"At one period of the year numerous and immense flights of pigeons visit Canada, when the population make a furious war against them both by guns and nets; they supply the inhabitants with a material part of their subsistence, and are sold in the market at Quebec remarkably cheap, often as low as a shilling per dozen, and sometimes even at a less rate. It appears that the pigeon prefers the loftiest and most leafless tree to settle on. In addition to the natural beauty of St. Ann and its environs, the process by which the inhabitants take the pigeons is worth remarking. Upon the loftiest tree, long bare poles are slantingly fixed; small pieces of wood are placed transversely across this pole, upon which the birds crowd; below, in ambush, the sportsman with a long gun enfilades the whole length of the pole, and, when he fires, few if any escape. Innumerable poles are prepared at St. Ann for this purpose. The other method they have of taking them is by nets, by which means they are enabled to preserve them alive, and kill them occasionally for their own use or for the market, when it has ceased to be glutted with them. Behind Madam Fontane's this sport may be seen in perfection. The nets, which are very large, are placed at the end of an avenue of trees (for it appears the pigeons choose an avenue to fly down); opposite a large tree, upon erect poles two nets are suspended, one facing the avenue, the other the tree; another is placed over them, which is fixed at one end, and supported by pulleys and two perpendicular poles at the opposite; a man is hid in a small covered house under the tree, with a rope leading from the pulleys in his hand. Directly the pigeons fly against the perpendicular nets, he pulls the rope, when the top net immediately falls and incloses the whole flock; by this process vast numbers are taken."
"Tanner's Narrative," a story (authentic) of thirty years among the Indians, published in 1830, refers frequently to great numbers of pigeons, and gives their range from the Kentucky, Big Miami and Ohio Rivers to Lake Winnipeg, or "The Lake of Dirty Waters."
Mr. Osborn further adds: "Tanner was a United States Indian interpreter at the Soo."
William Glazier made a trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi River in 1881 and wrote a book entitled "Down the Mississippi River." In three different places in this book he mentions seeing wild pigeons. In one place he says that a small flock of pigeons dropped down in the tops of some tall pines near him.
In Hayden's Survey Report, Interior Department, as given in Coues' "Birds of the Northwest," 1874, it is mentioned that wild pigeons were found on the Pacific coast, and Cooper reports them in the Rocky Mountains. [High authority, but it must have referred to the band-tailed pigeon.—W. B. M.]
From the foregoing chapters I have summarized the latest reports of the presence of the wild pigeon in its former haunts. These instances have been reported as follows:
N. W. Judy & Co., St. Louis, Mo., the largest dealers in poultry and game in that section, said, in 1895, they had had no wild pigeons for two years; the last they received were from Siloam Springs, Ark. This would mean that they were on the market during the season of 1893. Until 1890 frequent reports were recorded of pigeons seen singly, in pairs and in small flocks.
In 1891 Mr. F. M. Woodruff, Assistant Curator of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, secured a pair at Lake Forest, Ill.