History suggests that few things stimulate human ingenuity more than the challenge of killing. This is most evident when the intended targets are other human beings, for no other organism poses anywhere near the same severity of threat. But as a species, we are no slackers even when the adversary is an eighteen-inch-long bird. Safe only when they rose high enough to exceed the range of weaponry, the passenger pigeons otherwise lived a gauntlet whereby they became targets of an arsenal that employed an amazing array of instruments.
In rare instances the birds were poisoned. Asphyxiation was tried by burning sulfur underneath nests. All one needed was five or six fireproof containers, two ounces of sulfur, a few sacks, and a torch. Arrive at the roost after dark, distribute the sulfur among the containers, and then ignite the contents. Stand to the side to avoid the fumes and wait for the birds to drop from the trees: “This hunting is easy. Women can take part with pleasure since there is neither fatigue nor danger of being wounded.”1
Fire was also used in at least two ways. The first was described by William Bartram, one of the country’s first great naturalists. He arrived at the villa of a friend near Savannah, Georgia, just after dark. Soon, servants showed up with “horse loads” of pigeons collected over a short period from a nearby swamp. They had entered the roost with blazing torches, the light of which so blinded and confused the birds, many dropped to the ground helpless. The servants then easily gathered the prey and put them into sacks.2
The second way was simpler and more effective, for the fire did not merely leave the birds dazed, but dead. Employing the “grand mode of taking them,” a roosting site in Tennessee was set ablaze, incinerating swarms of birds as they wheeled furiously in their confused attempt to escape. From heaps two feet deep, scorched corpses were then collected the next day for personal use or sale. Texas saw one of its few large pigeon invasions in the fall of 1872. Despite ongoing exploitation, the birds stayed into the spring, when they attempted to nest in thick stands of Ashe juniper. (Birds that fed on juniper cones were said to taste like turpentine.) But farmers, leery that their crops would be endangered by the enormous number of the feathered immigrants, burned thousands of acres of woods to rid themselves of the menace.3
Low-flying pigeons could be downed by just about any object at hand. An anonymous Jesuit wrote at length about pigeons along the St. Lawrence River in the mid-1600s: “They passed continually in flocks so dense, and so near the ground, that sometimes, they were struck down by oars.” Clubs and stones killed pigeons as they flew low over St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 1864. The strangest weapon used to dispatch the birds was employed by settlers in Orillia, Ontario. While harvesting their potatoes, farmers took advantage of nearby birds by flinging tubers at them. It is good to read that they lost more potatoes than they gained pigeons. But to have most of a stew fall from the sky in one lump must have been convenient.4
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
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 much 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
No one other factor contributed more to extinction of the species than did organized netting.
—DUANE YOUNG, 1953
Traps proved to be both more efficient and less expensive than guns in capturing pigeons, and trapping was the only way to satisfy the live-pigeon market. (By the 1870s, though, some netters were finding birds too spooked to approach bait.) Almost all of the traps involved spring-nets, but a few were of other design. Newly fledged squabs could be lured into pens by live decoys, then their exit would be blocked with a net. Boxes of various sizes and even troughs used to collect maple syrup were raised at one end by props tied to long ropes. Grain was placed under the container, and when enough birds began feeding, the rope was released and the box enclosed the birds. A variant of this type proved successful in a wheat field near Winnipeg, Manitoba. Nets twenty feet long and fifteen wide were extended on frames, one side of which was kept up by an eight-foot-long pole connected to a cord that would be tugged at the right second. Would-be trappers placed dead trees and stuffed pigeons next to the net to lure the birds.26
From Ontario came two novel, albeit simple, approaches. In one, boys built small huts out of grain-bearing sheaths. When pigeons came to feed on the roof, the boys would reach up and grab them. A candidate for most horrible trap, although apparently not often used, was a platform about eight feet tall filled with sticking wax and enough food to attract the birds. The prize, though, for opportunistic netting has to go to the farmer in Massachusetts in the 1600s who told his friend Cotton Mather that he had caught two hundred dozen pigeons with two minutes’ worth of effort: the birds flew into his barn and he merely closed the door!27
A few enjoyed the sport of netting, but most pursued it for money. Some of these latter were professional, but many saw pigeon netting as a sideline, a way of augmenting the family larder. William Armstrong began compiling a list of netters in the vicinity of his hometown of Blairstown, New Jersey: “It soon resembled that of a list of voters at a polling place.”28 I think it has been overlooked that a great number of people killed passenger pigeons in their spare time and sold the surplus.
