EDWARD A.MCILHENNY :

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THE WILD TURKEY
AND ITS HUNTING |

BY
EDWARD A. McILHENNY

Illustrated from Photographs

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1914

230324

Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by
Tut Outpoor Worup PuBLisHiInc COMPANY

Copyright, 1914, by
DovuBLEDAY, Pace & ComMPANY
All rights reserved, including that of

translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

CONTENTS
Introduction
CHAPTER
I. My Early Training with the Turkeys
II. Range, Variation, and Name .
iI. The Turkey Prehistoric .
IV. The Turkey Historic
V. Breast Sponge — Shrewdness
VI. Social Relations — Nesting — The
Young Birds
VII. Association of Sexes .
VIII. Its Enemies and Food .
IX. Habits of Association and Roosting
X. Guns I Have Used on Turkey .
XI. Learning Turkey Language: Why Does
the Gobbler Gobble .
XII. On Callers and Calling .
XIII. Calling Up the Lovelorn Gobbi
XIV. The Indifferent Young Gobbler
XV. Hunting Turkey with a Dog
XVI. The Secret of Cooking the Turkey
XVIT. Camera Hunting for Turkeys .

Vv

PAGE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The grandest bird of the American continent. Frontispiece
FACING PAGE

Plate I. Figs.1to5. Types: M. antiqua; M. celer.
Marsh .

Plate II. Figs. 6 to 10. Views of ‘the cane of
wild turkeys Rs SOE ote et eats

Plate III. Fig. 11. Left lateral view of the skull
of an old male wild turkey .

Plate IV. Figs. 12 to 16. Views of the cranium
and skull of the turkey .

Plate V. Figs 17 to 19. Views of the Tall of
wild turkeys, and skeleton of the left foot of a
wild turkey

Plate VI. Figs. 20 to 23. ee of ae tues

Plate VII. Fig. 24. Nest of a wild turkey in situ

Note the full chest of the gobbler on the left.
This is the breast sponge

Nest located in thick brush on top of a ade in
Louisiana . :

Hen, wild turkey, and cies young .

The beginning of the strut Bea

The chief of all his enemies is the ‘‘ genus homo”

vil

30

AS

60

75

80

90

102

106

112

116

124
142

Vill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

An ideal turkey country. They will go a long way
to roost in trees growing in water .

A hermit. It would take an expert turkey ie
ter to circumvent this bird . ;

Big woods in Louisiana where the old sobeiees
roam at will. A delightful place in which to camp

Jordan’s Turkey Call (cut in text)

I soon saw the old gobbler stealing slowly théongh
the brush . ol a ee

“Cluck,” “put,” “‘put,”’ there stands a gobbler,
within oP paces a“ the left .

Suddenly there was a ‘< Gil-obble-obble-obble,”
near it made me Jump ee

The soft, gentle quaver of the hen has no effect on
the ear of the young gobbler

156

160

174
183

190

202

206

216

INTRODUCTION
Reali many eminent naturalists and

observers have written of the turkey

from the date of its introduction to
European civilization to the present time, there
has been no very satisfactory history of the
intimate life of this bird, nor has there been a
satisfactory analysis of either the material from
which our fossil turkeys are known, or the many
writings concerning the early history of the bird
and its introduction to civilization. I have
attempted in this work to cover the entire
history of this very interesting and vanishing
game bird, and believe it will fill a long-felt
want of hunters and naturalists for a more de-
tailed description of its life history.

This work was begun by Chas. L. Jordan and
would have been completed by him, except for
his untimely death in 1909.

Mr. Jordan for more than sixty years was a

ix

xX INTRODUCTION

careful observer and lover of the wild turkey,
and for many years the study of this bird oc-
cupied almost his entire time. I feel safe in
saying that Mr. Jordan knew more of the ways
of the wild turkey in the wilds than any man
who ever lived. No more convincing example
of his patience and perseverance in his study of
the bird can be given than the accompanying
photographs, all of which were taken of the wild
birds in the big outdoors by Mr. Jordan.

At the time of Mr. Jordan’s death he was in
his sixty-seventh year and was manager of the
Morris game preserve of over 10,000 acres, near
Hammond, La. He had been most successful in
attracting to this preserve a great abundance of
game, and was very active in suppressing poach-
ing and illegal hunting. His activity m this
cause brought about his death, as he was shot
in the back by a poacher during the afternoon of
February 24, 1909, for which Allen Lagrue,
his murderer, is now serving a life sentence in the
penitentiary.

I had known Mr. Jordan for a number of
years before his death and was much interested

INTRODUCTION Xl
in his work with the turkey, as I, for years, had
been carrying on similar studies. After Mr.
Jordan’s death, through the kindness of Mr.
John K. Renaud, I secured his notes, manuscript,
and photographic plates of the wild turkey, and
with these, and my knowledge of the bird, I
have attempted to compile a work I think he
would have approved.

Mr. Jordan from time to time wrote articles
on the wild turkey for sporting magazines,
among them Shooting and Fishing, and parts
of his articles are brought into the present pub-
lication. I have carried out the story of the
wild turkey as if told by Mr. Jordan, as his full
notes on the bird enable me to do this.

I am indebted to Dr. R. W. Shufeldt for his
chapter on the fossil turkey, the introduction of
the turkey to civilization, and photographs ac-
companying his two chapters, written at my
request especially for this work. E. A. M.

_ THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

CHAPTER I

MY EARLY TRAINING WITH THE TURKEYS

Y FATHER was a great all-round
M hunter and pioneer in the state of
Alabama, once the paradise of hunters.
He was particularly devoted to deer hunting and
fox hunting, owning many hounds and horses.
He knew theways and haunts of the forest people
and from him my brothers and I got our early
traininginwoodcraft. Iwas the youngest of three
sons, all of whom were sportsmen to the manner
born. My brothers and myself were particu-
larly fond of hunting the wild turkey, and were
raised and schooled in intimate association with
this noble bird; the fondness for this sport has
remained with me through life. I therefore may
be pardoned when I say that I possess a fair
knowledge of their language, their habits, their
likes and dislikes.

In the great woods surrounding our home
3

4 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
there were numbers of wild turkeys, and I can
well remember my brother Frank’s skill in calling
them. Every spring as the gobbling season ap-
proached my brothers and myself would construct
various turkey calls and lose no opportunity
for practising calling the birds. I can recall,
too, when but a mere lad, coming down from
my room in the early morning to the open
porch, and finding assembled the family and
servants, including the little darkies and the
dogs, all in a state of great excitement. I has-
tened to learn the cause of this and was shown
with admiration a big gobbler, and as I looked
at the noble bird, with its long beard and glossy
plumage, lying on the porch, I felt it was a
beautiful trophy of the chase.

“Who killed it?’’? I asked. “Old Massa, he
kill ’im,’? came from the mouths of half a
dozen excited little darkies. A few days later
my brothers brought in other turkeys. This
made me long for the time when I would be
old enough to hunt this bird, and these happy
incidents inspired me with ambition to acquire
proficiency in turkey hunting, and to learn

MY EARLY TRAINING WITH THE TURKEYS 9

every method so that I might excel in that
sport.

As I grew older, but while still a mere lad, I
would often steal to the woods in early morning
on my way to school, and, hiding myself in some
thick bush, sitting with my book in my lap and a
rude cane joint or bone of a turkey’s wing for a
eall in my hand, I would watch for the turkeys.
When they appeared I would study every move-
ment of the birds, note their call, yelp, cluck,
or gobble, and I gradually learned each sound
they made had its meaning. I would study
closely the ways of the hens and their conduct
toward the young and growing broods; I would
also note their attention to the old or young gob-
blers, and the mannerisms of the male birds
toward the females. All this time I would be
using my call, attempting to imitate every note
that the turkeys made, and watching the effect.
These were my rudimentary and earliest lessons
in turkey lore and lingo, and what I have often
called my schooling with the turkeys.

At this age I had not begun the use of a rifle
or shotgun on turkeys, although I had killed

6 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

smaller game, such as squirrels, rabbits, ducks,
and quail. I was sixteen years of age when I
began to hunt the wild turkeys. I discovered
then that although I was able to do good calling
I had much more to learn to cope successfully
with the wily ways of this bird. It took years of
the closest observation and study to acquire the
knowledge which later made me a successful
turkey hunter, and I have gained this knowledge
only after tramping over thousands of miles of
wild territory, through swamps and hummocks,
over hills and rugged mountain sides, through
deep gulches, quagmires, and cane brakes, and
spending many hours in fallen treetops, behind
logs or other natural cover, not to be observed,
but to observe, by day and by night, in rain,
wind, and storm. I have hunted the wild tur-
keys on the great prairies and thickets of Texas,
along the open river bottoms of the Brazos,
Colorado, Trinity, San Jacinto, Bernardo, as
well as the rivers, creeks, hills, and valleys of
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,. and Louisiana.
With all modesty, I believe I have killed as
many old gobblers with patriarchal beards as

MY EARLY TRAINING WITH THE TURKEYS 7
any manintheworld. Ido not wish to say this
boastfully, but present it as illustrative of the
experience I have had with these birds, and
particularly with old gobblers, for I have always
found a special delight in outwitting the wary old
birds.

I doubt not many veteran turkey hunters
have in mind some old gobbler who seemed in-
vincible; some bird that had puzzled them for
three or four years without their learning the
tricks of the cunning fellow. Perhaps in these
pages there may be found some information
which will enable even the old hunter to better
circumvent the bird. I am aware that there
are times when the keenest sportsmen will be
outwitted, often when success seems assured.

How well I know this. Many times I have
called turkeys to within a few feet of me; so near
that I have heard their “‘put-put.”’ And they
would walk away without my getting a shot.
Often does this occur to the best turkey hunter,
on account of the game approaching from the
rear, or other unexpected point, and suddenly
without warning fly or run away. No one can

8 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

avoid this, but the sportsman who understands
turkeys can exercise care and judgment and kill
his bird, where others unacquainted with the
bird fail. I believe I can take any man or boy
who possesses a good eye and fair sense, and in
one season make a good turkey hunter of him.
I know of many nefarious tricks by which tur-
keys could be easily secured, but I shall not tell
of any method of hunting and capturing turkeys
but those I consider sportsmanlike. Although
an ardent turkey hunter, I have too much respect
for this glorious bird to see it killed in any but
an honorable way.. The turkey’s fate is hard
enough as it is. The work of destruction goes
on from year to year, and the birds are being
greatly reduced in numbers in many localities.
The extinction of them in some states has
already been accomplished, and in others it is
only a matter of time; but there are many
localities in the South and West, especially in
the Gulf-bordering states, where they are still
plentiful, and with any sort of protection will
remain so. Some of these localities are so
situated that they will for generations remain

MY EARLY TRAINING WITH THE TURKEYS 9

primeval forests, giving ample shelter and food
to the turkey.

A novice might think it an easy matter to
find turkeys after seeing their tracks along the
banks of streams or roads, or in the open field,
where they lingered the day before. But these
birds are not likely to be in the same place the
following day; they will probably be some miles
away on a leafy ridge, scratching up the dry
leaves and mould in quest of insects and acorns,
or in some cornfield gleaning the scattered grain;
or perhaps they might be lingering on the banks
of some small stream in a dense swamp, gather-
ing snails or small crustacea and water-loving
insects.

To be successful in turkey hunting you must
learn to rise early in the morning, ere there is a
suspicion of daylight. At such a time the air is
chilly, perhaps it looks like rain, and on awaken-
ing you are likely to yawn, stretch, and look at
the time. Unless you possess the ardor of a
sportsman it is not pleasant to rise from a com-
fortable bed at this hour and go forth into the
chill morning air that threatens to freeze the

10 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

marrow in your bones. But it is essential that
you rise before light, and if you are a born tur-
key hunter you will soon forget the discomforts.
It has been my custom, when intending to go
turkey hunting, never to hesitate a moment, but,
on awakening in the morning, bound out of bed
at once and dress as soon as possible. It has
also been my custom to calculate the distance
I am to go, so as to reach the turkey range by the
time or a little before day breaks. I have fre-
quently risen at one or two o'clock in the morn-
ing and ridden twelve miles or more before day-
break for the chance to kill an old gobbler.

Early morning from the break of day until
nine o'clock is the very best time during the
whole day to get turkeys; but the half hour after
daybreak is really worth all the rest of the day;
this is the time when everything chimes with the
new-born day; all life is on the move; diurnal
tribes awakening from night’s repose are coming
into action, while nocturnal creatures are seeking
their retreats. Hence at this. hour there is a
conglomeration of animal life and a babel of
mingled sounds not heard at any other time of

MY EARLY TRAINING WITH THE TURKEYS l11

day. This is the time to be in the depths of the
forest in quest of the wild turkey, and one
should be near their roosting place if possible,
quietly listening and watching every sound and
motion. If in the autumn or winter you are
near such a place, you are likely to hear, as day
breaks, the awakening cluck at long intervals;
then will follow the long, gentle, quavering call
or yelp of the mother hen, arousing her sleeping
brood and making known to them that the time
has arrived for leaving their roosts. If in the
early spring, you will listen for the salutation of

the old gobbler.

