Passenger Pigeons.....

[Destry L. Hoffard]

I'm currently in discussion and sharing information with a gentleman who's writing a book about Passenger Pigeons. I was just thinking that there are certainly Parker guns still extant that have definitely shot wild pigeons before they were extinct. The last live bird matches that used real passengers would have been in the VERY early 1880's. After that the birds were too scarce to be a reliable source so pen raised and feral pigeons came into use. Be fun to positively identify a famous trap shooters gun that was old enough to have seen use on the real thing.


Destry

[greg conomos]

Well...probably not the proudest accomplishment that Parkers might be able to claim.

[charlie cleveland]

hope you find a ole parker that links to the time of carryer piegons..i too think this is an interesting topic...what do you think maybe a few 10 ga used in this sport... charlie

[Peter Clark]

Well...probably not the proudest accomplishment that Parkers might be able to claim.

Sort of like the dubious honor of owning a Sharps that was used on buffalo.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

The shooting and trapping of passenger pigeons really had very little to do with their demise. They were the most numerous bird in North America and possibly the world. A study was done several years ago, wish I'd have kept a copy. The results were that there hadn't been enough lead shot manufactured in the US up to that time to have killed all the birds. The reason they became extinct was because they couldn't adapt to the cutting of the huge tracks of hardwood timber in the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the country. They nested and fed in flocks of millions, once the stands of trees that could support that activity were gone so were the wild pigeons. I'm not saying shooting and trapping didn't play a part, but even if that hadn't have been done there still wouldn't be any passenger pigeons today.


Destry

[Peter Clark]

The shooting and trapping of passenger pigeons really had very little to do with their demise. They were the most numerous bird in North America and possibly the world. A study was done several years ago, wish I'd have kept a copy. The results were that there hadn't been enough lead shot manufactured in the US up to that time to have killed all the birds. The reason they became extinct was because they couldn't adapt to the cutting of the huge tracks of hardwood timber in the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the country. They nested and fed in flocks of millions, once the stands of trees that could support that activity were gone so were the wild pigeons. I'm not saying shooting and trapping didn't play a part, but even if that hadn't have been done there still wouldn't be any passenger pigeons today.


Destry
There are also also some thoughts that avian disease may have played a role in pigeon decline. Not unlike the decline of band tail pigeons, a bird I grew up hunting. Also, I read today that shooting off the buffalo would have been nearly impossible and there is evidence that disease played a part in their demise as well. I have a friend who raises bison commercially and he is deathly afraid of having them around sheep or goats as those animals carry Malignant Catarrhal Fever, which is fatal to bison while sheep and goats are uneffected. Perhaps wild sheep carry it as well? In any case, p. pigeons and buffalo would struggle in todays world. Sad but true. Both species lived in very close quarters since there were only about two main flocks of pigeons and two main herds of bison making them highly susceptible to contagions.
-plc-

[greg conomos]

The thing about buffalo is there are still some alive. Extinct, well, that's forever.

I wish someone would develop a sport of such popularity that it resulted in the extinction of mosquitoes.

[George Lander]

Excuses always seem to abound when it comes to justification of man's destruction of the environment for his own pleasure or financial gains. Passenger pigeons were shot, not only for sport, by the thousands but also for the market by the tens of thousands. Buffalo were shot by the thousands for their skins as well as for sport. The newly constructed transcontinental railroads played a major role in both of these travestys. My Dad told me of waterfowl hunting at Mattemuskeet, North Carolina in the early 1920's when the sky would go quickly from bright sunshine to dusk when the flocks would fly over. No more! Native Americans would take only the game necessary for their survival and would honor the spirit of the beast for providing such.

JMHO, George

[Dennis V. Nix]

George, I pretty much agree with you except for the Indians driving buffalo over buffalo jumps by the thousands. Now I know they could not use all of that meat or preserve it for very long. Other than that I agree they were pretty good stewards of the land.

[George Lander]

Dennis: Archeologists have found that the Indians used the same cliffs over several centuries confirmed by the remains found using radio carbon dating. At least that is my understanding.

