Page:The Passenger Pigeon - Mershon.djvu/79



Rh Michigan not less than three hundred tons of birds. During the thirty years of their greatest slaughter there must have been shipped to our great cities 5,700 tons of these birds; allowing each pigeon to weigh one-half pound would show twenty-three millions of birds. Think of it! And all these were caught during their brooding season, which must have decreased their numbers as many more. Nor is this all. During the same time hunters from all parts of the country gathered at these brooding places and slaughtered them without mercy.

In the above estimate are not reckoned the thousands of dozens that were shipped alive to sporting clubs for trap-shooting, as well as those consumed by the local trade throughout the pigeon districts of the United States.

These experts finally learned that the birds while nesting were frantic after salty mud and water, so they frequently made, near the nesting places, what were known by the craft as mud beds, which were salted, to which the birds would flock by the million. In April, 1876, I was invited to see a net over one of these death pits. It was near Petoskey, Mich. I think I am correct in saying the birds piled one upon another at least two feet deep when the net was sprung, and it seemed to me that most of them escaped the trap, but on killing and counting, there were found to be over one hundred dozen, all nesting birds.