CHAPTER II

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME

HEN America was discovered the wild
turkey inhabited the wooded portion of
the entire country, from the southern

provinces of Canada and southern Maine, south
to southern Mexico, and from Arizona, Kansas,
and Nebraska, east to the Atlantic Ocean and
the Gulf of Mexico. As the turkey is not a
migratory bird in the sense that migration is
usually interpreted, and while the range of the
species is one of great extent, as might be expected,
owing to the operation of the usual causes, a
number of subspecies have resulted. At the
present time, ornithologists recognize four of
these as occurring within the limits of the United
States, as set forth in Chapter IV beyond.

In countries thickly settled, as in the one
where I now write, there is a great variety of wild

turkeys scattered about in the woods of the
12

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 13

small creeks and hills. Many hybrid wild tur-
keysare killed here every year. The cause of this
is: every old gobbler that dares to open its mouth
to gobble in the spring is within the hearing of
farmers, negroes, and others, and is a marked
bird. It is given no rest until it is killed; hence
there are few or no wild turkeys to take care of
the hens, which then visit the domestic gobbler
about the farmyards. Hence this crossing with
the wild one is responsible for a great variety of
plumages.

I once saw a flock of hybrids while hunting
squirrels in Pelahatchie swamp, Mississippi, as
I sat at the root of a tree eating lunch, about one
o'clock, with gun across my lap, as I never wish
to be caught out of reach of my gun. Suddenly
I heard a noise in the leaves, and on looking in
that direction I saw a considerable flock of
turkeys coming directly toward me in a lively
manner, eagerly searching for food. The mo-
ment these birds came in sight I saw they had
white tips to their tails, but they had the form
and action of the wild turkey, and it at once
occurred to me that they were a lot of mixed

14 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

breeds, half wild, half tame, with the freedom of
the former. I noticed also among them one
that was nearly white and one old gobbler that
was a pure wild turkey; but it was too far off
to shoot him. Dropping the lunch and grasp-
ing the gun was but the work of a second; then
the birds came round the end of the log and
began scratching under a beech tree for nuts.
Seeing two gobblers put their heads together
at about forty yards from me, I fired, killing
both. The flock flew and ran in all directions.
One hen passed within twenty paces of me and
T killed it with the second barrel. A closer
examination of the dead birds convinced me
that there had been a cross between the wild
and the tame turkeys. The skin on their necks
and heads was as yellow as an orange, or more
of a buckskin, buff color, while the caruncles on
the neck were tinged with vermilion, giving them
amost peculiar appearance; all threeof thoseslain
had this peculiar marking, and there was not a
shadow of the blue or purple of the wild turkey
about their heads, while all other points, save the
white-tipped feathers, indicated the wild blood.

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 15

Shortly after the foregoing incident, while a
party of gentlemen, including my brother, were
hunting some five miles below the same creek,
they flushed a flock of wild turkeys, scattering
them; one of the party killed four of them that
evening, two of which (hens) were fuil-blood
wild ones. One of the remaining two, a fine
gobbler, had as red a head as any tame gobbler,
and the tips of the tail and rump coverts were
white. The other bird (a hen) was also a half-
breed. There was no buff on their heads and
necks, but the purple and blue of the wild blood
was apparent.

Early the next morning my brother went to
the place where the turkeys were scattered the
previous aiternoon, and began to call. Very
soon he had a reply, and three fine gobblers
came running to him, when he killed two, one
_ with each barrel; now these were full-blood wild
ones.

Ihave noted.that anumber of wild turkeysin the
Brazos bottomsare very different in some respects
from the turkeys of the piney woods in the east-
ern section of that state. In Trinity County,

16 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Texas, I found the largest breed of wild turkeys
I have found anywhere, but in the Brazos bot-
toms the gobblers which I found there in 1876,
in great abundance, were of a smaller stature,
but more chunky or bulky. Their gobble was
hardly like that of a wild turkey, the sound
resembling the gobble of a turkey under a barrel,
a hoarse, guttural rumble, quite different in
tone from the clear, loud, rolling gobble of his
cousin in the Trinity country. The gobblers of
the Brazos bottoms were also distinguishable
by their peculiar beards. In other varieties of
turkeys three inches or less of the upper end of
the beard is grayish, while those of the Brazos
bottoms were more bunchy and black up to the
skin of the breast. There is a variety of turkeys
in the San Jacinto region, in the same state,
which is quite slender, dark in color, and has a
beard quite thin in brush, but long and pictur-
esque. His gobble is shrill. This section is a
low plain, generally wet in the spring, partly tim-
bered and partly open prairie. It is a great
place for the turkey.

Since the days of Audubon it has been proph-

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 17

esied that the wild turkey would soon become
extinct. J am glad to say that the prophecies
have not been realized up to the present time,
even with the improved implements of destruc-
tion and great increase of hunters. There is no
game that holds its own so well as the wild tur-
key. This is particularly true in the southern
Gulf States, where are to be found heavily
timbered regions, which are suited to the habits
of this bird. Here shelter is afforded and an
ample food supply is provided the year round.
In the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Ar-
kansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory the
wild turkey is still to be found in reasonable
abundance, and if these states will protect them
by the right sort of laws, I am of the opinion
' that the birds will increase rapidly, despite the
encroachment of civilization and the war waged
upon them by sportsmen. It is not the legiti-
mate methods of destruction that decimate the
turkey ranks, as is the case with the quail and
grouse, but it is the nefarious tricks the laws in
many states permit, namely, trapping and bait-

18 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

ing. The latter is by far the most destructive,
and is practised by those who kill turkeys for the
market, and frequently by those who want to
slaughter these birds solely for count. No creat-
ure, however prolific, can stand such treatment
long. The quail, though shot in great numbers
by both sportsmen and market hunters, and an-
-nually destroyed legitimately by the thousands,
stands it better than the wild turkey, although
the latter produces and raises almost as many
young at a time as the quail.

There are two reasons for this: one is, the
quail are not baited and shot on the ground; the
other reason is that every bobwhite in the spring
can, and does, use his call, thus bringing to him
a mate; but the turkey, if he dares to gobble,
no matter if he is the only turkey within a radius
of forty miles, has every one who hears him and
can procure a gun, after him, and they pursue
him relentlessly until he is killed. Among the
turkeys the hens raised are greatly in excess of
the gobblers. This fact seems to have been pro-
vided for by nature in making the male turkey
polygamous; but as the male turkey is, during

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 19
the spring, a very noisy bird, continually gob-
bling and strutting to attract his harem, and
as he is much larger and more conspicuous than
the hens, 1t is only natural that he is in more
danger of being killed. Suppose the proportion
of gobblers in the beginning of the spring is
three to fifteen hens, in a certain stretch of
woods. As soon as the mating season begins,
these gobblers will make their whereabouts
known by their noise; result — the gunners are
after them at once, and the chances are ten to
one they will all be killed. The hens will then
have no mate and no young will be produced;
whereas, if but one gobbler were left, each of our
supposed fifteen hens would raise an average of
ten young each, and we would also have 150
new turkeys in the fall to yield sport and food.
It has always been my practice to leave at least
one old gobbler in each locality to assist the
hens in reproduction. If every hunter would
do this the problem of maintaining the turkey
supply would be greatly solved.

The greatest of all causes for the decrease of
wild turkeys lies in the killing of all the old

20 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

gobblers in the spring. Some say the yearling
gobblers will answer every purpose. I say they
will not; they answer no purpose except to grow
and make gobblers for the next year. The hens
are all right — you need have no anxiety about
them; they can take care of themselves; pro-
vided you leave them a male bird that gobbles,
they will do the rest. Any suitable community
can have all the wild turkeys it wants if it will
obtain a few specimens and turn them into a
small woodland about the beginning of spring,
spreading grain of some sort for them daily.
The turkeys will stay where the food is abundant
and where there is a little brush in which to retire
and rest.

Some hunters, or rather some writers, claim
that the only time the wild turkey should be
hunted is in the autumn and winter, and not in
the spring. I have a different idea altogether,
and claim that the turkey should not be hunted
before November, if then, December being
better. By the first of November the young
gobbler weighs from seven to nine pounds, the
hens from four to seven pounds; in December

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 21
and January the former weighs twelve pounds
and the latter nine pounds. There you are.
But suppose you did not hunt in the spring at all.
How many old, long-bearded gobblers (the joy
and delight above every sort of game on earth
to the turkey hunter) would you bag in a year,
or a lifetime? Possibly in ten years you would
get one, unless by the merest accident, as they
are rarely, if ever, found in company with the
hens or young gobblers, but go in small bands
by themselves, and from their exclusive and
retiring nature it Is a rare occasion when one 1s
killed except in the gobbling season.

Take away the delight of the gobbling season
from the turkey hunter, and the quest of the wild
turkey would lose its fascination. In so express-
ing myself, I do not advise that the gobblers
be persecuted and worried all through the gob-
bling season, from March to June, but believe
they could be hunted for a limited time, namely,
until the hens begin to lay and the gobblers
to lose their fat — say until the first of April.
Every old turkey hunter knows where to stop,
and does it without limitation of law. Old

22 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

gobblers are in their best condition until about
the first of April, then they begin to lose flesh
very rapidly. At this time hunting them should
be abandoned altogether.

In my hunting trips after this bird I have
covered most of the southern states, and have
been interested to note that all the Indians I
have met called the turkey “Furkee” or “Fir-
kee’; the tribes I have hunted with include the
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and
the Cherokees, who live east of the Mississippi
River, and the Alabams, Conchattas, and Zunis
of the west. Whether their name for the bird
is a corruption of our turkey, or whether our
word is a corruption of their “Furkee,”’ Iam not
prepared to state. It may be that we get our
name direct from the aboriginal Indians. All
of the Indian tribes I have hunted with have
legends concerning the turkey, and to certain of
the Aztec tribes it was an object of worship. An
old Zuni chief once told me a curious legend of
his people concerning this bird, very similar to
the story of the flood. It runs:

Ages ago, before man came to live on the

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 23

earth, all birds, beasts, and fishes lived in har-
mony as one family, speaking the same language,
and subsisting on sweet herbs and grass that
grew in abundance all over the earth. Sud-
denly one day the sun ceased to shine, the sky
became covered with heavy clouds, and rain
began to fall. For a long time this continued,
and neither the sun, moon, nor stars were seen.
After a while the water got so deep that the
birds, animals, and fishes had either to swim or
fly in the air, as there was no land to stand on.
Those that could not swim or fly were carried
around on the backs of those that could, and
this kept up until almost every living thing was
almost starved. Then all the creatures held
a meeting, and one from each kind was selected
to go to heaven and ask the Great Spirit to send
back the sun, moon, and stars and stop the rain.
These journeyed a long way and at last found
a great ladder running into the sky; they climbed
up this ladder and found at the top a trapdoor
leading into heaven, and on passing through the
door, which was open, they saw the dwelling-
place of man, and before the door were a boy

24 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

and girl playing, and their playthings were the
sun, moon, and stars belonging to the earth. As
soon as the earth creatures saw the sun, moon,
and stars, they rushed for them and, gathering
them into a basket, took the children of man
and hurried back to earth through the trap-
door. In their hurry to get away from the man
whom they saw running after them, the trap-
door was slammed on the tail of the bear, cut-
ting it off. The blood spattered over the lynx
and trout, and since that time the bear has had
no tail, and the lynx and trout are spotted.
The buffalo fell down and hurt his back and
has bad a hump on it ever since. The sun,
moon, and stars having been put back in their
places, the rain stopped at once and the waters
quickly dried up. On the first appearance of
land, the turkey, who had been flying around
all the time, lit, although warned not to do so
by the other creatures. It at once began to
sink in the mud, and its tail stuck to the mud so
tight that it could hardly fly up, and when it
did get away the end of its tail was covered with
mud and is stained mud color to this day. The

RANGE, VARIATION, AND NAME 29
earth now having become dry and the children
of man now lords of the earth, each creature was
obliged to keep out of their way, so the fishes
took to the waters using their tails to swim away
from man, the birds took to their wings, and the
animals took to their legs; and by these means the
birds, beasts, and fishes have kept out of man’s
way ever since.

Before dealing with the wild turkeys as they
are to-day, it will be well to make a short study
of their prehistoric and historic standing; this
has been ably done for me by Dr. R. W. Shufeldt
of Washington, D. C., who has very kindly
written for this work the next two chapters
entitled “The Turkey Prehistoric,” and “‘The
Turkey Historic.”

CHAPTER III

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC

Jp ROBABLY no genus of birds in the

" American avifauna has received the

amount of attention that has been be-
stowed uponthe turkeys. Eversince the coming
to the New World of the very first explorers,
who landed in those parts where wild turkeys
are to be found, there has been no cessation of
verbal narratives, casual notices, and appear-
ance of elegant literature relating to the mem-
bers of this group. We have not far to seek for
the reason for all this, inasmuch as a wild turkey
is a very large and unusually handsome bird,
commanding the attention of any one who
sees it. Its habits, extraordinary behavior, and
notes render it still more deserving of considera-
tion; and to all this must be added the fact that
wild turkeys are magnificent game birds; the

hunting of them peculiarly attractive to the
26

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC 27

sportsman; while, finally, they are easily domes-
ticated and therefore have a great commercial
value everywhere.