Best Regards, George

[greg conomos]

I'm not so sold on the idea of Indians as noble creatures living in harmony with the land.

No Indian tribe had developed any sort of sanitation. Their nomadic ways are attributed to just that fact -they would settle in an area until the ground had become too fouled then move on down the road a bit.

They were also very eager to kill neighboring tribes, women and children first. Read some of Lewis and Clark's accounts, written in 1802, they were amazed to find Tribe A was eager to kill any and all of Tribe B if only they could get close enough.

[Ray Masciarella]

I don't think any Parker shooter got up every day with the object of killing every last bird. This whole subject is a lot more complicated then folks realize or really even want to know. Tell me exactly what we would be doing with all those birds and bison today? One thing we wouldn't be doing is producing any grain in the Midwest and plains states. What then would we be eating? Had the Parker or Sharps been never invented it would have made no difference.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Guys who squall about the extinction of the passenger pigeon by hunters and trap shooters are guys who have only read short articles written by guys who think the same way. If you've ever actually read the history of their extinction and studied it you'll understand that it's not the gun but the saw that brought it about. I'm not saying it was a good thing, I'm just stating the facts of the issue.

And the darkening of the sky by ducks, or lack thereof, again has nothing to do with sport hunting or even market hunting. Like the passenger pigeon, it has to to with habitat destruction. Blame the bulldozer and the saw, not the gun oh ye uninformed.....


DLH

[calvin humburg]

How do you know about indians was you there?

[greg conomos]

Lewis and Clark was there.....

[calvin humburg]

Your lucky to belong to a noble race.

[Robert Delk]

Regarding the passenger pigeon: They thought that one of the big flocks might have hit a huge storm over the great lakes and were lost which really cut into the breeding stock.I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been in a beech forest when several million birds were there feeding on the nuts.It is said that a man could have walked from the east coast to the Mississippi river and never left the cover of trees when this country was first settled. Hard to imagine now.

[Ben Rawls]

As a practical matter the passenger pigeon could not coexist with agriculture. An entire years crop could and was consumed in minutes by these huge flocks. Farmers welcomed their demise. As my mother said :"We were too busy trying to get enough to eat to worry about the environment".
One point that has not been mentioned is the fact that the pigeons mated in the air. It was a very hit or miss thing and once the huge flocks were reduced their reproductive efficiency was reduced to the point of eventual extinction-much like the demographics of old Europe today.

[todd allen]

I don't come here to discuss politics, but this notion that the Indians were these roving bands of environmentalists is laughable. They did not possess the population numbers, or the technology to make much of an impact on the world back then. Not always peaceful either. My wife is 25% Chickasaw, (a war like people, look it up) and has twice taken up arms in defense against bad guys. (don't get caught prowling around our backyard at night)
Back to the topic. I have a Lifter from 1874, serial no. 3130 that I suspect was a pigeon gun, back in the day. I base this assumption on grade, dimensions, and condition. I would love to know for sure, but it ain’t talking. I have first hand knowledge of its use on pigeons in my lifetime, btw.
Now if we can get back to Destry’s topic, without all the white guilt.

[Larry Mason]

I'll take the blame! I'm a Southern White Male. Everything wrong in this world is my tribes fault.........Plus, I've been married twice, I can handle it.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Todd,

The 1874 date is definitely early enough. The last matches shot with passenger pigeons would have been in the very early 1880's.

The guy I'm helping with photos for the book? Yeah, I just made his day. I sent him a copy of my tintype that shows a pair of actual passenger pigeon trappers with three live decoy pigeons in the photo.


Destry

[Eric Grims]

I have read that in excavating pre Colombian native sites on our continent that there was very little evidence that passenger pigeon remains were present in any significant amounts in the garbage dumps of the early settlements. It can be theorized that the western movement of colonial farmer settlers provided vast amounts of of food resulting in a population explosion of this bird. I believe I may have read this in either of the1491 or 1493 books.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

That wasn't the deal, they didn't feed in farm fields. They were mast crop feeders, hence the main reason for extinction being the cutting of the large timber tracts in the midwest.


DLH