Now, about the merciless slaughter. Prof. Roney estimates 1,500,000 dead and 80,000 live birds as the shipments, and then goes on to say that one billion birds have been destroyed! What logic.
I have official figures before me, and they show that the shipments from Petoskey and Boyne Falls were:
| Petoskey, dead, by express | 490,000 |
| Petoskey, alive, by express | 86,400 |
| Boyne Falls, dead | 47,100 |
| Boyne Falls, alive | 42,696 |
| Petoskey, dead, by boat, estimated | 110,000 |
| Petoskey, alive, by boat, estimated | 33,640 |
| Cheboygan, dead, by boat, estimated | 108,300 |
| Cheboygan, alive, by boat, estimated | 89,730 |
| Other points, dead and alive, estimated | 100,000 |
| Total | 1,107,866 |
This may be set down as accurate or nearly so, and 1,500,000 will cover the total destruction of birds by net, gun and Indians. The total number of nesting squabs taken by the Indians would not reach 100,000 and not over fifty barrels of these ever reached a market, the Indians smoking the remainder for winter use. No one knows how many birds 1,500,000 are until they see them, and handle a few. As an illustration: To buy and sell 125,000 birds in four months, it took myself, two men and a boy all our time, working from daylight until after dark every day.
I doubt if there were a billion birds in all the Crooked and Maple nestings. I am certain that there were not at any one time. I am also certain that more than double as many young birds left those nestings than all the birds caught, killed or destroyed. The morning that the Crooked nesting broke, I was out at daylight, and at the net to see and help one of my men make a strike; for an hour and a half a continuous body of birds half a mile wide and very thick was going out; our strike was twenty-nine dozen, twenty-five dozen young and four dozen old, about the same proportion as the other catchers. This showed that of the immense body over five-sixths were young birds, barely old enough ones remaining to guide the body of young, and this was out of the nesting from which the bulk of the birds had been caught, where the destruction had been the greatest. When it is considered that the Manistee birds hatched three times unmolested, that there was a body several times larger there, than at the Crooked and Maple, and that many from each body went further north entirely out of reach and nested at least once, possibly twice again, some idea may be formed of the immense addition to the army of pigeons from the Michigan nestings of 1878. Many more young birds left the Crooked River nesting alone, than all, old or young, destroyed during the entire season's pigeoning.
Prof. Roney's lament about the young dying when deprived of the parent bird, and his addition to the number "sacrificed to Mammon" from that source, compares favorably with the poisoned berry story, or the attack on Turner. Admitting that 1,500,000 birds were caught and killed, not more than half of these would be old birds, some of which would not be nesting, and from some of which the young had left the nest. If for every one of the 750,000 old birds caught and killed, the squab had died, this would make a total slaughter of 2,250,000, or about one four hundred and fiftieth of the number he says.
I don't believe Prof. Roney knows what a billion is. However, there were not 750,000, no, nor 100,000 squabs killed by losing their parents. It is a well-proved fact that the old bird coming in will stop and feed any squab heard crying for food, that in this way they look out for one another's young, and the orphans or half-orphans are cared for. It is rare, however, for both old birds to be caught or killed, since the toms and hens when nesting always fly separately, and the chance of both the parents of the squab falling a "victim to Mammon," particularly in a large nesting, is small. As proof of the pigeons feeding squabs indiscriminately, I may mention that one of the men in my employ this year, at the Shelby nesting in 1876, in one afternoon shot and killed six hen pigeons that came to feed the one squab in the same nest.
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Why, Prof. Roney, the catch went on all the same, your party made no difference of note, but the weather was rough and somewhat stormy; the birds didn't "stool" well, and during the days mentioned the catch was very small, hence the decrease in shipments. Now, regarding the law, it is well enough as it is; one shotgun near a nesting is more destructive than a dozen nets; the report of the gun causes the birds to rise in thousands, and, when repeated, to leave in a body, regardless of nest or squab, and never to return; as an example, may be mentioned, the Minnesota nesting of 1877, when the birds were driven entirely away.