The extensive literature on wild and domesti-
cated turkeys is by no means confined to the Eng-
lish language, for we meet with many references
to these fowls, together with accounts and descrip-
tions of them, distributed through prints and
publications of various kinds, not only in Latin,
but in the Scandinavian languages as well as
in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and doubt-
less in others of the Old World. Some of these
accounts appeared as long ago as the early part
of the sixteenth century, or perhaps even ear-
lier; for it is known that Grijalva discovered
Mexico in 1518, and Gomarra and Hernandez,
whose writings appeared soon afterward, gave,
among their descriptions of the products of that
country, not only the wild turkey, but, in the
ease of the latter writer, referred to the wild as
well as to the domesticated form, making the dis-
tinction between the two.
> In order, however, to render our history of
the wild turkeys in America as complete as pos-

28 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

sible, we must dip into the past many centuries
prior to the discovery of the New World by
those early navigators. We must go back to the
time when it was questionable whether man ex-
isted upon this continent at all. In other words,
we must examine and describe the material rep-
resenting our extinct turkeys handed us by the
paleontologists, or the fossilized remains of the
prehistoric ancestors of the family, of which
we have at hand a few fragments of the greatest
value. These I shall refer to but briefly for
several reasons. In the first place, their tech-
nical descriptions have already appeared in
several widely known publications, and in the
second, what I have here to say about them is in
a popular work, and technical descriptions are
not altogether in place. Finally, such material as
we possess is very meagre in amount indeed, and
such parts of it as would in any way interest the
general reader can be referred to very briefly.
The fossil remains of a supposed extinct tur-
key, described by Marsh! as Meleagris altus from
_ Marsh, 0. C. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1870, p. 11. Also Am.

Jour. Sci., [V, 1872, 260. Ina letter to me under date of April 25, 1912,
Dr. George F. Eaton of the Museum of Yale University, New Haven,

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC 29

the Post-pliocene of New Jersey, is, from the
literature and notices on the subject, now
found to be but a synonym of the Meleagris
superba of Cope from the Pleistocene of
New Jersey. At the present writing I have
before me the type specimen of Meleagris
altus of Marsh, for which favor I am in-
debted to Dr. Charles Schuchert of the Pea-
body Museum of Yale University. My account
of it will be published in another connection
later on.

Some years after Professor Marsh had de-
scribed this material as representing a species to
which I have just said he gave the specific name
of altus, it would appear that I did not fully
concur in the propriety of doing so, as will be
seen from a paper I published on the subject
Conn., writes that “Type of Meleagris alius is in Peabody Museum with
other types of fossil Meleagris.’ At the present writing I am not in-
formed as to what these “other types’ are; and I am of the opinion that
the museum referred to by Doctor Eaton has no fossil meleagrine material
that has not, up to date, been described. See also Amer. Nat., Vol.
IV, p. 317.

Cope, E. D. “Synopsis of Extinct Batrachia, etc.” Meleagris
superbus (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., N.S. XIV, Pt. 1, 1870,239). Along
and careful description of M. superbus [superba] will be found here,
where the species is said to be “established on a nearly perfect right tibia,

an imperfect left one, a left femur with the condyles broken off, and a
right coracoid bone, with the distal articular extremity imperfect.”

30 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

about fifteen years ago.! This will obviate the
necessity of saying anything further in regard to
M. superba.

So far as my knowledge carries me, this
leaves but two other fossil wild turkeys of
this country, both of which have been de-
scribed by Professor Marsh and_ generally
recognized. These are Meleagris antiqua in
1871, and Meleagris celer in 1872. My com-
ments on both of these species will be found
in the American Naturalist for July, 1897, on
pages 648, 649.’

1Shufeldt, R. W., “On Fossil Bird-Bones Obtained by Expeditions of
the University of Pennsylvania from the Bone Caves of Tennessee.”
The Amer. Nat., July, 1897, pp. 645-650. Among those bones were
many belonging to M. g. silvestris. Professor Marsh declined to allow
me to even see the fossil bones upon which he based the several alleged
new species of extinct Weleagridae which he had described.

*Marsh, O. C. [Title on page 120.] Meleagris antiqua. Amer.
Journ. Sci., ser. 3, I, 1871, 126. From this I extract the following
description, to wit :—

Meleagris antiquus, sp. nov.

A large Gallinaceous Bird, approaching in size the wild Turkey, and
probably belonging to the same group, was a contemporary of the Oreo-
don and its associates during the formation of the Miocene lake deposits
east of the Rocky Mountains. ‘The species is at present represented only
by afew fragments of the skeleton, but among these isa distal end of a
right humerus, with the characteristic portions all preserved. The speci-
men agrees in its main features with the humerus of Meleagris gallopavo
Linn., the most noticeable points of difference being the absence in the
fossil species of the broad longitudinal ridge on the inner surface of the
distal end, opposite the radial condyle, and the abrupt termination of the
ulnar condyle at its outer, superior border.

PLate I

Types: M. antiqua; M. celer. Marsh

Fig. 1. Anconal aspect of the distal extremity of the right humerus of ‘‘Meleagris
antiquus’’ of Marsh. Fig. 2. Palmar aspect of the same specimen as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 3. Anterior aspect of the proximal moiety of the left tarsometatarsus of Meleagris
celer of Marsh. Fig. 4. Posterior aspect of the same fragment of bone shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. Outer aspect of the same fragment of bone shown in Figs. 3 and 4. All figures
aay ale Reproduced from photographs made direct from the specimens by Dr. R.

. Shufeldt.

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC oi

It will be noted, then, that Meleagris antiqua
of Marsh is practically represented by the wmper-
fect distal extremity of a right humerus; and that
Meleagris celer of the same paleontologist from
the Pleistocene of New Jersey is said to be repre-
sented by the bones enumerated in a foregoing
footnote. In this connection let it be borne in
mind that, while I found fossil specimens of
Meleagris g. silvestris in the bone caves of Ten-
nessee, I found no remains of fossil turkeys in
Oregon, from whence some classifiers of fossil

Measurements.
Greatest diameter of humerus at distal end . . 12. lines
Transverse diameter of ulnar condyle . . . . 3.4 a
Wertical diameter of ‘same. = 3°... rN
Transverse diameter of radial condyle . . . . 4.25 0

The specimens on which this species is based were discovered by Mr.
G. B. Grinnell of the Yale party, in the Miocene clay deposits of north-
ern Colorado.”

Ibid. IV, 1872, 261. [Titleonp. 256.]| ‘“‘Art XXX. Notice of some
new Tertiary and Post-Tertiary Birds.” From this article by Pro-
fessor Marsh I extract the following:

Meleagris celer, sp. nov.

A much smaller species of the same genus is represented by two tibiae
and the proximal half of a tarso-metatarsal, which were found together,
and probably belonged to the same individual. ‘The tibia is slender, and
has the shaft less flattened from before backward than in the last species
[M. altus]. The distal half of the shaft has its anterior face more dis-
tinctly polygonal. From the head of the tibia a sharp ridge descends a
short distance on the posterior face, where it is met by an external ridge
of similar length. The tarso-metatarsal has the external ridge of the
proximal end more prominent, and the posterior tendinal crest more os-
sified than in the larger species. The remains preserved indicate a bird
about half the bulk of M. altus.

32 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
birds state that M. antiqua came (A. O. U. Check-
Listed, 1910, p. 388"). |

On the 19th of April 1912, I communicated
by letter with Dr. George F. Eaton, of the
Museum of Yale University, in regard to the
fossils described by Marsh of M. antiqua and

Measurements. .
Length of tibia . . wg ee SS aeecreraD
Greatest diameter of proximal end... ae i
Transverse diameter of shaft at middle . .. . 9.6 =
Transverse diameter of distal end . . . . . 16.5 ae
Antero-posterior diameter of outer condyle . . . 10. i
Transverse diameter of proximal end of tarso-metatarsus 19. rs
Antero-posterior diameter . . og te a ae a

On page 260 is described Meleagris ‘altus:

Meleagris altus [Marsh]. Proc. Phila. Acad. 1870, p. 11, and Amer.
Nat., Vol. IV, p. 317. (M. superbus Cope, Synopsis Extinct Ba-
trachia ete., p. 239.)

(Followed by description and the following measurements of the
fossil bones.)

Length (approx.) of humerus. ; . . .. 2* 2.5905 ¢om
Greatest diameter proximal end. . . . . . = 42@. ze
Greatest, diameter, distal end. 5 20. 2" (a) aoe Si
Length of coracoid . a) ors
Transverse diameter of lower end . . . . . 87.5 a
Length of femur. . Peer er a Stl). a
Transverse diameter of distal end . . . . . 3i. a
Length of tibia . al 5 0) ene rae oe ae
Transverse diameter of distal end . . . . . 18. .
Length of tarso-metatarsus . .) ela eee e
Transverse diameter of proximal ‘end... oss a
Distance from proximal end to spur. . 110. +

(A number of differencesas compared with existing species are enumerated)

*Shufeldt, R. W. A Study of the Fossil Avifauna of the Equus Beds
of the Oregon Desert. Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., ser. 2, IX, 1892,
pp. 389-425. Pls. XV-XVII. Advance abstracts of this memoir were
published in The Auk (Vol. VIII, No. 4, October, 1891, pp. 365-368).
The American Naturalist (Vol. XXV, No. 292, Apr., 1891, pp. 303-306,
and ibid No. 297, Sept., 1891, pp. 818-821) and elsewhere. Although
no turkeys were discovered among these fossils, there were bones present
of extinct grouse.

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC 33

M. celer, with the view of borrowing them for
examination. Dr. Eaton, with great kindness,
at once interested himself in the matter, and
wrote me (April 20, 1912) that “‘ We have a wise
rule forbidding us to lend type material, but I
shall be glad to ask Professor Schuchert to make
an exception in your favor.” In due time
Prof. Charles Schuchert, then curator of the
Geological Department of the Peabody Mu-
seum of Natural History of Yale University,
wrote me on the subject (May 2, 1912), and
with marked courtesy granted the request
made of him by Dr. Eaton, and forwarded me
the type specimen of Marsh of M. antiqua and
M. celer by registered mail. They were received
on the 3rd of May, 1912, and I made negatives
of the two specimens on the same day. It
affords me pleasure to thank both Professor
Schuchert and Dr. Eaton here for the unusual
privilege I enjoyed, through their assistance, in
the loan of these specimens;! also Dr. James FE.

1Upon examining this material after it came into my hands, I found
first, in a small tube closed with a cork, the distal end of the right hum-
erus of some large bird. The cork was marked on the side, “Type,” on

top “Mel. antiquus. G. Ranch. Col. G. B. G. August 6, 1870.’ The
specimen is pure white, thoroughly fossilized, and imperfect. The

34 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Benedict, Curator of Exhibits of the U.S. Na-
tional Museum, and Dr. Charles W. Richmond of
the Divison of Birds of that institution, for their
kindness in permitting me to examine and make
notes upon a mounted skeleton of a wild turkey
(M. g. silvestris) taken by Prof. S. F. Baird at
Carlisle, Penn., many years ago. Mr. Newton
P. Scudder, librarian of the National Museum,
likewise has my sincere thanks for his kindness
in placing before me the many volumes on the
history of the turkey I was obliged to consult
in connection with the preparation of this
chapter.

From what has already been set forth above, it
is clear that Marsh’s specimen (for he attached
but scant importance to the other fragments with
it), upon which he based “ Meleagris antiquus”’
was not taken in Oregon, but in Colorado.!
Feel ae the two specimens received is in a small pasteboard -box,
marked on top “Birds. Meleagris, sp. nov. N. J., Meleagrops celer
(type).” The specimen is the imperfect, proximal moiety of the left
tarso-metatarsus of a rather large bird. It is thoroughly fossilized,
earth-brown in color, with the free borders of the proximal end con-

siderably worn off. On its postero-external aspect, written in ink, are
the words “ M. celer.”’

1 In making this statement, I take the words of Dr. Geo. Bird Grin-
nell as written on the cork of the bottle containing the specimen to be
correct, and not the locality given elsewhere. (The A. O. U. Check-List
of North American Birds. Third Edition, 1910, p. 388.) Moreover, the

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC 35

Both of these fossils I have very critically com-
pared with the corresponding parts of the bones
represented in each case in the skeleton of an
adult wild turkey (Meleagris g. silvestris) in the
collection of mounted bird skeletons in the U. 5.
National Museum.

