The Great NYC Pigeon Hunt

Photo Copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers

Have you ever looked at a pigeon in New York City and wondered what that thing tastes like? Probably not. I, however, have been very curious about this for a long time. When my publisher dispatched me to NYC a few days ago for interviews with TIME magazine and Prevention magazine it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something about it.

One of the chapters that I'd always intended to include in 'Eating Aliens' was on pigeons. Pigeons are easily one of the most visible invasive species in North America. They seemed like they ought to be easy enough to bag and write about. Somehow it never quite came together during work on the book. I went on hunts for pigeons but was skunked every time for one reason or another.

The setting that I really wanted for the pigeon chapter was in New York City. If any species deserves to be the mascot of NYC it is surely the common pigeon. No other animal is so common there. They are omnipresent and almost universally hated among New Yorkers.

I even built a special pigeon trap which was designed to break down into panels that could be packed into a piece of airline-approved carry-on luggage and then re-assembled. I brought this trap up to NYC last year and placed it on the roof of my friend John Durant's apartment building. The plan was to catch a few pigeons that weekend and cook them but it didn't work out. Pigeons were caught and then seem to have been released by some interloper before we could kill them. I didn't have the money to make another trip up to the city just for a pigeon hunt and the book had to be finished without pigeons.

Out of nowhere I got an email last week asking if I could come up to NYC for an interview with PreventionMagazine for their website. The journalist, Mandy Oaklander, wanted to do something a little bit different than just sitting in front of a camera and talking. I liked the sound of this right away. We scheduled a few more interviews with TIME magazine and Beer Sessions Radio to round out the trip and my publisher sent me up to find something interesting to do with Mandy for Prevention.

Naturally the old pigeon project came to mind. I called John Durant up and asked him if he was up for an urban pigeon hunt. He was game and then it all came together at the very last minute.

Mandy met us in John's Manhattan apartment with her videographer, Janet. We decided to skip the rooftop trap (there weren't any pigeons around) and go straight for the most dramatic possible setting in NYC for hunting pigeons. Central Park.

It was a warm, sunny day at the end of August and the park was full of people. Tourists, families, sunbathers, nannies out pushing strollers. This looked like trouble.

I want to point out the sheer absurdity of doing this with Prevention Magazine. Their last issue had 'Dr. Oz' on the cover. Other articles include 'Proper Pole Walking 101,' and a special report on breast cancer. 'Outdoor Life' rejects every pitch I send them; 'Outside' ignores my emails and 'Field and Stream' pretends that I don't exist. Of all the magazines that I could possibly hunt pigeons in Central Park with, somehow it turned out to be Prevention.

Most city pigeons are so tame that we figured the hardest part would be finding a secluded area where nobody would witness the murder. The initial plan was that John and Mandy would act as lookouts while Janet filmed and I would just walk up to a pigeon, grab it, and quickly kill it by hand.

This didn't really work in the park. The secluded areas tended to be in wooded places where there weren't any pigeons. It turns out that pigeons like to hang out around humans to wait for a shot at our food. After half an hour of walking around we realized that there were going to have to be at least a few witnesses.

In one clearing we stumbled across a circle of about a dozen people who stood facing each other and laughing. That was all they were doing. Laughing. The sound seemed a bit forced. It looked like some sort of odd group therapy. I looked about desperately for a pigeon on the ground. Nothing would have pleased me more at that moment than to nab a pigeon for lunch in view of this bunch. Would they keep laughing? Start crying? Throw things at us? Sadly, all I could find were robins.

Our breakthrough moment came when we stopped under some trees while I lunged pointlessly at wary pigeons who seemed to sense that I was up to something. John noticed that one of the trees was a feral apple tree. He picked up a rotted apple from the ground and threw it hard against a cluster of apples still hanging on the tree. Half a dozen good, firm apples dropped down to us. We ate some of the apples and realized that if John was pretty good at knocking down apples then maybe he would be a pretty good shot on a pigeon.

We gathered up a few dozen apples, filled the backpack I was carrying, and went pigeon hunting.

Right in front of Cleopatra's Needle Janet spotted a lone pigeon standing in front of a tree (she was the group's number one pigeon spotter all day). Perfect placement. I nailed it hard with an apple. The apple splattered into tiny fragments and the pigeon flew away in what seemed to be unexpectedly good health. Mandy and Janet seemed ecstatic. This hunting business was getting serious!

We had a few other failed attempts at hitting birds with apples (missing clean every time). We were getting better at this, though. It was clear that the tactic would eventually be a winning one if only we could keep finding pigeons. Our new problems were that I kept eating the ammunition and that it exploded too easily on contact. John and I picked up some rocks in hope that they would connect more solidly.

The funny thing about pigeons in the park is that there aren't nearly so many as you would expect. They seem to prefer city streets to large parks. We had to walk a very long way in between pigeon sightings. The frustrating part was that when we saw pigeons they were usually around a lot of people. Even though everything we did was completely legal (its basically open season on pigeons year-round in NYC, so long as you don't use poison, guns or arrows), we had to expect to get lynched if anyone saw what we were doing. Fat chance that any of New York's finest would be up to date on the finer points of municipal pigeon laws.

Right along the Upper West Side of the park there was a crowded entrance to the park next to a busy playground. Also a lot of pigeons. Right there in the middle of the sidewalk. Bobbing around only a few feet in front of people on park benches enjoying their lunches. Oh, we mustn't.

“We can't,” I declared. “We can't kill a pigeon right here in front of a playground. These people will riot.”

There seemed to be general agreement. Yet John Durant began to coolly stalk an especially lovely pink bird. He adjusted his grip on the rock in his hand.

Perhaps the birds could be lured away just below a slight rise in the landscape that could hide us from the playground. I asked John to start pushing them by walking towards the pigeons while I went back to the intended kill-zone and began throwing bread crumbs to attract them.

The tactic worked. The pink bird was right in front of me and John was lined up on another bird. We counted to three and then threw our rocks and apples. My own rock missed badly. I reached for another one in my pocket to throw as the pink bird took to the air and flew past me. I turned to chase it and saw that John had just nailed a bird with a solid throw, but it was flapping injured back toward the playground and crowded sidewalk.

Instantly I ran hard and caught up with the bird right behind the benches. I didn't even dare look up to see how the onlookers were reacting. I tackled the pigeon as though it were a football and crouched over it. It struggled under me as I reached for the sheath knife in my back pocket and swiftly sliced off the head.

“The backpack! Bring me the backpack!” Either John or Mandy (I'm not sure which) ran up with the bag and I stuffed the still-flapping body inside, followed by the head. I zipped the bag, stood up and started walking very quickly away from the playground.

“Time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

John pointed out that the way home to his apartment was back through the exit by the playground but there was no way in hell that I would be walking back in that direction.

Usually hunting is a very sober thing. In this case we were all laughing as we ran the hell out of there. We'd just pulled off the craziest thing that anyone had probably seen in Central Park for a very long time. And now were going to cook a New York City pigeon for lunch.

The pigeon turned out to taste exactly like any mourning dove I have ever eaten. I skinned it to ensure that we weren't eating anything that had come into direct contact with any dirty NYC public surfaces. We pan-seared it in olive oil with salt, pepper and a bit of red wine. John cooked up some of the remaining ammunition (the feral apples) with cinnamon and rum. The entire meal was excellent. Janet did not partake (she only eats fish and no other meat), but John and Mandy shared my opinion that city pigeon is a perfectly edible, enjoyable and reasonable food.