The Choiseul pigeon is usually considered to have been endemic to the island of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands off the coast of New Guinea, where the only specimens were collected. The specimens Meek acquired were likely collected near Choiseul Bay in the northern part of the island. The last reports of the species from the indigenous population came from the Kolombangara River. It also reportedly lived on the neighboring islands of Santa Isabel and Malaita, and it is suspected that it may once have lived on Bougainville Island. However, these reports were never confirmed and must be considered anecdotal. It would be considered very unusual if the Choiseul pigeon were truly endemic to Choiseul as the island hosts no other endemic species, and the pigeon was never linked ecologically with another species on the island. In January 1904 six specimens and an egg were collected by Albert Stewart Meek, a bird collector for Lord Walter Rothschild, near Choiseul Bay on Choiseul. Several local boys told Meek that the pigeon was also present on the nearby islands of Santa Isabel and Malaita. Though Meek did not travel to these islands, he did search for the Choiseul pigeon on the adjacent Bougainville Island, but did not find any evidence of its presence. No other specimens were ever collected or seen by Western scientists. The Choiseul pigeon was not searched for again until briefly in 1927 and again in October 1929, when five veteran collectors belonging to the Whitney South Seas Expedition dedicated three months to searching for the pigeon in multiple locations across Choiseul without success. The indigenous people interviewed by this expedition largely believed that the pigeon was extinct in 1929. The last reported indigenous sighting was sometime in the early 1940s near Sasamungga by the Kolombangara River, although this sighting was never confirmed. Searches of the small, cat-free islands of Rob Roy Island and Wagina off Choiseul's southeast coast and Choiseul's forested coastal swampland in the 1960s by British ornithologist Shane A. Parker did not discover any signs of the pigeon. American scientist Jared Diamond searched for the bird in 1974 without success. This pigeon was a source of food for the local people, who would locate its roosting sites either due to the bird calling or by the droppings that had accumulated below its perches. It was well-remembered by the indigenous peoples, and stories of the delicious ground-dwelling pigeon were passed down by local elders after its extinction.