Ben,
If I was you, I'd buy that book my friend wrote before making statements about passenger pigeons. They ate mast and berries mostly, they weren't a farm pest in hardly any way. They didn't mate while flying in the air either. Their only real mating problem was that they laid a single egg and didn't usually nest every year.
DLH
[QUOTE=Ben Rawls;148048]I think pigeon shooting got it's start in the days when the Passenger Pigeon was a pest. It was a wild bird that numbered in the billions and could descend on a farmers field and consume his years crop in minutes. They were killed by the millions by farmers and market hunters. They had a fatal flaw in their reproductive cycle:they mated in the air in huge swirling masses. It was a hit or miss proposition and very inefficient. As the numbers declined their reproductive rate fell and before anyone knew they were extinct.
They were sold as market birds and were reportedly very tasty.
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I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter--of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass. Falstaff - Henry IV
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