Taking everything at my command into con-
sideration as set forth above, as well as the extent
of Professor Marsh’s knowledge of the osteology
of existing birds — not heretofore referred to —
I am of the opinion, that in the case of his Melea-
gris antiqua, the material upon which it is based
is altogether too fragmentary to pronounce,
with anything like certainty, that it ever be-
longed to a turkey at all. In the first place, it
is a very wmperfect fragment (Plate 1, Figs. 1
and 2); in the second, it does not typically pre-
sent the “characteristic portions” of that end
of the humerus in a turkey, as Professor Marsh
states it does. Thirdly, the distal end of the
humerus is by no means a safe fragment of the
skeleton of hardly any bird to judge from.

specimen is pure white, which is characteristic of the fossils found in
the White River region of Colorado. This is confirmed by Professor
Marsh in his article quoted above.

36 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Finally, it is questionable whether the genus
Meleagris existed at all, as such, at the time the
‘*Miocene clay deposits of northern Colorado”
were deposited.

That this fragment may have belonged to the
skeleton of some big gallinaceous fowl the size
of an adult existing Meleagris — and long ago
extinct — I in no way question; but that it was
a true turkey, I very much doubt.

Still more uncertain is the fragment repre-
senting Meleagris celerof Marsh. (Platel, Figs.
3-5.) The tibia mentioned I have not seen,
and of them Professor Marsh states that they
only “probably belonged to the same indi-
vidual’ (see antea). As to this proximal moiety
of the tarso-metatarsus, it is essentially dif-
ferent from the corresponding part of that bone
in Meleagris g. silvestris. In it the hypotarsus
is twice grooved, longitudinally; whereas in WM.
g. silvestris there is but a single median groove.
In the latter bird there is a conspicuous osseous
ridge extending far down the shaft of the bone,
it being continued from the internal, thickened
border of the hypotarsus. This ridge is only

THE TURKEY PREHISTORIC Bh

andicated on the fossil bone, having either been
proken off or never existed at all. In any event
it is not present in the specimen. ‘The general
facies of the fossil is quite different from that
part of the tarso-metatarsus in an existing wild
turkey, and to me it does not seem to have come
from the skeleton of the pelvic limb of a mele-
agrine fowl at all. It may have belonged to a
bird of the galline group, not essentially a tur-
key; while on the other hand it may have been
from the skeleton of some large wader, not nec-
essarily related to either the true herons or storks.
Some of the herons, for example, (Ardea) have
“the hypotarsus of the tarso-metatarsus three-
crested, graduated in size, the outer being the
smaller; the tendinal grooves pass between
them.’ As just stated, the hypotarsus of the
tarso-metatarsus in Meleagris celer of Marsh is
three-crested, and the tendinal grooves pass be-
tween them. In M. g. silvestris this process is
but two-crested and the median groove passes
between them.

1Shufeldt,R. W. “Osteological Studies of the Subfamily Ardeinz.”
oun Comp. Med. and Surg.,Vol. X, No. 4, Phila., October, 1889, pp.
287-317.

38 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

The sternum of the turkey, if we have it
practically complete, is one of the most char-
acteristic bones of the skeleton; but Professor
Marsh had no such material to guide him when
he pronounced upon his fossil turkeys. Had I
made new species, based on the fragments of
fossil long bones of all that I have had for exami-
nation, quite a numerous little extinct avifauna
would have been created.

““Ttisoftena positive detriment toscience,in my
opinion, to create new species of fossil birds upon
the distal ends of long bones, and surely no assist-
ance whatever to those who honestly endeavor to
gain some idea of the avian species that really
existed during prehistoric times.”

iShufeldt, R. W. Amer. Nat., July, 1897, p. 648. I have had no
occasion to change my opinion since.

CHAPTER IV

THE TURKEY HISTORIC

AVING disposed of such records as we
Hi of the extinct ancestors of the

American turkeys — the so-to-speak
meleagrine records — we can now pass to what
is, comparatively speaking, the modern history
of these famous birds, although some of this
history is already several centuries old.

We have seen in the foregoing chapter that
all the described fossil species of turkeys have
been restricted to the genus Meleagris, and this
is likewise the case with the existing species and
subspecies. Right here I may say that the
word Meleagris is Greek as well as Latin, and
means a guinea-fowl. ‘This is due to the fact
that when turkeys were first described and
written about they were, by several authors of
the early times, strangely mixed up with those

African forms, and the two were not entirely
39

40 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

disentangled for some time, as we shall see
further on in this chapter. In modern orni-
thology, however, the generic name of Meleagris
has been transferred from the guinea-fowls to
the turkeys. These last, as they are classified
in “The A. O. U. Check-List of the American
Ornithologists’ Union,” which is the latest
authoritative word upon the subject, stand as

follows:
Family MeLteacrip®. ‘Turkeys.
Genus Mer.umacris Linneus. |

Meleagris Linneeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, 1, 1758, 156.
Type, by subs. desig., Meleagris gallopavo Linnzeus
(Gray, 1840).

Meleagris gallopavo (Linnzeus).

Range.— Eastern and south central United States,
west to Arizona and south to the mountains of Oaxaca.

a. [Meleagris gallopavo gallopavo. Extralimital.]

b. Meleagris gallopavo silvestris Vieillot. Wild Tur-
key [310a].

Meleagris silvestris Vieillot Nouv., Dict. d’Hist. Nat.,
IX, 1817, 447.

Range. — Eastern United States from Nebraska, Kan-
sas, western Oklahoma, and eastern Texas east to central
Pennsylvania, and south to the Gulf coast; formerly
north to South Dakota, southern Ontario, and southern
Maine.

c. Meleagris gallopavo merriami Nelson. Merriam’s
Turkey [310].

THE TURKEY HISTORIC Al

Meleagris gallopavo merriami Nelson, Auk, XVII,
April, 1900, 120.

(47 miles southwest of Winslow, Arizona.)

Range.— Transition and Upper Sonoran zones in the
mountains of southern Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,
western Texas, northern Sonora, and Chihuahua.

d. Meleagris gallopavo osceola Scott. Florida Tur-
key [3100].

Meleagris gallopavo osceola Scott, Auk, VII, Oct.,
1890, 376. (Tarpon Springs, Florida.)

Range. — Southern Florida.

e. Meleagris gallopavo intermedia Sennett. Rio
Grande Turkey [310c].

Meleagris gallopavo intermedia Sennett. Bull. U. S.
Geol. & Geog. Surv. Terr., V, No. 3, Nov., 1879, 428.
(Lomita, Texas.)

Range.— Middle northern Texas south to northeastern
Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.

The presenting of the above list here does
away with giving, in the history of the wild tur-
keys, any of the very numerous changes that
have taken place through the ages which led up
toits adoption. The discussion of these changes,
as a part of meleagrine history, would make an
octavo volume cf two hundred pages or more.

It may be said here, however, that the word
gallopavo is from the Latin, gallus a cock, and
pavo a peafowl, while the meanings of the several

42 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

words silvestris, merriami, osceola, and intermedia
are self-evident and require no definitions.

Audubon, who gives the breeding range of the
wild turkey as extending “‘from Texas to Mas-
sachusetts and Vermont” (Vol. V., p. 56), says
of them in his long account: “I have ascertained
that some of these valuable birds are still to be
found in the states of New York, Massachusetts,
Vermont, and Maine. In the winter of 1832-33,
I purchased a few fine males in the city of Bos-
ton’’; and further, ““At the time when I removed
to Kentucky, rather more than a fourth of a cen-
tury ago, turkeys were so abundant that the
price of one in the market was not equal to that
of a common barn-fowl now. I have seen them
offered for the sum of three pence each, the birds
weighing from ten to twelve pounds. A first-
rate turkey, weighing from twenty-five to thirty
pounds avoirdupois, was considered well sold
when it brought a quarter of a dollar.’”?

From these remarks we may imagine how
plentiful wild turkeys must have been on the
~ tAudubon, J. J. “The Birds of America,” Vol. V, pp. 54-55. Even

in Audubon’s time the wild turkeys were being rapidly exterminated.
At this time M. g. silvestris does not occur east of central Pennsylvania.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 43
North American continent, when Aristotle wrote
his work “On Animals,’ over three hundred
years before the birth of Christ, upward of
twenty-three centuries ago! A good many
changes can take place in the avifauna of a
country in that time. a

How these big, gallinaceous fowls ever got the
name of “turkey” has long been a matter of dis-
pute; and not a few ornithologists and writers
of note in the 16th and 17th centuries errone-
ously conceived that the term had something to
do either with the Turks or their country. But
this idea has now been entirely abandoned, for it
has become quite clear that, during the times
mentioned, the turkey was strangely confused
with the guinea-fowl, a bird to which the name
turkey was originally applied.

Later on, both these birds became more abun-
dant, as more of them were domesticated and
reared in captivity, and the fact was gradually
realized that they were entirely different species
of fowls. During these times, the word turkey
was finally applied only to the New World
species, and the West African form was there-

44 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

after called “‘Guinea-fowl.”! After the word
turkey was more generally applied to the. bird
now universally so known, some believe that
there was another reason as to how it cameabout,
and this “possibly because of its reputed call-
note,’ says Newton, “to be syllabled turk, turk,
turk, whereby it may be almost said to have
named itself.” (Notes and Queries, ser. 6, III,
pp. 23, 369.)?

So much for the origin of the name turkey; and

when one comes to search through the literature

devoted to this fowl to ascertain who first de-
scribed the wild species, the opinion seems to be

*Columella. (De Re Rustica, VII, cap.2.) Edwards (Gleanings, I,
p. 269). 1760? |

"Newton, Alfred. A Dictionary of Birds. (Assisted by Hans Gadow,
with contributions from Richard Lydekker, Chas. S. Roy, and Robert
W. Shufeldt, M.D.) Pt. IV, 1896, p. 994. The quotation is from the
Art. “Turkey,” and in further reference to its name, Professor New-
ton remarks, “The French Cog and Poule d’ Inde (whence Dindon)
involve no contradiction, looking to the general idea of what India then
was. One of the earliest German names for the bird, Kalekuttisch Hiim
(whence the Scandinavian Kalkun) must have arisen through some mis-
take at present inexplicable; but this does not refer, as is generally sup-
posed, to Calcutta, but to Calicut on the Malabar coast (Notes and
Queries, ser. 6, X, p. 185).

“But even Linnseus could not clear himself of the confusion, and,
possibly following Sibbald, unhappily misapplied the name Meleagris,
undeniably belonging to the guinea-fowl, as the generic term for what
we now know as the turkey, adding thereto as its specific designation
the word gallopavo, taken from the Gallopavus of Gesner, who, though not
wholly free from error, was less mistaken than some of his contemporaries
and even successors.”

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AJYIN} PyIM V JO [NYS v JO MIA JOLIOdNS °g ‘SIY “‘aAOGv WOIF UVAS ‘9g “SI UL UMOYS ][NYS ay} Jo a[qrpuvut io Mef IaMOT LZ “BLY

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THE TURKEY HISTORIC AD

pretty general that this was done by Oviedo in
the thirty-sixth chapter of his “SSummario de la
Natural Historia de las Indias,” which it is
stated appeared about the year 1527.

Professor Spencer F. Baird, apparently quot-
ing Martin, says: “Oviedo speaks of the turkey
as a kind of peacock abounding in New Spain,
which had already in 1526 been transported in a
domestic state to the West India Islands and
the Spanish Main, where it was kept by the
Christian colonists.’’!

In an elegant and comprehensive article on
“The Wild Turkey,” Bennett states: “Oviedo,
whose Natural History of the Indies contains the
earliest description extant of the bird, and whose
acquaintance with the animal productions of the
newly discovered countries was surprisingly ex-
tensive. He speaks of it as a kind of Peacock

1Baird, Spencer F. The Origin of the Domestic Turkey. Rep. of
the Comm. of Agricul. for the year 1866. Washington Gov. Printing
Office, 1867, pp. 288-290. In this article Professor Baird undertakes to
demonstrate “‘that there are two species of wild turkey in North Amer-
ica; one confined to the more éastern and southern United States, the
other to the southern Rocky Mountains and adjacent part of Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona; that the latter extends along eastern Mexico as far
south at least as Orizaba, and that it is from this Mexican species and
not from that of eastern North America that this domestic turkey is

derived.” [Reprinted in Hist. of N. Amer. Birds, III, p. 411, foot-
note.]

46 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

found in New Spain, of which a number had been
transported to the islands of the Spanish Main,
and domesticated in the houses of the Christian
inhabitants. His description is exceedingly ac-
curate, and proves that before the year 1526,
when his work was published at Toledo, the
turkey was already reduced to a state of Do-
mestication.””?

Again, in a very elaborate and now thoroughly
classical contribution, Pennant states: ‘““The
first precise description of these birds is given
by Oviedo, who, in 1525, drew up a summary of
his greater work, the History of the Indies, for
the use of his monarch Charles V.*_ This learned
man had visited the West Indies and its islands
in person, and payed particular regard to the
natural history. It appears from him, that the
Turkey was in his days an inhabitant of the

greater islands and of the main-land. He speaks

1Bennett, E. T. ‘“‘The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological —
Society delineated.’ [The Drawings by William Harvey; Engr. by
Branston and Wright, assisted by other artists] London, 1835. Further
on, this article will be quoted on other points, as it treats of the entire
history of the wild turkey.