The netting operations were often intricate, involving captive pigeons, bait, and net traps. Where the birds nested, there were at least two variations. Early in the season when the pigeons were concentrated, nets were set up nearby to capture birds as they made their various foraging flights. This activity was known as “flight-catching,” and most of the captives were killed. Later during nesting, as the birds dispersed from the nesting site, more time was necessary to attract a sufficient number to a given trap location. To compensate for the fewer numbers caught, most of these birds were kept alive for shooting contests, which brought a higher price per bird. Special pigeon baskets woven of hickory, oak, or other wood strips held live pigeons. One scribe called them a “portable prison house for feathered innocents.” A narrow opening and neck enabled the hunter to easily stuff a bird headfirst, but stopped the birds from escaping. And wide potbellies prevented suffocation.29
Nets varied in size. Peter Yarnell and his brother used a tiny one of four square feet. They still caught 21 pigeons at a time and 103 in a day, which exceeded their personal needs. But far more common were the industrial-size nets, which often ranged from twenty-five to forty feet long and ten to twenty feet wide. A net used in Ontario was twice that large. The best of the nets were made of linen, fashioned from hand-spun flax into meshes of one to two inches. On occasion the nets would be stained with butternut bark to make them less conspicuous. Two nets were sometimes used side by side and triggered so they snapped back toward each other making it harder for birds to escape.30
A pigeon basket of white oak made to hold and transport live passenger pigeons. Courtesy of School House Museum, Ridgewood Historical Society (New Jersey)
To get a sense of how these traps worked, picture a giant mousetrap with one end of the net attached to the bar. When it was released, the net would be unfurled over the birds attracted to the bed. Here is a description of a typical rig used in Pennsylvania: “One side of the net would be staked along the entire length to the ground and through the other side which was free, was run what was called the net string, which was fastened on each end to the spring poles by which the net was sprung. The spring poles were … doubled back to give force by which the net was spread and were a number of feet from the net. The net would be tucked carefully on the ground along the staked side and so arranged that when it was released it would fly out and spread itself over the ground or bed on which the pigeons … would alight.” Sometimes the pigeoner dug a slight trench in which he could obscure the rolled-up net. In the same vicinity, two short stakes or “release rods” were hammered into the earth. Each of these stakes had a shorter dowel driven through it that could be pulled by a cord held by the trapper to spring the net. As for the poles, trappers liked beech, cedar, hemlock, hickory, and other trees whose wood was both flexible and strong. The nets were often weighted at their edges to facilitate their unfurling and to make it harder for birds to escape; sometimes metal rings placed around the poles were connected to the ropes so when the net rested at the end of its trajectory, the ring would slide down to hold the birds more securely.31
A bough house or hiding place for hunters, by the painter Arthur Tait, published by Currier and Ives in 1862. Courtesy of Garrie Landry
Since the trap was sprung by a human hand, the bodies attached to these hands had to be hidden in a blind. This was usually called a “bough house” or “booth.” It tended to be a small simple affair situated close to one of the spring poles with a frame of branches, often cedars and other evergreens when they were available. Then smaller branches, bearing a thick growth of leaves, would fill in the cracks, making the inhabitants invisible. Leading to it were a number of cords enabling the netters to manipulate the live pigeons that were so integral to the effort, as well as the trip rope.
All that work would be for naught unless the nets landed over lots of pigeons. The chances that this would happen were dramatically enhanced through the use of any number of inducements, usually in combination with each other. One way to draw the attention of small feeding flocks during spring and fall was to imitate the calls of the males. The hunter could produce the sound in his throat, but only at the risk of making swallowing painful. A more popular approach was to use two blocks of wood with a silk band sandwiched between. This “call” was held in the teeth and blown as one would a blade of grass held taut by the thumbs. An experienced caller would know both how to change the tone by varying the pressure on the blocks and when such a change would be most appropriate.32
People had long recognized that passenger pigeons were partial to salt. Although scarce in inland locations, salt springs made superb netting grounds. Several were known in Michigan, one of which by the White River was rented out for $300 a season. An even-better-known spring was in Benzie County. Discovered by pigeoners in 1870, it was called simply Salt Spring. Where the mineral-rich water gurgled to the surface, a mound had formed that sloped downward to cover an area of thirty or forty feet. During nesting years, pigeons by the millions congregated on this small plateau. Again the owners allowed netters to use the spot for a fee, but it was worth it as hundreds of birds at a time would be caught.33
