sale was at hand, and I was excited to dress the birds, put them in an insulated container with dry ice, and ship them. The $30 I was to be paid for the 20 squabs was a fortune for a farm kid like me. Several days before the slaughter, I
came home from a track meet just at dark and noticed a pigeon fluttering outside the dovecote in the pen, and I went to see if things were OK. A raccoon had gotten into the
pen and had slaughtered 111 pigeons; there were only 18 birds left. The ‘coon was gone. Tragedy! I was sick, couldn’t sleep. Typical 4-H project, typical farm- ing operation. That day taught me a lot. When I got home from school the
next afternoon, I got my .410 Stevens and waited, checking my pigeon pen every 15 minutes. About 8:30 p.m., I saw pigeons out in the flight yard fly- ing around frantically. I grabbed my .410 and a handful of shells and ran to the pen, opened the door, and peeked into the dovecote. There the raccoon was, caught red-handed. Up went the Stevens single-shot and BLAM! I shot the murdering critter. It was a wet sow coon, doing what coons do – rustling grub for itself and its young. It had killed ten more pigeons,
leaving eight. I went back to the house and got eight shells. I shot the rest of the birds to put an end to the 4-H project. We ate the birds. Dad commented that these pigeons were probably the most expensive pigeons ever eaten. From that tremendous success
in 4-H, I went into raising sheep. The first year, dogs killed half of them. The second year, they got leptospirosis. The third year, the sheep got foot rot. The last year, they got scabies mites. At that point in life, I was considering farming for a profession. I had a farm picked out, a wife picked out, and I got up enough nerve to go to my banker to see if I could get a loan. The banker was the father of a
gal I went out with on the sly. She was Lutheran; I was Catholic. His opinion of me and civet cats was roughly equiva- lent. But, I had put on my best jeans and engineer boots and was not planning on marrying his daughter, so I went to the bank with high hopes. Bankers on TV ads are always
smiling and friendly, young or middle aged. This banker was old, scowled, and was impatient. I was obviously wasting
his time. He was speaking with me as a favor to my dad. I knew I was sunk when he wanted to see my 4-H records. He was not at all impressed with the pigeon project or my sheep production successes.
“Young man, your record is very
clear. Let me do you and me a favor and make this very short. Either join the Army or go to college. Don’t even think of farming,” he growled. “You still seeing Ruth?” he asked. “No, haven’t seen her since May,”
I answered.
He laid a $20 bill on the desk. “Here is $20. Do me a favor and
don’t see her again.” He did not look very happy. His daughter was gorgeous, but
not really my type of lady anyway. Joy was missing from that family. “Thanks, Mr. Banker.” I left. The $20 was still on the table. The steel cleats on my engineer
boots chattered on the bank’s marble floor as I exited with as much dignity as I could muster. You might be asking yourself
now, “What in blazes is Boddicker writ- ing about pigeons for?” Well, almost every varmint hunter I ever knew had character-defining experiences with pigeons. The McAndrews boys and I experienced important bonding on those pigeon ambushes. Show me a varmint hunter who never wrung a pigeon’s neck and I will
show you a varmint hunter who wan- ders aimlessly through hayfields hunt- ing pocket gophers, never quite getting things together. It seems to me to be very neces-
sary that all neophyte varmint hunters should have pigeons prominent in their mandatory hunter education program. Pigeons can be trapped using the
same principles as we use to catch fur- bearers. Falconers use them for hawk food. Live bird shoots use hundreds of them. The going price is $1 to $2.50 per bird. Sometimes, a market can be found
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Page 127 $69.95
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