get no rest at all.” Pigeoners were still taking birds when the final figures were announced on June 11: over seven hundred thousand pigeons had been shipped from Sheffield and two hundred thousand from Kane. That did not include the ninety thousand taken earlier at Tionesta and Tidioute, nor those “carried away by shootists” and the two thousand dozen still in coops awaiting transport.
But no one ignored the Petoskey nesting. It was, by far, the best documented of any, and it included a full cast of articulate heroes and villains. About forty miles in length and three to ten in width, the nesting of 1878 occupied large chunks of three counties at the north end of Michigan’s lower peninsula: Emmet, Cheboygan, and Charlevoix. Each of the county seats had a newspaper at the time, which makes it possible to reconstruct what it was like that spring, when the region would be invaded by the pigeons and the throngs of people who followed after. It was as if oil had been discovered, for the birds were the center of an industry, and their presence turned the region into a boomtown complete with hundreds of pigeoners from all over the country; pigeon dealers and agents; hordes of nearby Indians looking for work; pluckers, shuckers, pickers, and packers; clerks to keep track; and there is even one mention in a secondary source of “trollops.” But unlike any other place consumed by pigeon fever, there appeared as well a small group of men who tried to stop the killing. One wrote of the experience, which prompted both rebuttals by detractors and corroborations by supporters. That, too, was unique.29
Most residents of the Upper Midwest examine early March closely for even the faintest signs that winter is giving way to spring. But the winter of 1877–78 had been so mild that one newspaper editor commented that there could be no bursting of spring because there had never been a winter. Typically, winter mail deliveries required carriers to cross the frozen Mackinac Straits by foot, but since March 2 the ice had been too thin. Several careless people who’d ventured o
nto the thinning ice had had to be rescued, and two had drowned in the process. To prepare for summer, the firm of Dingman and Franks began filling their icehouse by towing the drifting ice to shore for collection, even though it was light and of poor quality.30
Map of the 1878 Petosky, Michigan, nesting. © Gary Antonetti/Ortelius Design, based on a map in Reginald Sharkey, The Blue Meteor
Inland the warmth had created other problems. Timber operators hauled their logs to mills over frozen ground. But the unseasonable weather meant that they had but the early-morning hours to work before the hard surface of the primitive roads thawed into deep mud. These gooey conditions resulted in a significant reduction in product. Later in the spring, around Petoskey, fires broke out in several places. Charles Bemis was hauling a load of hay that ignited, and he was badly burned as he fought the flames in a successful effort to save the silage.31
A run of herring provided excellent sport and fodder for anglers using hooks and lines from the Charlevoix docks. Robins appeared on March 9. Six days later, Rozelle Rose, editor of Petoskey’s Emmet County Democrat, noted the arrival of the season’s first passenger pigeons. Several large flocks had flown over, prompting him to query, “Where are the sportsmen with their guns?” He did not have to wait long for an answer.