2In the original work, here quoted, names of persons and some
other nouns are printed in capitals —an old custom which the pub-
lishers of the present work decided not to follow. My MS. was made
to agree with the original in all particulars. R. W.S.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC AT

of them as Peacocks; for being a new bird to
him, he adopts that name from the resemblance
he thought they bore to the former. ‘But,’
says he, “the neck is bare of feathers, but cov-
ered with a skin which they change after their
phantasieintodiversecolours. They havea horn
(in the Spanish Pecon corto) as it were on their
front, and hairs on the breast.’ (in Purchas,
III, 995.) He describes other birds which he
also calls Peacocks. They are of the galli-
naceous genus, and known by the name of Curas-
sao birds, the male of which is black, the female
ferruginous.’”!

*Pennant, Thos. Esqr. F. R. S. “An Account of the Turkey.”
Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society of London. Vol. LXXI for the year
1781. London [Art.] No. 1. Communicated by Joseph Banks, Esaqr.,
P.R.S. Read December 21, 1781, pp. 77, 78.

Pennant’s contribution fills a large place in the literature of the wild
turkey, and further on I shail take occasion to quote still more extensively
from it. It starts in by giving in brief the characters of the turkey, and
in describing the wild turkey he cites the previous works of Josselyn
(Voyage); Clayton (Virginia); Catesby, Belon, Gesner, Aldrovandus,
Ray, Buffon, and others. He gives a “Description” of the bird, espe-
cially the “Tail,” and adds that a “White Turkey” — “‘A most beautiful
kind has of late been introduced into England of a snowy whiteness, finely |
contrasting with its red head. These I think came from Holland, prob-
ably bred from an accidental white pair; and from them preserved pure
from any dark or variegated birds.” (p. 68.)

He presents variation in “Size,” quoting Josselyn (New-Eng. Rari-
ties); Lawson (History of Carolina); and Clayton (Phil. Trans.). Also
their ‘‘ Manners’; their being “‘Gregarious”’; “Their Haunts,’’ “ Place,’
and much else, having more to do with their habits than their history,
and consequently not levitimately to be touched upon in this chapter.

48 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Dr. Coues, who has also written an article on
the history of the wild turkey, which, by the
way, is mainly composed of a lengthy quotation
from the above cited article of Bennett’s, says:
**Linneeus, however, knew perfectly well that
the turkey was American. He says distinctly:
‘Habitat in America septentrionali,’ and quotesas
his first reference (after Fn. Soec. 198), the Gallo-
pavo sylvestris nove anglie, or New England
Wild Turkey of Ray. Brisson distinguished the
two perfectly, giving an elaborate description,
a copious synonomy, and a good figure of each;
and from about this time it may be considered
that the history of the two birds, so widely di-
verse, was finally disentangled, and the proper
habitat ascribed to each.” (Refers to first de-
scribers of the pintado and turkey.)'

So much for the earliest describers of the wild

*Coues, Elliott. ‘‘ History of the Wild Turkey.” Forest and Stream,
XI, January 1, 1879, p. 947.

Another work I have examined on this part of our subject is D. G.
Elhot’s ““Game Birds of America,”’ and the turkey cuts in this book were
copied by Coues into the last edition of his ““Key to North American
Birds,” and very poorly done. Dr. D. G. Elliot’s superb work, illus-
trated by magnificent colored plates by the artist Wolfe, on “A Mono-
graph of the Phasianide or the Family of the Pheasants,’ I have not
examined. ‘The copy in the Library of Congress was out ona loan when

I made application for it. Several plates of different species of wild
turkeys are to be found in it.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 49

turkey, and I shall now pass on to the general
history of the bird, and, through presenting what
has been collected for us by the best authors on
the subject, endeavor to show how, after the
wild turkey was found in America by different
navigators and explorers, it was brought, from
time to time, to several of the countries of the Old
World — chiefly Spain and Great Britain — from
whence it probably was taken, upon different
occasions, into other countries of the continent.

Wild turkeys have always been easy to cap-
ture, and we are aware of the fact that they are
quite capable of crossing the Atlantic on ship-
board in comfort and safety, landing in as good
a condition —if properly cared for during the
voyage — as when they left America. Josselyn
(1672) in his New England Rarities (p. 9) has not
a little to say on this point.

As already stated, the literature and _ bibli-
ography of the turkey is quite sufficient to fill a
good many volumes. Nothing of imporance,
however, has been added to it, gainsaying what
we now have as a truthful account of the bird’s
introduction into Europe. Indeed Buffon (Ois,

50 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

II, pp. 132-162), Broderip (Zool. Recreat. pp.
120-137), Pennant (Arct. Zool. pp. 291-300), and
others, practically cleared up nearly all the
points on this part of the turkey’s history, mak-
ing but a few statements that are not wholly
reliable and worthy of acceptance. Pennant
very properly ignored in his work Barrington’s
essay (Miscellanies, pp. 127-151) in which the
latter attempted to prove that turkeys were
known before America was discovered, and that
they were shipped over there subsequently to
its discovery!

I have already cited above Pennant’s article
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London (1781), and quoted from it to
some extent. It is one of the standard writings
on the wild turkey invariably referred to by
all authors when writing on the history of that
bird. As it is only accessible to the few, and so
full of reliable information, I propose to give
here, somewhat in full, those paragraphs in it
having special reference to the historical side of
our subject, and in doing so I retain the spelling
and composition of the original production.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 51

‘“Belon, (‘Hist. des Oys.,’ 248) the earliest of
those writers,” says Pennant, “‘who are of the
opinion that these birds were natives of the old
world, founds his notion on the description of
the Guinea-fowl, the Meleagrides of Strabo,
Athenzeus, Pliny, and others of the ancients.
I rest the refutation on the excellent account
given by Athenzus, taken from Clytus Milesius,
a disciple of Aristotle, which can suit no other
than thatfowl. ‘‘ They want,” says he, ‘‘ natural
affection towards their young; their head is
naked, and on the top is a hard round body like
a peg or nail; from their cheeks hangs a red piece
of flesh like a beard. It has no wattles like the
common poultry. The feathers are black, spot-
ted with white. They have no spurs; and both
sexes are so alike as not to be distinguished by the
sight.” Varro (Lib. III. c.9.) and Pliny (Lib. X.
c. 26) take notice of the spotted plumage and
the gibbous substance on the head. Athenzus
is More minute, and contradicts every character
of the Turkey, whose females are remarkable for
their natural affection, and differ materially in
form from the males, whose heads are destitute

52 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
of the callous substance, and whose heels (in the
males) are armed with spurs.”

*‘Aldrovandus, who died in 1605, draws his
arguments from thesame source as Belon; I there-
fore pass him by, and take notice of the greatest
of ournaturalists Gesner (Av. 481.), who falls into
a mistake of another kind, and wishes the Turkey
to be thought a native of India. He quotes
Adlian for that purpose, who tells us, ‘That in
India are very large poultry not with combs, but
with various coloured crests interwoven like
flowers, with broad tails either bending or dis-
played in a circular form, which they draw along
the ground as peacocks do when they do not
erect them; and that the feathers are partly of a
gold colour, partly blue, and of an emerald col-
our. (De Anim. lib. XVI. c, 2.).

‘This in all probability was the same bird with
the Peacock Pheasant of Mr. Edwards, Le Baron
de Trbet of M. Brisson, and the Pavo bicalcaratus
of Linneus. I have seen this bird living. It
has a crest, but not so conspicuous as that de-
scribed by Allian; but it has not those striking
colours in form of eyes, neither does it erect its

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 53
tail like the Peacock (Edw. IT. 67.), but trails it
like the Pheasant. The Catreus of Strabo (Lib.
XV. p. 1046) seems to be the same bird. He
describes it as uncommonly beautiful and spot-
ted, and very like a Peacock. The former au-
thor (De Anim. lib. XVII, c. 23.) gives more
minute account of this species, and under the
same name. He borrows it from Clitarchus,
an attendant of Alexander the Great in all his
conquests. It is evident from his description
that it was of this kind; and it is likewise prob-
able that it was the same with his large Indian
poultry before cited. He celebrates it also for
its fine note; but allowance must be made for the
credulity of Alan.

“The Catreus, or Peacock Pheasant, is a native
of Tibet, and in all probability of the north of
India, where Clitarchus might have observed it;
for the march of Alexander was through that
part which borders on Tibet, and is now known
by the name of Penj-ab or five rivers.”

“TI shall now collect from authors the several
parts of the world where Turkies are unknown
in the state of nature. Europe has no share in

54 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the question; it being generally agreed that they
are exotic in respect to that continent.”’

** Neither are they found in any part of Asia
Minor, or the Asiatic Turkey, notwithstanding
ignorance of their true origin first caused them
to be named from that empire. About Aleppo,
capital of Syria, they are only met with, do-
mesticated like other poultry. (Russel, 63).
In Armenia they are unknown, as well as in
Persia; having been brought from Venice by
some Armenian merchants into that empire
(Tavernier, 145), where they are still so scarce
as to be preserved among other rare fowls in the
royal menagery’’ (Bell’s Travels, I. 128).

“Du Halde acquaints us that they are not
natives of China; but were introduced there
from other countries. He errs from misin-
formation in saying that they are common in
india:

“T will not quote Gemelli Careri, to prove that
they are not found in the Philippine Islands,
because that gentleman with his pen traveled
round the world in his easy chair, during a very
long indisposition and confinement, (Sir James

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 55

Porter’s Obs. Turkey, I, 1, 321), in his native
country.”

*“But Dampier bears witness that none are
found in Mindanao” (Barbot in Churchill’s Coll.,
V.29).

The hot climate of Africa barely suffers these
birds to exist in that vast continent, except under
the care of mankind. Very few are found in
Guinea, except in the hands of the Europeans,
the negroes declining to breed any on account of
the great heats (Bosman, 229). Prosper Alpinus
satisfies us they are not found either in Nubia or
in Egypt. He describes the Meleagrides of the
ancients, and only proves that the Guinea hens
were brought out of Nubia, and sold at a great
price at Cairo (Hist. Nat. A’gypti. I, 201);
but is totally silent about the turkey of the
moderns.”

“Let me in this place observe that the Guinea
hens have long been imported into Britain.
They were cultivated in our farm-yards; for 1
discover in 1277, in the Grainge of Clifton, in the
parish of Ambrosden in Buckinghamshire, among
other articles, six Mutilones and six Africane

56 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

femine (Kennett’s Parochial Antiq. 287), for
this fowl was familiarly known by the names of
Afra Avis and Gallina Africana and Numida.
It was introduced into Italy from Africa, and
from Rome into our country. They were neg-
lected here by reason of their tenderness and
difficulty of rearing. We do not find them in
the bills of fare of our ancient feasts (neither in
that of George Nevil nor among the delicacies
mentioned in the Northumberland household
book begun in the beginning of the reign of Henry
VIII); neither do we find the turkey; which last
argument amounts almost to a certainty, that
such a hardy and princely bird had not found
its way to us. The other likewise was then
known by its classical name; for that judicious
writer Doctor Caius describes in the beginning
of the reign of Elizabeth, the Guinea-fowl, for the
benefit of his friend Gesner, under the name of
Meleagris, bestowed on it by Aristotle” (CAII
Opusc. 13. Hist. An., lib. VI. c. 2).

**Having denied, on the very best authorities,
that the Turkey ever existed as a native of the old
world, I must now bring my proofs of its being

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 57

only a native of the new, and of the period in
which it first made its appearance in Kurope.”’

“The next who speaks of them as natives of
the mainland of the warmer parts of America is
Francusco Fernandez, sent there by Philip I,
to whom he was physician. ‘This naturalist ob-
served them in Mexico. We find by him that
the name of the male was Huexolotl, of the fe-
male Cihuatotolin. He gives them the title of
Gallus Indicus and Gallo Pavo. The Indians,
as well as the Spaniards, domesticated these
useful birds. He speaks of the size by compari-
son, saying that the wild were twice the magni-
tude of the tame; and that they were shot with
arrows or guns (Hist. Av. Nov. Hisp. 27). I
cannot learn the time when Fernandez wrote.
It must be between the years 1555 and 1598, the
period of Philip’s reign.”’

*“Pedro de Ciesa mentions Turkies on the
Isthmus of Darien (Seventeen Years Travels,
20). Lery, a Portugese author. asserts that
they are found in Brazil, and gives them an
Indian name (In De Laet’s Descr. des Indes,
491); but since I can discover no traces of them

58 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

in that diligent and excellent naturalist Marc-
grave, who resided long in that country, I must
deny my assent. But the former is confirmed
by that able and honest navigator Dampier,
who saw them frequently, as well wild as tame,
in the province of Yucatan (Voyages, Vol II,
part II, pp. 65, 85, 114), now reckoned part
of the Kingdom of Mexico.”

