Passenger Pigeons.....

[Fishtail]

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.

[MarketHunter]

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

[ch]

How do you know about indians was you there?

[Fishtail]

Lewis and Clark was there.....

[ch]

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.