I know. Why weren't regular pigeons, dove, quail, turkey, grouse or migratory waterfowl hunted to extinction? I think it was disease that did the passenger pigeon in.
lets bring them back! raise them and eat them!
Google the Carolina Parakeet, it was hunted into extinction for it's women's hat feathers. The were easy to shoot because they stayed together and would always come back to the same tree looking for the dead missing member.
Actually if you look into the history of hunting and conservation movement in the United States most of the species you mention nearly were hunted to extinction. The only one that I know for sure wasn’t was the “regular” (European) pigeon, as it had adapted to living in cities by the time it was brought over to the Americas. Even when I was a kid back in the ‘80s I can remember turkeys being nearly extinct. It had to be reintroduced to many of the places it lives now.
The reason that passenger pigeons were so easily hunted to extinction is that they were hunted by large commercial operations, at night when they all roosted closely together with punt guns (these were giant shotguns, named after the type of boat to which they were usually mounted when employed in waterfowl hunting.). These guns have been known to take out a hundred ducks in a single shot (though 50 was apparently a much more common number). Imagine what a team of hunters employing dozens of guns like that could do to a huge mass of densely packed, sleeping birds. Diseases and deforestation probably also contributed to their demise, but the odds are almost they would be around today (if not abundant) if they weren’t hunted the way they were.