‘In North America they were observed by the
very first discoverers. When Rene de Landon-
niere, patronized by Admiral Coligni, attempted
to form a settlement near where Charlestown
now stands, he met with them on his first
landing in 1564, and by his historian has repre-
sented them with great fidelity in the fifth plate
of the recital of his voyage (Debry): from his
time the witnesses to their being natives of the
continent are innumerable. They have been
seen in flocks of hundreds in all parts from
Louisiana even to Canada; but at this time are
extremely rare in a wild state, except in the more
distant parts, where they are still found in vast
abundance.”

“It was from Mexico or Yucatan that they

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 59

were first introduced into Europe; for it is certain
that they were imported into England as early
as the year 1524, the 15th of Henry VIII. (Ba-
ker’s Chr. Anderson’s Dict., Com. 1,354. Hack-
luyt, II, 165, makes their introduction about the
year 1532. Barnaby Googe, one of our early
writers on Husbandry, says they were not seen
here before 1530. He highly commends a Lady
Hales of Kent for her excellent management of
these fowl, p. 166.)

“We probably received them from Spain, with
_ which we had great intercourse till about that
time. They were most successfully cultivated
in our Kingdom from that period; insomuch
that they grew common in every farm-yard,
and became even a dish in our rural feasts by
the year 1585; for we may certainly depend on
the word of old Tusser in his Account of the
Christmas Husbandrie Fare.” (Five Hundred
Points of good Husbandrie, p. 57.)

** Beefe, Mutton, and Porke, shredpiece
of the best,
Pig, Veale, Goose, and Capon, and
Turkie well drest,

60 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Cheese, Apples and Nuts, jolie
carols to heare,
As then in the countrie, is counted
good cheare.”’

“‘But at this very time they were so rare in
France, that we are told, that the very first which
was eaten in that Kingdom appeared at the
nuptial feast of Charles TX. in 1570 (Anderson’s
Dict. Com. 1, 410).

A little later on Bartram in his travels in the
South published some notes on the wild turkey
[now M. g. osceola] as he found them in Florida
during the latter part of the eighteenth century.
The original edition of his book, which I have not
seen, appeared in 1791. I have, however, ex-
amined the edition of 1793, wherein on page 14
he says: “Our turkey of America is a very

different species from the Meleagris of Asia

*Pennant’s article is illustrated by a folding plate giving the leg of a
turkey bearing a supernumery toe situated in front of the tibiotarsus
with the claw above. The note in reference to it is here reproduced in
order to complete the article. Philos. Trans., Vol. LXXI, Ab. III,
p. 80:

“To this account I beg leave to lay before you the very extraordinary
appearance on the thigh of a turkey bred in my poultry yard, and which
was killed a few years ago for the table. The servant in plucking it was
very unexpectedly wounded in the hand. On examination the cause
appeared so singular that the bird was brought to me. I discovered
that from the thigh-bone issued a short upright process, and to that grew
a large and strong toe, with a sharp and crooked claw, exactly resembling
that of a rapacious bird.”

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THE TURKEY HISTORIC 61

and Europe; they are nearly thrice their size
and weight. I have seen several that have
weighed between twenty and thirty pounds,
and some have been killed that have weighed
near forty.”

And further on in the same work he adds
(Florida, p. 81]: “Having rested very well during
the night, I was awakened in the morning early
by the cheering converse of the wild turkey-
cocks (Meleagris occidentalis) saluting each
other from the sun-brightened tops of the lofty
Cupressus disticha and Magnolia grandiflora.
They begin at early dawn and continue till sun-
rise, from March to the last of April. The high
forests ring with the noise, like the crowing of
the domestic cock, of these social sentinels; the
watchword being caught and repeated, from
one to another, for hundreds of miles around,
insomuch that the whole country is for an hour
or more in a universal shout. A little after
sunrise, their crowing gradually ceases, they
quit then their high lodging places, and alight
on the earth, where, expanding their silver-bor-
dered train, they strut and dance round about

62 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the coy female, while the deep forests seem to

994

tremble with their shrill noise.
Another of the early writers (1806), who paid
some attention to the history and distribution of
the wild turkeys was Barton. I find the following
having reference to some of his observations, viz. :
‘‘A memoir has been read before the American
Philosophical Society in which the author has
shown that at least two distinct species of Mele-
agris, or turkey, are known within the limits of
North America. ‘These are the Meleagris gallo-.
pavo, or Common Domesticated Turkey, which
was wholly unknown in the countries of the Old
World before the discovery of America; and the
Common Wild Turkey of the United States, to
which theauthor of the memoir has given thename
Meleagris Palawa—one of its Indian names.

‘Bartram, William. ‘Travels through North and South Carolina,
Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive
Territories of the Muscogalges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country
of the Choctaws. Containing an account of the soil and Natural Pro-
ductions of those regions; together with observations on the manners of
the Indians. Embellished with Copper Plates.

The original edition of Bartram is cited in the Third Instalment of
American Ornithological Bibliography by Elliott Coues (the references
being pp. 83 and 290 bis). Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. Terr.
1879, p. 810, Govm’t Printing Office. It is here in this work of his that
Bartram designates the domestic turkey as Meleagris gallopavo, Linn.;
and thé wild turkey of this country (M. occidentalis) (p. 83) as M.
americanus (p. 290 bis).

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 63

“The same author has rendered it very prob-
able that this latter species was domesticated
by some of the Indian tribes living within the
present limits of the United States, before these
tribes had been visited by the Europeans. It
is certain, however, that the turkey was not do-
mesticated by the generality of the tribes, within
the limits just mentioned, until after the Euro-
peans had taken possession of the countries of
North America.’”!

Nine or ten years after Barton wrote, De Witt
Clinton, who was a candidate for President of
the United States in 1812, and a son of James
Clinton, was one of the writers of that time on
the wild turkey. He pointed out how birds,
the turkey included, change their plumage after
domestication, and, after giving what he knew
of the introduction of the turkey into Spain from
America and the West Indies, he adds: “‘ From
the Spanish turkey, which was thus spread over
1Barton,P.S. The Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, Vol.
II, 1806, pp. 162-164. Coues, in his Ornitho. Biblio., cited above, omits
brary; he also has the year wrong, giving 180 for 1806 —~ the latter

being correct. ‘The copy I consulted had no Pl. 1, with the article,
that I happened to see.

64 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Europe, we have obtained our domestic one.
The wild turkey has been frequently tamed, and
his offspring is of a large size.”’ (p. 126.)?

Nearly a quarter of a century after Clinton’s
article appeared, the anatomy of the wild turkey
began to attract some attention. Among the
first articles to appear on this part of the sub-
ject was one by the late Sir Richard Owen, who,
apparently taking the similarity of the vernac-
ular names into account, made anatomical
comparisons of the organs of smell in the tur-
' key and the turkey buzzard. Naturally, he
found them very different, — quite as different,
perhaps, as are the olfactory organs of an owl
and an ostrich, which I, for one, would not under-
take to make a comparison of for publication,
simply for the fact that in both these birds their
vernacular name begins with the letter o.?

Even twenty years after this paper appeared
there were those who still entertained doubts
as to the origin of the domesticated turkeys, and

believed that they had nothing to do with the

1Clinton, De Witt. Trans. Lit. and Philos. Soc., New York, 1, 1815,
pp. 21-184. Note S. pp. 125-128.

Owen, R. P. Z. 5S. V. 1837, pp. 34, 35.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 65

wild forms. Among the doubters, no one was
more prominent than Le Conte, who published
the following as his opinion at the time, stating:
‘The conviction that these two birds were really
distinct species has long existed in my mind.
More than fifty years ago, when I first saw a
Wild Turkey, I was led to conclude that one
never could have been produced from the other.”’
[Bases it on differences of external characters]
(p. 179), adding toward the close of his article:
“I defy any one to show a Turkey, even of the first
generation, produced from a pair hatched from the
eggs ofa wild hen,’ etc. “I repeat, contrary to
the assertions of many others, that no one has
ever succeeded in domesticating our Wild Tur-
key,’ ete. “Thoroughly believe that the tame
and wild bird are different species, and the latter
not the ancestor of the tame one.” (p. 181.)
*Le Conte, John. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci, of Phila. TX, 1857, pp.
179-181. The distinctive characters and the habits, as given by this
author of the wild and domesticated turkeys of the United States, are
doubtless of some value; but the deductions he draws from the com-
parisons made are, as we know, quite erroneous. I have not examined
the article by E. Roger in the Bull. Soc. Acclim. cited by Coues in his
Ornitho. Biblio. as having appeared in the “2c Ser. VII, 1870, pp. 264—
266.” Hither the year or the pagination, or both, of the citation is
wrong, and as many of the copies were out at the time of my search,

and the others distributed through several libraries, I failed to obtain
Hecke NV 9:

66 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

During the year 1856, the papers Gould pub-
lished on the wild turkeys attracted considerable
attention, and they have been widely quoted
since. In one of his first papers on the subject
he quotes from Martin the same paragraph which
Baird quoted in his article in the Report of the
Commissioner of Agriculture (1866 antea), while
Baird in his article misquotes Gould by saying
that the turkey was introduced into England in
1541; whereas Gould states the introduction
took place in 1524.!

‘Gould, J. 2. On a new turkey, Meleagris Mexicana. P. Z. S.
XXIV, 1856, pp. 61-63. (In his Ornithol. Bibliogr.) Coues remarks
upon-this as follows: “‘Subsequently determined to be the stock whence
the domestic bird descended, and hence a synonym of M. gallopavo,
Linn.”

This paper was extensively republished at the time, generally under
the title of ““A new species of turkey from Mexico” [all citing the P. Z.
S. article]. One journal quoted it as follows: ‘“‘Mr. Gould exhibited a
specimen of turkey which he had obtained in Mexico, and which dif-
fered materially from the wild turkey of the United States. At the
same time this turkey so closely resembled the domesticated turkey of
Kurope that he believed naturalists were wrong in attributing its origin
to the United States species. The present specimen was therefore a new
species, and he proposed to call it Meleagris Mexicana, which, if his
theory was correct, must henceforth be the designation of the common
turkey.” Amer. Jour. Sci. XXII, 1856, p. 139. Under the same title
this latter was reprinted in Edinb. New Philos. Journ. n. s., iv, 1856,
pp. 371, 372. See also Bryant, H. ““Remarks on the supposed new species
of turkey, Meleagris Mexicana, recently described by Mr. Gould.” Proc.
Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vi, 1857, pp. 158,159. ‘‘In the Proceedings of the
Zoological Society of London for 1856, page 61,” says Professor Baird,
“Mr. Gould characterizes as new a wild turkey from the mines of Real
del Norte, in Mexico, under the name of Meleagris Mexicana, and is the
first to suggest that it is derived from the domesticated bird, and not
from the common wild turkey of eastern North America, on which he

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 67

Before passing to the more recent literature on
these birds, and what I will have to say further
on about their comparative osteology and their
eggs, it will be as well to reproduce herea few more
statements made by Bennett, whose work, “‘ The
Gardens and Menagerie of the Zodlogical
Society Delineated,” I have already quoted.’

retains the name of M. gallopavo, of Linnzeus. He stated that the
peculiarities of the new species consist chiefly in the creamy white tips
of the tail feathers and of the upper tail coverts, with some other points
of minor importance. I suggest that the wild turkey of New Mexico,
as referred to by various writers, belongs to this new species, and not to
the M. gallopavo.” (loc. cit. p. 289.) Compare the above with what
Professor Baird states in the series of the Paczf. Railroad Reports, vol.,
ix, p. 618, with the remainder of the above quoted article, which is too
long to reproduce here.

‘Bennett, E. T. “Publ. with the sanction of the council under the
superintendence of the Secretary and Vice Secretary of the Society.
Birds. Vol. II. London, 1835, pp. 209-224.’ There is a very excel-
lent wood-cut of a turkey illustrating this article (left lateral view), of
which the author says: ‘Our own figure is taken from a young male, in
imperfect plumage, brought from America by Mr. Audubon. Another
specimen, in very brilliant plumage, but perhaps not purely wild, forms
a part of the Society's Museum”’ (p. 223). Bennett derived most of his
information about the habits of the wild turkey in nature “‘from an excel-
lent memoir by M. Charles Lucien Bonaparte, in his continuation of
Wilson’s American Ornithology.”

“Tn that work M. Bonaparte claims credit for having given the first
representation of the wild turkey;' and justly so, for the figures intro-
duced into a landscape in the account of De Laudonniere’s Voyage to
Florida in De Bry’s Collection, and that published by Bricknell in his
Natural History of North Carolina, cannot with certainty be referred
to the native bird. They are besides too imperfect to be considered as
characteristic representations of the species. Much about the same
time with M. Bonaparte’s figure appeared another, in M. Viellot’s Gai-
erie des Oiseaux, taken from a specimen in the Paris Museum.

1Newton disputes this and says: “In 1555 both sexes were characteristically
figured by Belon (Oiseaux, p. 249), as was the cock by Gesner in the same year,

and these are the earliest representations of the bird known to exist.’”’ (Dict.
of Birds, pp. 995, 996.)

