sALL MY tife ... well, no, not yet all of it ... Eaccepted the
idea that men with guns were responsible for killing off al!
mm the Passenger Pigeons and aimosi all the prairie buffalc of

North America.

People might argue about the
infallibility of the popes but no-
body was so bold as to dispute the
claim that our wicked grand-
parents were responsible for a
slaughter of wild creatures such as
the world had seldom seen before.

Like so many such ideas, we
never looked to see if the claim
made complete sense.

The first man known to me to
have the courage to question the

Mm revealed truths is Bob Leighton of

Pitt Meadows, a veteran of both
the B.C. Provincial Police and the
old B.C. Game Commission. Mr.
Leighion writes as follows:

“In a recent column you raise
the question of why Mallard
Ducks are scarcer and Canada
Geese more plentiful, even though
m both species are heavily hunted
m and have been for a century.

“*You could have better raised
the question about the dove fami-
ly. Doves, White Winged and
Mourning Doves, are the most
heavily hunted of all birds on this
continent yet they continue un-
diminished.

**However the Passenger
Pigeon, which was also a dove,
passed into cxtinction. Whiy
should it be that in birds so zizzi-
lar, one species is destroyed anu
the other thrives?

“There is little doubt about the
size of the Passenger Pigeon
flocks of the last century.

_ Audubon estimated a billion birds

in one flock and his figure was
not a guess. He knew the speed of
flight, the length of time it took
the flock to pass, the width of the

Paul
St. Pierre

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

flock and the average density.

“With the application of simple
arithmetic, he was able to come
up with a believable calculation.
And the billion-bird flock
Audubon surveyed was almost
certainly not the only flock then
migrating north and south on this
continent.

‘*We are all expected, required,
rather, to believe that the Passen-
ger Pigeon was hunted into ex-
tinction.

‘Hasn't the time come to ex-
amine a few facts?

“Hf the pigeon hunters averaged
a kill per shot, damn gocd
shooting on fast, strong, moving
birds, there would have had to be
a billion shots fired at Audubon’s
observed flock alone.

“That would require 300 tons
of lead shot being lifted skyward
by old black powder shotguns.

“The number of hunters needed
to kill Audubon’s flock of Pas-
senger Pigeons would have been
1,000,000, this assuming that each
one killed 1,000 pigeons. Few of
us have shoulders which can stand
up to a thousand punches a day.

“A more realistic kill figure
would be 100 per hunter. That
would have required 10,000,000
hunters — three times the number
of soldiers, Union and Con-
federate, involved in the Civil
War,

“The more one examines the
facts of the great pigeon slaughter
the thinner the popular theory
becomes.

“Buffalo are another example.

“Conservative estimates place
the bison populaticn at
50,000,000. Buffalo hunters used
guns of 50 to 60 calibre, both
muzzie loaders and breech
loaders, charged with black
powder. They used lead bullets of
500 grains or more.

“A buffalo is a large, tough
animal and it would be an excep-
tional hunter who could average
one kill per two shots.

“Also, notwithstanding popular
legend, a black powder rifle is
relatively inefficient and, unless
fouling is removed from the barrel
frequently, not terribly accurate.

“We are expected to believe
that a little handful of American
and Canadian buffalo hunters,
packed 3,500 tons of lead bullets
and the requisite black powder, as
well as a few acres of patch mate-
rial and a number of millions of
expensive brass reloadable cases
out onto the roadless prairies and
slew 50 million animals.

Friday, November 15, 1991.~ North Shore News - 8

iGun control won’t solve the mystery

**This is not to suggest that
there is no such thing as overhun-
ting. Of course there is. We have
seen examples here in our own
province and in recent times.

**But usually, I believe, other
factors are dominant in the life of
wild birds and animals, a lot of
them factors which we either un-
derstand only dimly or else
haven't even learned to think cf
yet.

*“No doubt some people would
say there is no harm done by our
telling school children that our
forefathers wantonly slaughtered
and exterminated the pigeons and

the bison. Overhunting is one of
the threats to many species of
wildlife, so why not dramatize a
couple of examples at the expense
of truth?

“My feeling is that no lesson
should be taught at the expense of
truth. We would all be better off
if we tried to put the extinction of
the pigeons and near-extinction of
the buffalo into proper perspec-
tive, namely that overhunting was
one factor in a mystery to which
we have not yet found the an-
swer.’*

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