Editing Passenger pigeon (section)

===Hunting===
[[File:Passenger pigeon shoot.jpg|left|thumb|Depiction of a shooting in northern Louisiana, Smith Bennett, 1875]]

The passenger pigeon was an important source of food for the people of North America.<ref name="Schorger129">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=129}}</ref> Native Americans ate pigeons, and tribes near nesting colonies would sometimes move to live closer to them and eat the juveniles, killing them at night with long poles.<ref name="Schorger1334">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|pp=133–134}}</ref> Many Native Americans were careful not to disturb the adult pigeons, and instead ate only the juveniles as they were afraid that the adults might desert their nesting grounds; in some tribes, disturbing the adult pigeons was considered a crime.<ref name="Schorger137">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=137}}</ref> Away from the nests, large nets were used to capture adult pigeons, sometimes up to 800 at a time.<ref name="Schorger139">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=139}}</ref> Low-flying pigeons could be killed by throwing sticks or stones. At one site in [[Oklahoma]], the pigeons leaving their roost every morning flew low enough that the [[Cherokee]] could throw clubs into their midst, which caused the lead pigeons to try to turn aside and in the process created a blockade that resulted in a large mass of flying, easily hit pigeons.<ref name="Schorger168"/> Among the game birds, passenger pigeons were second only to the [[wild turkey]] (''Meleagris gallopavo'') in terms of importance for the Native Americans living in the southeastern United States. The bird's fat was stored, often in large quantities, and used as butter. Archaeological evidence supports the idea that Native Americans ate the pigeons frequently prior to colonization.<ref name="Schorger134">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=134}}</ref>

[[File:Passenger pigeon capture.jpg|thumb|upright|1881 spread showing methods of trapping pigeons for shooting contests]]

What may be the earliest account of Europeans hunting passenger pigeons dates to January 1565, when the French explorer [[René Goulaine de Laudonnière|René Laudonnière]] wrote of killing close to 10,000 of them around [[Fort Caroline#Fort Caroline (1564–1565)|Fort Caroline]] in a matter of weeks:
{{Blockquote|There came to us a manna of wood pigeons in such great numbers, that over a span of about seven weeks, each day we killed more than two hundred with [[arquebus]]es in the woods around our fort.<ref name=Manna >{{cite book |last=Laudonnière |first=René de Goulaine de |title=L'histoire notable de la Floride située ès Indes Occidentales: contenant les trois voyages faits en icelle par certains Capitaines et Pilotes françois |date=1853 |location=Paris |publisher=Chez P. Jannet |page=136 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lohbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA136}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=MacNamara |first1=Charles |editor1-last=Miller |editor1-first=G.A. |title=Champlain as a Naturalist |magazine=The Canadian Field-Naturalist |volume=XL |issue=6 |location=Ottawa |publisher=Graphic Publishers |page=127 |url=https://archive.org/details/canadianfieldnat1926otta}}</ref>}}

This amounted to about one passenger pigeon per day for each person in the fort.<ref name=each >{{cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Kevin M. |title=Twenty Florida Pirates |date=1994 |location=Sarasota, FL |publisher=Pineapple Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/twentyfloridapir0000mcca/page/16 16] |isbn=978-1-56164-050-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/twentyfloridapir0000mcca |url-access=registration |quote=its leader, Rene de Laudonniere, had been there 200 soldiers without relief over a year, since June 1564..}}</ref>

After European colonization, the passenger pigeon was hunted with more intensive methods than the more [[sustainability|sustainable]] methods practiced by the natives.<ref name="Fuller 2014 72–88"/> Yet it has also been suggested that the species was rare prior to 1492, and that the subsequent increase in their numbers may be due to the decrease in the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] population (who, as well as hunting the birds, competed with them for mast) caused by European immigration, and the supplementary food (agricultural crops) the immigrants imported<ref>{{cite book |last=Mann |first=C. C. |author-link=Charles C. Mann |title=1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus |publisher=[[Alfred A. Knopf]] |location=[[New York City |New York]] |isbn=978-1-4000-4006-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/1491newrevelatio00mann/page/315 315–318] |chapter=The Artificial Wilderness |year=2005 |title-link=1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus}}</ref> (a theory for which Joel Greenberg offered a detailed rebuttal in his book, ''A Feathered River Across the Sky'').<ref name="archaeology"/> The passenger pigeon was of particular value on the frontier, and some settlements counted on its meat to support their population.<ref name="Schorger130">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=130}}</ref><ref name="Schorger131">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=131}}</ref> The flavor of the flesh of passenger pigeons varied depending on how they were prepared. In general, juveniles were thought to taste the best, followed by birds fattened in captivity and birds caught in September and October. It was common practice to fatten trapped pigeons before eating them or storing their bodies for winter.<ref name="Schorger129"/> Dead pigeons were commonly stored by [[salting (food)|salting]] or [[pickling]] the bodies; other times, only the breasts of the pigeons were kept, in which case they were typically [[smoking (cooking)|smoked]]. In the early 19th century, commercial hunters began netting and shooting the birds to sell as food in city markets, and even as pig [[fodder]]. Once pigeon meat became popular, commercial hunting started on a prodigious scale.<ref name="Schorger131"/><ref name="Schorger144"/>

