There was a time when market hunting flourished in this country. It ended, thankfully before too many other than the passenger pigeon became extinct. I was brought up in a household with my great-grandfather who was born in 1844 and died on Nov. 11, 1942. He told me all about the demise of the passenger pigeon long before I could read well enough to learn that fact on my own. It was a personal account from someone who witnessed the tragedy first hand.

He was born in Adrian, Michigan moved to Maumee, Ohio and settled in Phoenix, New York. I have long forgotten where he lived at the time but am guessing it was in Ohio. He told me the birds flocked by the thousands, roaming the countryside during the day and roosting in trees at night. They had a habit of flying and maintaining one level that brought their flight pattern very close to the ground in some places. This made it possible at dusk when they returned to roost to flail into the flocks with long poles knocking them from the air.

This was not the primary reason so many were taken however. Once the roosting sites were located charges of dynamite were exploded after they roosted killing them by the hundreds. Apparently they were very easily duped with few of the survival instincts inherent in some animal species. I am sure that was not the primary reason for their end. The lack of common sense and total unregulated hunting of the day was the real cause.

This nation was rich in all sorts of natural resources and it was those resources that helped make it the great nation it ultimately was to become. Its fish and game was one of its most important assets. My grandfather told me that the pigeons were packed in barrels and sold at market for pennies apiece. He told me about trapping muskrats when he was a small boy. They stretched the skins on willow branches and sold them for nine cents apiece when they had dried sufficiently.

Waterfowl were one of the most sought after game animals slaughtered for gain. Chesapeake Bay was one of the most famous areas for harvesting all manner of species. The punt boat and its mounted punt gun accounted for millions of birds every year. The gun was a miniature cannon that was loaded with huge amounts of shot and powder. It then was sculled up on rafts or resting waterfowl on the water. The shot was capable of killing as many as forty-five or more birds with one shot. Every school child is aware of the purge of the buffalo and how they were nearly wiped out before the government came to its senses. Thankfully, a great many species of game animals were saved by common sense hunting, fishing and trapping regulations.

There are still some individuals who engage in one form of market hunting or another. These are the responsible guides that arrange both hunting and fishing sorties for sportsmen that follow the rules of fair chase and legal taking of both fish and game. The business has further expanded into an entertainment industry via television and the movies. I take issue with that end of the trend for the simple reason that the scenes depicted although perhaps legal under the law do not follow under the rules of fair chase. They show game being baited or lured within range by food plots etc. This does not fall under the perview of honest sportsman like behavior.

I guided years ago and am proud to say I never did any more than put the hunter or fisherman within close proximity of the quarry and told them how I might act under the same circumstances. I well remember old timers that had been part of the market hunting scene in the old days. Two of them Claude Ballou and Art Main were bird dog trainers par excellent guiding bird hunters. They were also professional partridge hunters. I know some may say I have misspelled partridge but that was not the way real partridge hunters pronounced it. The pat was emphasized. One thing set them apart from the crowd and it was their dogs. They had meat dogs. They may not have been the showy, pampered thoroughbred trial dogs some may have had but they were just what I have labeled them, meat dogs.

As I write this missive it has suddenly come to me that I was somewhat of a meat hunter in my early years. We had a businessman in our community that loved to cook a game dinner once a year for his employees. He was not capable on his own to garner enough wild game for the crowd. I was a kid, the war was on and shells were hard to get. He had connections, furnished the shells and I furnished the game.

Oh, I almost forgot, I had the meat dogs to help me too.