68 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Bennett was also of the opinion that “Daines
Barrington was the last writer of any note who
denied the American origin of the turkey, and he
seems to have been actuated more by a love of
paradox than by any conviction of the truth of
his theory. Since the publication of his Mis-
cellanies, in 1781, the knowledge that has been
obtained of the existence of large flocks of tur-
keys, perfectly wild, clothed in their natural
plumage, and displaying their native habits,
spread over a large portion of North America,
together with the certainty of their non-existence
in a similar state in any other part of the globe,
have been admitted on all hands to be decisive
of the question.”” (p. 210).

I have already cited the evidence above to
prove that it was Oviedo who first published an
accurate description of the wild turkey, — his
work being published at Toledo in about the
year 1526, at which time the turkey had already

“Tt is somewhat singular that so noble a bird, and in America at least
by no means a rare one, should have remained unfigured until within five
years of the present time; all the plates in European works being mani-
festly derived from domestic specimens.” Bennett was aware that
Audubon’s Plates were published about this time, for he mentions them.
He also was well informed in matters regarding the crossing of the wild
male turkey with the female domestic one, and with the improvement
in the breed thus obtained.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 69

become domesticated. In other words, it was
the Spaniards who first reduced the bird to a
state of domestication, and very soon thereafter
it was introduced into England. Spain and Eng-
land were the great maritime nations of those
times, and this fact will amply account for the
early introduction of the bird into the latter
country. Singularly enough, however, we have
no account of any kind whatever through which
we can trace the exact time when this took place.
As others have suggested, it 1s just possible that
it may have been Cabot, the explorer of the then
recently discovered coasts of America, who first
transported wild turkeys into England. Baker
quotes the popular rhyme in his Chronicle:

“Turkeys, carps, hoppes, picarel and beer,
Came into England all in one year,”

that is, about 1524, or the 15th of the reign of
Henry VIITI.!

What was said by the German author Heres-
bach was translated by a writer on agricultural
iene tion states that this assertion “is wholly untrustworthy,” as
carp, pickerel (and other commodities) both lived in this country

(England) long before 1524, ‘‘if indeed they were not indigenous to it.”
(Dict. of Birds, p. 995).

70 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

subjects, Barnaby Googe, who published it in his
work. ‘This appeared in the year 1614, and he
refers to “those outlandish birds called Ginny-
Cocks and Turkey-Cocks,” stating that “before
the yeare of our Lord 1530 they were not seene
with us!”

Further, Bennett points out that ““A more
positive authority is Hakluyt, who in certain
instructions given by him to a friend at Con-
stantinople, bearing date of 1582, mentions,
among other valuable things introduced into
England from foreign parts, ‘Turkey-Cocks and
hennes’ as having been brought in “about fifty
years past.”” We may therefore fairly conclude
that they became known in this country about
the year 1530.

Guinea-fowls were extremely rare in England
throughout the sixteenth century, while tame
turkeys became very abundant there, forming
by no means an expensive dish at festivals, —
the first were obtained from the Levant, while
the latter were to be found in poultry yards
"No two authors seem to agree upon the exact date lente ieeia

was really introduced into England. Here Bennett states positively
1530; Professor Baird has it 1541; Alfred Newton 1524, and so on.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC Al

nearly everywhere. In one of the Constitutions
of Archbishop Cranmer it was ordered that of
fowls as large as swans, cranes, and turkey-
cocks, “‘there should be but one in a dish.’’!

When in 1555 the serjeants-at-law were
created, they provided for their inauguration
dinner two turkeys and four turkey chicks at a
cost each of only four shillings, swans and cranes
being ten, and half a crowneachforcapons. At
this rate, turkeys could not have been so very
scarce in those parts.” “Indeed they had be-
come so plentiful in 1573,’ continues Bennett,
“that honest Tusser, in his ‘Five Hundred
Points of Good Husbandrie,’’’ enumerates them
among the usual Christmas fare at a farmer’s
table, and speaks of them as “‘ill neighbors”’ both
to “peason’’ andtohops. (pp. 212, 213.)

‘““A Frenchman named Pierre Gilles has the
credit of having first described the turkey in this
quarter of the globe, in his additions to a Latin
translation of Aelian, published by him in 1535.
His description is so true to nature as to have

*Leland’s Collectanea, (1541).
*Dugdale. ‘‘Origines Juridiciales.”

72 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

been almost wholly relied on by every subsequent
writer down to Willoughby. He speaks of it as
a bird that he has seen; and he had not then been
further from his native country than Venice; and
states it to have been brought from the New
World.

“That turkeys were known in France at this
period is further proved by a passage in Cham-
pier’s ‘Treatise de Re Cibaria,’ published in
1560, and said to have been written thirty years
before. This author also speaks of them as hav-
ing been brought but a few years back from the
newly discovered Indian islands. From this
time forward their origin seems to have been
entirely forgotten, and for the next two centuries
we meet with little else in the writings of orni-
thologists concerning them than an accumula-
tion of citations from the ancients, which bear
no manner of relation tothem. In the year 1566
a present of twelve turkeys was thought not
unworthy of being offered by the municipality
of Amiens to their king, at whose marriage, in
1570, Anderson states in his History of Com-
merce, but we know not on what authority,

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 13

they were first eaten in France. Heresbach, as
we have seen, asserts that they were introduced
into Germany about 1530; and that a sumptu-
ary law made at Venice in 1557, quoted by Za-
noni, particularizes the tables at which they were
permitted to be served.

“So ungrateful are mankind for the most im-
portant benefits that not even a traditionary
vestige remains of the men by whom, or the coun-
try from whence, this most useful bird was
introduced into any European states. Little
therefore is gained from its early history beyond
the mere proof of the rapidity with which the
process of domestication may sometimes be ef-
fected.” (pp. 213, 214.)

Some ten or more years ago, at a time when I
was the natural history editor of Shooting and
Fishing, in New York City, I published a number
of criticisms and original articles upon turkeys,
both the wild and domesticated forms.}

OP cmeide RW. “The Ancestry of the American Turkey,” Shoot-
a PABA Dotiesteate, a Pinkeye? 7 Pea unite nn ea
331. “A Reply to the Turkey Hunters,” Ibid. No. 23, September 22,

1898, pp, 451, 452. “The Wild Turkey of Arizona,” Ibid. Vol. 32,
No. 5, New York, May 22, 1902, pp. 108,109.

74 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

About twelve years ago, Mr. Nelson contrib-
uted a very valuable article on wild turkeys,
portions of which are eminently worthy of the
space here required to quote them.’ He says
among other things in this article that ‘‘All recent
ornithologists have considered the wild turkey
of Mexico and the southwestern United States
(aside from M. gallopavo intermedia) as the
ancestor of the domesticated bird. This idea
is certainly erroneous, as is shown by the series of
specimens now in the collection of the Biolog-
ical Survey. When the Spaniards first entered
Mexico they landed near the present city of
Vera Cruz and made their way thence to the
City of Mexico.

‘‘At this time they found domesticated turkeys
among the Indians of that region, and within a
few years the birds were introduced into Spain.’
~4Nelson, E. W. “‘Description of a New Subspecies of Meleagris

gallopavo and proposed changes in the nomenclature of certain North
American birds.”” Auk, XVII, April 1900, pp. 120-123.

*Among the luxuries belonging to the high condition of civilization
exhibited by the Mexican nation at the time of the Spanish conquest
was the possession of Montezuma by one of the most extensive zoological
gardens on record, numbering nearly all the animals of that country, with
others brought at much expense from great distances, and it is stated
that turkeys were supplied as food in large numbers daily to the beasts
of prey in the menagerie of the Mexican Emperor. (Baird, ibid pp.
288, 289.)

PLATE iV

Fig. 12. Superior view of the cranium of a large male tame turkey, with right
nasal bone (7) attached in situ. Specimen in Dr. Shufeldt’s private collection.
Fig. 13. Left lateral view of the skull of a female turkey, probably a wild one.
No. 19684, Coll. U. S. National Museum. (See Fig. 8, Pl. II.) ec, bony entrance
to ear. Compare contour line of cranium with Fig. 14. Fig. 14. Left lateral
view of the cranium of a tame turkey; male. Dr. Shufeldt’s private collection.
Fig. 15. Direct posterior view of the cranium of a tame turkey, probably a
female. pf, postfrontal. Specimen in Dr. Shufeldt’s collection. Fig. 16. Skull of a
wild Florida turkey, seen from below (M. g. osceola). (See Fig. 10, Pl. IJ.) Bones
named in Fig.18. Photo natural size by Dr. Shufeldt and considerably reduced.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 75

“The part of the country occupied by the
Spanish during the first few years of the conquest
in which wild turkeys occur is the eastern slope
of the Cordillera in Vera Cruz, and there is every
reason to suppose that this must have been the
original home of the birds domesticated by the
natives of that region.

‘“‘Gould’s description of the type of M. meai-
cana is not sufficiently detailed to determine the
exact character of this bird, but fortunately the
type was figured in Elliot’s ‘‘ Birds of North
America.” . . . In addition Gould’s type
apparently served for the description of the adult
male M. gallopavo in the ‘Catalogue of Birds
Brit. Mus.’ (xxu, p. 387), and an adult female
is described in the same volume from Ciudad
Ranch Durango. . . . Thus it will be-
come necessary to treat M. gallopavo and M. mexi-
cana as at least subspecifically distinct. What-
ever may be the relationship of M. meaicana to M.
gallopavo, the M. g. merriamz is easily separable
from M, g. mexicana of the Sierra Madre of western
Mexico, from Chihuahua to Colima. Birds from
northern Chihuahua are intermediate.”’

76 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

In this article Mr. Nelson names M. g. mer-
ruamv and gives full descriptions of the adult
male and female in winter plumage.

What has thus far been presented above on the
first discovery of the American wild turkeys,
their natural history in the New World, their
introduction into Spain, England, France, and
elsewhere, is practically all we have on this part
of our subject up to date. What I have given
is from the very best ornithological and other
authorities. Domesticated turkeys are now
found in nearly all parts of the world, while in
only a very few instances has any record been
kept of the different times of their introduction.
With the view of accumulating such data, one
would have to search the histories of all the
countries of all the civilized and semi-civilized
peoples of the world, which would be the labor of
almost a man’s entire lifetime, and in only too
many instances his search would be in vain, for

the several records of the times of introducing
these birds were not made.

Apart from the description of the wild turkeys,
there is still a very large literature devoted to the

THE TURKEY HISTORIC V7

domesticated forms of turkeys as they occur in
this country and abroad, as well as descriptions
of their eggs. I have gone over a large part of
this literature, but shall be able to use only a
small, though nevertheless essential, part of it
here. This I shall complete with an account of
turkey eggs, which will be presented quite apart
from anything to do with their nests, nesting
habits, and much else which will be fully treated
in other chapters of this book. In some works
we meet with the literature of all these subjects
together, others have only a part, while still
others are confined to one thing, as the eggs.!
Darwin in his works paid considerable attention
to the wild and tame turkeys. He states that
‘Professor Baird believes (as quoted in Teget-
meier’s “Poultry Book,’ 1866, p. 269) that our
turkeys are descended froma West Indian species,
now extinct. But besides the improbability of a
bird having long ago become extinct in these
large and luxuriant islands, it appears, as we

1Qgilvie-Grant, W. R. “A MHand-book to the Game-Birds.”
(Lloyd’s Nat. Hist., London, 1897, pp. 103-111.) Genus Meleagris. De-
scribes briefly some of the North American Turkeys, and also M. ocellata
(full page colored figure). Nest and eggs of all described in brief.

78 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

shall presently see, that the turkey degenerates
in India, and this fact indicates that this was not
aboriginally an inhabitant of the lowlands of the
tropics.

“FE. Michaux,” he further points out, “sus-
pected in 1802 that the common domestic turkey
was not descended from the United States species
alone, but was likewise from a southern form, and
hewentsofaras to believe that Englishand French
turkeys differed from having different proportions
of the blood of the two parent-forms.?

‘English turkeys are smaller than either wild
form. They have not varied in any great de-
gree; but there are some breeds which can be
distinguished — as Norfolks, Suffolks, Whites,
and Copper-Coloured (or Cambridge), all of
which, if precluded from crossing with other
breeds, propagate their kind truly. Of these
kinds, the most distinct is the small, hardy, dull-
black Norfolk turkey, of which the chickens are
black, with occasionally white patches about the
YeMichaux, F. ‘Travels in N. Amer.” 1802 Eng, Trans pet
See also the following: Blyth, E., “Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist.,” 1847,
vol. xx., p 391. This author points out that these turkeys in India are

flightless, black in color, small, and the appendage over the bill of
great size.

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 79
head. The other breeds scarcely differ except
in colour, and their chickens are generally mot-
tled all over with brownish-grey.'