Passenger pigeons were shot with such ease that many did not consider them to be a game bird, as an amateur hunter could easily bring down six with one shotgun blast; a particularly good shot with both barrels of a shotgun at a roost could kill 61 birds.<ref name="Schorger186">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=186}}</ref><ref name="Schorger193">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=193}}</ref> The birds were frequently shot either in flight during migration or immediately after, when they commonly perched in dead, exposed trees.<ref name="Schorger186"/> Hunters only had to shoot toward the sky without aiming, and many pigeons would be brought down.<ref name="Fuller 2014 72–88">{{Harvnb|Fuller|2014|pp=72–88}}</ref> The pigeons proved difficult to shoot head-on, so hunters typically waited for the flocks to pass overhead before shooting them. Trenches were sometimes dug and filled with grain so that a hunter could shoot the pigeons along this trench.<ref name="Schorger192">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=192}}</ref> Hunters largely outnumbered trappers, and hunting passenger pigeons was a popular sport for young boys.<ref name="Schorger198">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=198}}</ref> In 1871, a single seller of ammunition provided three tons of powder and 16 tons (32,000&nbsp;lb) of shot during a nesting. In the latter half of the 19th century, thousands of passenger pigeons were captured for use in the [[sports shooting]] industry. The pigeons were used as living targets in shooting tournaments, such as "[[trap-shooting]]", the controlled release of birds from special traps. Competitions could also consist of people standing regularly spaced while trying to shoot down as many birds as possible in a passing flock.<ref name="Fuller 2014 72–88"/><ref name="Hume 2015">{{cite journal |last=Hume |first=J. P. |title=Large-scale live capture of Passenger Pigeons ''Ectopistes migratorius'' for sporting purposes: overlooked illustrated documentation |journal=Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club |volume=135 |series=2 |pages=174{{ndash}}184 |year=2015 |url=https://boc-online.org/passenger-pigeons-large-scale-live-capture}}</ref> The pigeon was considered so numerous that 30,000 birds had to be killed to claim the prize in one competition.<ref name="Fuller 2001"/>

[[File:Passenger Pigeon Net Cockburn 1829.jpg|thumb|left|Pigeon net in Canada, by [[James Pattison Cockburn]], 1829]]

Humans used a wide variety of other methods to capture and kill passenger pigeons. Nets were propped up to allow passenger pigeons entry, and then closed by knocking loose the stick that supported the opening, trapping twenty or more pigeons inside.<ref name="Schorger169">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=169}}</ref> Tunnel nets were also used to great effect, and one particularly large net was capable of catching 3,500 pigeons at a time.<ref name="Schorger172">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=172}}</ref> These nets were used by many farmers on their own property as well as by professional trappers.<ref name="Schorger170">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=170}}</ref> Food would be placed on the ground near the nets to attract the pigeons. [[Decoy]] or "stool pigeons" (sometimes blinded by having their eyelids sewn together) were tied to a stool. When a flock of pigeons passed by, a cord would be pulled that made the stool pigeon flutter to the ground, making it seem as if it had found food, and the flock would be lured into the trap.<ref name="Fuller 2014 72–88"/><ref name="Schorger1779">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|pp=177–179}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=Paxson, H. D. |title=The last of the Wild Pigeon in Bucks County |pages=367{{ndash}}382 |journal=Collection of Papers Read Before the Bucks County Historical Society |volume=4 |year=1917 |url=https://archive.org/stream/collectionofpape04buck#page/n389/mode/1up}}</ref> Salt was also frequently used as bait, and many trappers set up near salt springs.<ref name="Schorger173">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=173}}</ref> At least one trapper used alcohol-soaked grain as bait to intoxicate the birds and make them easier to kill.<ref name="Schorger168">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=168}}</ref> Another method of capture was to hunt at a nesting colony, particularly during the period of a few days after the adult pigeons abandoned their nestlings, but before the nestlings could fly. Some hunters used sticks to poke the nestlings out of the nest, while others shot the bottom of a nest with a blunt arrow to dislodge the pigeon. Others cut down a nesting tree in such a way that when it fell, it would also hit a second nesting tree and dislodge the pigeons within.<ref name="Schorger141">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=141}}</ref> In one case, {{convert|6|km2|acre|abbr=on}} of large trees were speedily cut down to get birds, and such methods were common.<ref name="Fuller 2014 72–88"/> A severe method was to set fire to the base of a tree nested with pigeons; the adults would flee and the juveniles would fall to the ground.<ref name="Yeoman"/><ref name="Schorger142">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=142}}</ref> [[Sulfur]] was sometimes burned beneath the nesting tree to suffocate the birds, which fell out of the tree in a weakened state.<ref name="Schorger167">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=167}}</ref>