Two pigeoners in Pennsylvania, F.E.S. and his companion, attempted to create their own salt spring to lure birds during the 1880 nesting near Sheffield. They selected a remote site with a deer lick and began clearing the vegetation in a rectangle of sixty by a hundred feet. “The muck was six feet deep, so we put in a good floor of poles and brush to prevent a trip to China.” They spaded the top eight inches of the soil; dried it; shoveled the prepared soil on top of more poles so the bed would have a solid floor; and folded in five barrels of salt, ten pounds of sulfur, and a pint of anise oil. F.E.S. was particularly anxious to avoid the wet beds, or “old mud bed where the net, birds, and all went out of sight, and the birds were ruined for shipment.” The innovation succeeded admirably and was soon adopted “by all first-class netters.”34
In Maine, where rye fields were common, pigeon netters often prepped a different kind of baiting area, known as a dry bed, versions of which were used widely throughout pigeon range. The netters removed the stubble from a patch ten or twelve feet wide and fifteen or eighteen feet long. The dirt was leveled and took on the look of a vegetable bed. If no small trees were present, they would be brought from elsewhere and stuck in the ground to serve as perches. Finally, ample seeds would be laid out in rows.35
Grain of various kinds was often used to bait the pigeons. Corn drew their attention, while finer grain such as buckwheat would keep them feeding to encourage even more birds to alight. A farmer in Wisconsin did not specify what allurement he used, but he said the higher the quality, the more pigeons he would catch. Another pigeoner working in Pennsylvania found that adults had seemingly tired of grain after the squabs hatched, so he was forced to seek a more appealing substitute; angleworms proved to be just what the pigeons ordered, and by switching offerings he caught thousands of birds.36
Eliza Tucker, who lived near a large pigeon rookery in Richland County, Ohio, left behind several specific recipes for “Pidgion Bate” in papers dated January 10, 1826. One of them calls for the seeds of fennel, anise, and fenugreek pounded fine and boiled with “alwine.” Add two grated potatoes and let the mixture stand covered for twelve hours before placing it as bait. A second recipe calls for boiling sassafras with wheat and provides some critical final details to ensure that the effort to attract birds is successful: “When you make your bed—to bait Pidgions—make it level—and smoothe—don’t spit about it—nor make water—nor handle guns—nor Powder.”37
As important as any other part of netting was a supply of live passenger pigeons for bait, Judas pigeons if you will. Three categories of pigeons were used: fliers, stool pigeons, and dead ones. Ensconced in the bough house, the netters would keep their eyes to the sky waiting for a flock to approach. At the right moment, the fliers, legs securely fastened by a cord sixty or more feet long, would be tossed into the air to entice flocks of foraging pigeons. Ideally the tethered pigeons would descend straight down without fluttering. Simultaneously, the pigeoner would be working the stool pigeon. The stool device was a stick about three feet tall that was pierced by another rod usually closer to six feet long near its top that pivoted like a teeter-totter. At the exposed end of the cross rod was a padded circular platform. Most often the platform was wood, although one fancy model used the bail of a pail covered with woven string. The bird would be fitted with leather or yarn bootees that were attached to the platform. This footgear could be tightened sufficiently to keep the stoolie from escaping but were of pliant enough material to prevent injury. Connected to the longer rod was yet another cord leading to the netter, so he could raise and lower it. Rapid lowering forced the stool pigeon to hover, making it look as if it were landing.38
Stool pigeons occupied a unique position in human/pigeon relations. Trappers would keep some number of their catch alive to find a few that would make good stoolies. One netter complained that he and his father nearly exhausted their supply of cooped pigeons before they found suitable birds, while another said that only one out of fifty pigeons would qualify. Males were generally preferred because they were larger and more brightly colored and thus more apt to be seen by passing flocks. A lot of care and attention went into these breathing decoys, and a bird with a good record could command a price of $5 to $10 or even more. The candidates were fed by hand to make them comfortable with people, and they underwent a rigorous vetting. The blindfolded bird in bootees balanced on the pigeoner’s finger began his exercises: “The hand raised slowly and dropped quickly. As the bird drops, [the] wings are outstretched, quickly recovering as the hand stops, and this is repeated a number of times. Every motion is carefully watched and the action of the bird soon determines whether or not it will do for netting purposes.”39
Passenger pigeon net and stool held by Bob Currin, curator of the Coudersport Historical Society (Pennsylvania). The net was made by Aaron Robinson and was part of the society’s collection when it was incorporated in March 1919. The stool originated with Earl Crane. Photo taken by author with permission of Bob Currin; additional information from Coudersport Historical Society
One aspect of the stool pigeons that has received a lot of attention is that they were temporarily blinded during the netting season so they would be immune from distractions: the sight of an incoming flock might cause premature movement that would alert the wild birds. The pigeoner would pierce the edge of one lower eyelid with a fine needle and silk thread, then go up and over the head to connect the lower lid of the opposite eye. The two ends of the string would be pulled to ensure the eyes were covered, then twisted together on the crown. One experienced netter said he never had a bird flinch or bleed during the procedure. Over several years the holes would become permanent, like those in human ears punctured to accommodate rings or studs. A few birds remained calm enough as to not need the fixing.40
