Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/146

 116 big catches. In 1868, at Cheboygan, I took over six hundred fat birds before sunrise. I sold to the United States officers at Mackinac for trap shooting, also to Island House. In 1861 there were only a few professionals: Dr. E. Osborn of Saratoga, N. Y; William N. Cone, Masonville, N. Y; John Ackerman, Columbus, Ohio; L. G. Parke, Camden, N. J.; James Thompson, Hookset, N. H.; S. K. Jones, Saratoga, N. Y.; George and Charles Paxon of Evans Center, N. Y., and maybe a few others. After this time, trappers increased fast. More salt was used in Michigan for bait than any other State. I paid at Shelby $4 per barrel. Big bodies of pigeons were drowned off Sleeping Bear Point because of fog and wind, while trying to cross Lake Michigan. I have seen them.

In the Logan County roost, Ohio, I killed with two barrels, of a six-bore shoulder gun, 144 birds. The other boys killed nearly as many with smaller guns; we shot on the roost in the dark. Our plan was to fire one barrel on the roost and the other as the pigeons flew. The highest price paid per dozen was in New York City—$3—by Trimm & Summer from Pennsylvania.

For a good many years the birds were in the eastern States, with heavy catching in Massachusetts and New York, also Pennsylvania, and the hunters worked into Canada, then into Ohio, and so on to Michigan and Indiana, long before they took in Wisconsin and