[[File:Decoy Passenger Pigeon.jpg|thumb|upright|Trapper Albert Cooper with blind [[decoy]] pigeons for luring wild birds, c.&nbsp;1870]]

By the mid-19th century, [[railroad]]s had opened new opportunities for pigeon hunters. While it was once extremely difficult to ship masses of pigeons to eastern cities, railway access permitted pigeon hunting to become commercialized.<ref name="Schorger144">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=144}}</ref> An extensive [[telegraph]] system was introduced in the 1860s, which improved communication across the United States, making it easier to spread information about the whereabouts of pigeon flocks.<ref name="Hume 2015"/> After being opened up to the railroads, the town of [[Plattsburgh (city), New York|Plattsburgh, New York]], is estimated to have shipped 1.8 million pigeons to larger cities in 1851 alone at a price of 31 to 56 cents a dozen. By the late 19th century, the trade of passenger pigeons had become commercialized. Large commission houses employed trappers (known as "pigeoners") to follow the flocks of pigeons year-round.<ref name="Schorger145">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=145}}</ref> A single hunter is reported to have sent three million birds to eastern cities during his career.<ref name="Ehrlich">{{cite web |title=The Passenger Pigeon |year=1988 |last1=Ehrlich |first1=P. R. |author-link1=Paul R. Ehrlich |last2=Dobkin |first2=D. S. |last3=Wheye |first3=D. |website=[[Stanford University]] |url=https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Passenger_Pigeon.html |access-date=March 3, 2012}}</ref> In 1874, at least 600 people were employed as pigeon trappers, a number which grew to 1,200 by 1881. Pigeons were caught in such numbers that by 1876, shipments of dead pigeons were unable to recoup the costs of the barrels and ice needed to ship them.<ref name="Schorger146">{{Harvnb|Schorger|1955|p=146}}</ref> The price of a barrel full of pigeons dropped to below fifty cents, due to overstocked markets. Passenger pigeons were instead kept alive so their meat would be fresh when killed, and sold once their market value had increased. Thousands of birds were kept in large pens, though the bad conditions led many to die from lack of food and water, and by fretting (gnawing) themselves; many rotted away before they could be sold.<ref name="Fuller 2014 50–69"/>

Hunting of passenger pigeons was documented and depicted in contemporaneous newspapers, wherein various trapping methods and uses were featured. The most often reproduced of these illustrations was captioned "Winter sports in northern Louisiana: shooting wild pigeons", and published in 1875. Passenger pigeons were also seen as [[agricultural pests]], because feeding flocks could destroy entire crops. The bird was described as a "perfect scourge" by some farming communities, and hunters were employed to "wage warfare" on the birds to save grain, as shown in another newspaper illustration from 1867 captioned as "Shooting wild pigeons in Iowa".<ref name="Hume 2015"/> When comparing these "pests" to the [[bison]] of the Great Plains, the valuable resource needed was not the species of animals but the agriculture which was consumed by said animal. The crops that were eaten were seen as marketable calories, proteins, and nutrients all grown for the wrong species.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Whaples |first1=R. |year=2015 |title=A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction |journal=[[The Independent Review]] |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=443{{ndash}}6}}</ref><ref name=ext>{{cite journal |last1=Jackson |first1=J. A. |last2=Jackson |first2=B. |year=2007 |title=Extinction: the Passenger Pigeon, last hopes, letting go |journal=[[The Wilson Journal of Ornithology]] |volume=119 |issue=4 |pages=767{{ndash}}772|jstor=20456089 |doi=10.1676/1559-4491(2007)119[767:etpplh]2.0.co;2 |s2cid=85830808}}</ref>