Even while eradicating the species, some pigeoners became quite attached to particular stoolies. There was, for instance, the old trapper Jim and his Maggie. W. W. Thompson worked a nesting with Jim in Potter County, Pennsylvania. As one day ended with the capture of about two dozen birds, Jim enthused how well Maggie and the fliers had done in making that last small triumph possible: “There … you have seen as fine working of fliers and stooler, and as pretty a call of distant birds as you will ever see.” Many of the pigeoners would gather in the evening in the basement of the Coudersport Hotel to talk of killing and other things, and to break in new birds. Probably over spirits a few nights later, Jim told Thompson that he was looking to replace Maggie. Many a stoolie had its career cut short by a hawk or other agent, and so Thompson immediately asked if she was dead. “Not that I know of, I hope not,” replied Jim. He explained that he’d let her go, despite Thompson’s offer to buy her a few days earlier for $10. She wasn’t acting right, had a reduced appetite, and lacked the energy that was her wont. Ideally he would have rested her in his coop, to give her a chance to get over what was ailing her. But it might be months before he would be home. “I never kill a bird that does good work for me,” he continued, “but turn them loose, and surely Maggie has earned her freedom … I sincerely hope she will escape the hunters and netters, and live as long as nature allows a pigeon to live.”41
It is easy to imagine the netters furiously tugging the various cords in front of them like frantic puppeteers. The goal was to replicate the feeding behavior of wild pigeons, whereby birds at the rear of the flock would constantly be leapfrogging to the front to create the familiar wavelike action. Often the airborne pigeons would telegraph their intentions immediately and “lower their heads [to] come down.” At other times the flock might go a half mile before starting to turn to scope out the scene further. If the first try by the netters failed, there would be additional forced ascents and descents until the coveted flock either passed or decided to join the Judas pigeons. To make the beds seem even more hospitable, trappers would seed them with dead pigeons, propped to look like feeding birds. But the incoming pigeons were wary, so everything had to appear copacetic; the tethered birds could not flutter or act in any other alarming way, nor could the bed display blood or feathers.42
The number of pigeons that could be netted at one time was astounding. At a nesting near Beekmantown, New York, in 1851, there were catches of a hundred dozen and eighty-five dozen each. Netters would not even bother springing their traps if the likely haul was less than forty or fifty dozen. Forty bushels of corn lured a huge flock of pigeons to a trap in Wisconsin, which yielded thirty-five hundred birds in one catch. Perhaps, at least in part, because some of the last big nestings that took place there were so well documented, Michigan was the scene of some eye-popping single-haul totals: 300 dozen at a salt spring; 132 dozen at a bait bed (that’s what was kept; additional birds escaped); and the precise total of 109 dozen plus eight claimed by Dr. Voorheis in Benzie County. Over fifty thousand pigeons wound up in the nets of one three-man team who worked the 1878 Petoskey nesting.43
A huge catch could be both a blessing and a bane. The strength of enough birds could lift the net, allowing many to get away. Usually the problem could be handled through fast work. Some netters kept rocks or additional poles by their sides to weigh down the net edges, but most often they leapt out of their makeshift shacks and started killing pigeons. The easiest targets were the birds that poked their heads through the mesh. In Pennsylvania it was popular to slay them by pinching their heads or necks with the thumb and fingers. After a while that would become tiresome, so flat rocks became the killing implements of choice. But clearly rocks weren’t the answer either, so good ol’ American ingenuity came to the fore when James V. Bennett invented, patented, and used a special kind of long-nosed pincer that did not close all the way, but enough to break pigeon necks. This device was not only more restful to the hand than other killing methods, but was said to have “effectually reduced the cruelty at the wholesale butcheries to a minimum.”44
Another killing approach relied on a different part of the netter’s body: the jaws. While some aimed to bite the pigeon’s skull and crush it, others were more surgical and with practice could dislocate the neck bone without damaging the skull. One pigeoner complained that he chomped down on so many pigeon heads, his teeth became loose. (With the frequency of gum disease in the nineteenth century, that is quite plausible.)45
But at least one hunter balked at the oral attack: it was obviously a matter of taste. Novice Edwin Haskell shared a bough house with an experienced pigeoner. Their fliers and stoolie performed admirably that day, and a large flock of pigeons swooped in to investigate. At the perfect moment, the trap was sprung and the net scooped up a large percentage of the flock. But with so many struggling birds, Haskell had to launch himself onto the net to prevent the captives from escaping. He discovered, however, that even his weight and strength were insufficient to thwart the desperate pigeons: “We could not let go of the net to kill the birds with our hands—what, then, was to be done? The old pigeon catcher who had sprung the net decided quickly, by setting an example and yelling to me: ‘Bite their heads! Bite their heads! Do you hear?’ ‘Not for all the pigeons in the world,’ I replied. ‘Pshaw! Don’t be squeamish! See how it is done!’ he called out impatiently and went on crushing the skulls … I could kill pigeons with a gun without any compunction. But crushing the skulls of live birds between my teeth! Faugh! It makes me shudder to think of it.”46