“In Holland there was formerly, according to
Temminick, a beautiful butf-yellow breed, fur-
nished with an ample white topknot. Mr.
Wilmot has described a white turkey-cock with
a crest formed of ‘feathers about four inches
long, with bare quills, and a tuft of soft down
growing at the end.’ Many of the young birds
whilst young inherited this kind of crest, but
afterwards it either fell off or was pecked out by
the other birds. This is an interesting case, as
with care a new breed might probably have been
formed; and a topknot of this nature would have
been, to a certain extent, analogous to that borne
by the males in several allied genera, such as

Euplocomus, Lophophorus, and Pavo.’”*

*Dixon, E.S. “Ornamental Poultry,” 1848, p.34. This author also
noted the interesting fact that the female of the domesticated turkey
sometimes has the tuft of hair on her breast like the male. Bechstein
refers to the old German fable or superstition that a hen turkey lays as
many eggs as the gobbler has feathers in the under tail-coverts, which,
as we ae vary innumber. (Naturgesch. Deutschlands, B iii, 1793,
s. 309.).

*““Gardiner’s Chronicle,” 1852, p. 699.

*Darwin, Charles. ‘“‘Animals and Plants Under Domestication,”
Vol. 1, 1868, pp. 352-355. Other facts of this character are set forth
here which are of interest in the present connection.

80 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Darwin has further pointed out that “‘“The
tuft of hair on the breast of the wild turkey-cock

cannot be of any use, and it is doubtful whether
it can be ornamental in the eyes of the female
birds; indeed, had the tuft appeared under do-
mestication, it would have been called a mon-
strosity.

‘The naked skin on the head of a vulture is
generally considered as a direct adaptation for
wallowing in putridity; and so it may be, or it
may possibly be due to the direct action of putrid
matter; but we should be very cautious in draw-
ing any such inference, when we see that the skin
on the head of the clean-feeding male turkey is
likewise naked.’”?

Newton has pointed out that the topknotted
turkeys were figured by Albin in 1738, and that
it “has been suggested with some appearance of
probability that the Norfolk breed may be de-
scended from the northern form, Meleagris gal-
lopavo or americana, while the Cambridgeshire
breed may spring from the southern form the M.

Darwin, Charles. ‘‘The Origin of Species,’ 1880, pp. 70, 158.
He also shows that the young of wild turkey are instinctively wild.

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THE TURKEY HISTORIC 81

mexicana of Gould (P. Z. S. 1856, p. 61), which
indeed it very much resembles, especially in
having its tail-coverts and quills tipped with
white or light ochreous — points that. recent
North American ornithologists rely upon as dis-
tinctive of this form. If this supposition be
true, there would be reason to believe in the
double introduction of the bird into England at
least, as already hinted, but positive information
is almost wholly wanting.” (bid., p. 996.).

It is an interesting fact that the males of both
the wild and tame forms of turkeys frequently
lack spurs;' and Henshaw has pointed out that
in the case of M. g. merriami “‘A few of the gob-
blers had spurs; in one instance these took the
form of a blunt, rounded knob half an inch long.
In others, however, it was much reduced, and
in others still the spur was wanting; though my
impression is that all the old males had this wea-
pon.’” :

One of the best articles which have been con-

tributed to the present part of our subject, ap-

*Woodhouse, Dr. (Amer. Nat. vii, 1873, p, 326.).

"Henshaw, H. W. Rept. Geogr. and Geol. Expl. and Surv. West of the
100th meridian. 1875. Chap.III. The Ornith. Coll.1871-1874, p. 435.

82 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

peared several years ago from the pen of that
very excellent naturalist, the late Judge Caton of
Chicago. This contribution is rather a long one,
and I shall only select such paragraphs from it
as are of special value in the present connection.?

It is a well-known fact that the author of this
work made a long series of observations on wild
turkeys which he kept in confinement. He
raised many from the eggs of the wild turkey
taken in nature and hatched out by the common
hen on his own preserves. At one time he had as
many as sixty such birds, and he lost no oppor-
tunity to study their habits. They were of the
pure stock with all their characters as in the wild
form. These turkeys became very tame when
thus raised from the eggs of the wild birds, and
they did not deteriorate, either in size or in their
power of reproduction. “This magnificent
game bird,” says Caton, “was never a native of
the Pacific Coast. I have at various times sent
in all about forty to California, in the hope that
Caton, J.D. “The Wild Turkey and Its Domestication.” Amer.
Nat. xi, No. 6, 1877, pp. 321-330, also Ibid. vii, 1873, where this author

states that “‘The vision of the wild turkey is very acute but the sense of
smell is very dull.” (p. 431.)

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 83

it may be acclimatized in the forests. Their
numerous enemies have thus far prevented suc-
cess in this direction, but they have done reason-
ably well in domestication, and Captain Rodgers
of the United States Coast Survey has met with
remarkable success in hybridizing them with the
domestic bronze turkey. Last spring I sent
some which were placed on Santa Clara Island,
off Santa Barbara. They remained contentedly
about the ranch building and, as I am informed,
raised three broods of young which are doing
well. As there is nothing on the island more
dangerous to them than a very small species of
fox, we may well hope that they will in a few
years stock the whole island, which is many
miles in extent. As the island is uninhabited
except by the shepherds who tend the immense
flocks of sheep there, they will soon revert to the
wild state, when I have no doubt they will re-
sume markings as constant as is observed in the
wild bird here, but I shall be disappointed if the
changed condition of life does not produce a
change of color or in the shades of color, which
would induce one unacquainted with their his-

84 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

tory to pronounce them specifically different
from their wild ancestors here. Results will be
watched with interest.

** My experiments in crossing the wild with the
tame have been eminently successful.’ (Fol-
lowed by a long account, p. 329.)

**My experiments establish first that the tur-
key may be domesticated, and that each suc-
ceeding generation bred in domestication loses
something of the wild disposition of its ancestors.

“Second, that the wild turkey bred in do-
mestication changes its form and the color of its
plumage and of its legs, each succeeding genera-
tion degenerating more and more from these
brilliant colors which are so constant on the wild
turkey of the forest, so that it is simply a question
of time — and indeed a very short time — when
they will lose all of their native wildness and be-
come clothed in all the varied colors of the com-
mon domestic turkey; in fact be like our domestic
turkey, — yes, be our domestic turkey.

“Third, that the wild turkey and the domestic
turkey as freely interbred as either does with its
own variety, showing not the least sexual aver-

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 85

sion always observed between animalsof different
species of the same genus, and that the hybrid
progeny is as vigorous, as robust, and fertile as
was either parent.

“It must be already apparent that I, at least,
have no doubt that our common domestic turkey
is a direct descendant of the wild turkey of our
forests, and that therefore there is no specific dif-
ference between them. If such marked changes
in the wild turkey occur by only ten years
of domestication, all directly tending to the
form, habits, and colorings of the domestic
turkey, — in all things which distinguish the do-
mestic from the wild turkey, — what might we
not expect from fifty or a hundred years of do-
mestication? I know that the best ornitho-
logical authority at the present time declares
them to be of a different species, but I submit
that this is a question which should be recon-
sidered in the light of indisputable facts which
were not admitted or established at the time such
decision was made.

“There has always been diffused among the
domestic turkeys of the frontiers more or less of

86 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the blood of the wild turkey of the neighboring
forests, and as the wild turkey has been driven
back by the settlement of the country, the do-
mestic turkey has gradually lost the markings
which told of the presence of the wild; though
judicious breeding has preserved and rendered
more or less constant some of this evidence in
what is called the domestic bronze turkey, as the
red leg and the tawny shade dashed upon the
white terminals of the tail feathers and the tail-
coverts, the better should the stock be considered,
because it is the more like its wild ancestor.
“That the domestic turkey in its neighborhood
may be descended from or largely interbred with
the wild turkey of New Mexico, which in its wild
state more resembles the common domestic tur-
key than our wild turkey does, may unquestion-
ably be true, and it may be also that the wild
turkey there has a large infusion of the tame
blood, for it is known that not only our domes-
tic turkey, but even our barnyard fowls, relapse
to the wild state in a single generation when
they are reared in the woods and entirely away
from the influence of man, gradually assuming

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 87

uniform and constant colorings. But I will not
discuss the question whether the Mexican wild
turkey is of a different species from ours or
merely a variety of the same species, only with
differences in color which have arisen from ac-
cidental causes, and certainly I will not question
that the Mexican turkey is the parent of many
domestic turkeys, but I cannot resist the con-
clusion that our wild turkey is the progenitor of
our domestic turkey.”’

We have now come to where we can study the
eggs of these birds, and in the same article I
have just quoted so extensively from, Judge
Caton says on page 324 of it, ““The eggs of the
wild turkey vary much in coloring and somewhat
in form, but in general are so like those of the
tame turkey that no one can select one from the
other. The ground color is white, over which
are scattered reddish-brown specks. These dif-
fer in shades of color, but much more in numbers.
I have seen some on which scarcely any specks
could be detected, while others were profusely
covered with specks, all laid by the same hen in
the same nest. The turkey eggs are more pointed

88 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

than those of the goose or the barnyard fowl,
and are much smaller in proportion to the size
of the bird.”

This, in the main, is a fair description of the
eggs of Meleagris, while at the same time it may
be said that the ground color is not always
*‘white,” nor the markings exactly what might
be denominated “specks.”

Turkey eggs of all kinds, laid by hens of the
wild as well as by those of the domesticated
birds, have been described and figured in a great
many popular and technically scientific books
and other works, in this country as well as
abroad. A large part of this literature I have
examined, but I soon became convinced of the
fact that no general description would begin to
stand for the different kinds of eggs that turkeys
lay. They not only differ in size, form, and mark-
ings, but in ground colors, numbers to the clutch,
and some other particulars. Then it is true that
no wild turkey hen, of any of the known sub-
species or species of this country, has ever laid an
egg but what some hen of the domestic breeds
somewhere has not laid one practically exactly

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 89

like itin all particulars. In other words, the eggs
of our various breeds of tame turkeys are like the
eggs of the several forms of the wild bird, that is,
the subspecies known to science in the United
States avifauna. Therefore I have not thought
it necessary to present here any descriptions of
the eggs of the tame turkeys or reproductions of
photographs of the same.

Among the most beautiful of the wild turkey
eggs published are those which appear in Major
Bendire’s work. They were drawn and painted
by Mr. John L. Ridgway of the United States
Geological Survey.! These very eggs I have not
only examined, studied and compared, but,
thanks to Dr. Richmond of the Division of Birds
of the Museum, and to Mr. J. H. Riley, his
assistant, I had such specimens as I needed
loaned me from the general collection of the Mu-
seum, in that I might photograph them for use
in the present connection. Dr. Richmond did
me a special kindness in selecting for my study
the four eggs here reproduced from my photo-
_ tBendire, Charles, “Life Histories of North American Birds with

Special Reference to oe Breeding Habits and Eggs.’’ Washington,
Govmt. Printing Office, 1892.

90 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
graph of them in Plate VI. These are all of M.
g. silvestris.

Of these, figures 20 and 21 are from the same
clutch, and doubtless laid by the same bird.
(Nos. 30014, 30014.) They were collected by
J. H. Riley at Falls Church, Va. Figure 20 is an
egg measuring 66 mm. x 45 mm., the color being
a pale buffy-brown, finely and nearly evenly
speckled all over with umber-brown, with very
minute specks to dots measuring a millimetre in
diameter. ‘The finest speckling, with no larger
spots, is at the greater end (butt) for a third of
the egg. ;

Figure21 measures 63 mm.x45mm., the ground
color being a pale cream, speckled somewhat
thickly and uniformly all over with fine specks of ©
light brown and lavender, with larger spots and
ocellated marks of lavender moderately abun-
dant over the middle and the apical thirds, with
none about the larger end or remaining third.
Figure 22 (Plate VI) is No. 31185 of the collection
of the U.S. National Museum (ex Ralph Coll.) ; it
was collected at Bridgeport, Michigan, by Allan
Herbert (376, 4700, ’77) and measures 68 x 46.

PuLatTE VI

Eggs of wild turkey (M. g. silvestris)
Names and descriptions given in the text. All the specimens photo natural size by

Dr. Shufeldt and somewhat reduced in reproduction. Fig. 20. Upper left-hand one. Fig.
21. Upper right-hand one. Fig. 22. Lower left-hand one. Fig. 23. Lower right-hand one,

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 9]

It is of a rather deep buffy-brown or ochre, very
thickly and quite uniformly speckled all over
with more or less minute specks of dark brown.
Figure 23 was collected by H. R. Caldwell
(91310), the locality being unrecorded (Coll.
U.S. Nat. Museum, No. 32407), and measures
63x48. Itisof a pale buffy-brown or pale cafe
au lait color, quite thickly speckled all over with
fine dots and specks of light brown. Some few
of the specks are of noticeably larger size, and
these are confined to the middle and apical
thirds. Speckling of the butt or big end ex-
tremely fine, and the specks of lighter color.
Referring to the wild turkey (M. g. silvestris)
Bendire says (loc. cit., p. 116): “‘In shape, the
eggs of the Wild Turkey are usually ovate, oc-
casionally they are elongate ovate. The ground
color varies from pale creamy white to creamy
buff. They are more or less heavily marked
with well-defined spots and dots of pale choco-
late and reddish brown. In an occasional set
these spots are pale lavender. Generally the
markings are all small, ranging in size from a No.
6 shot to that of dust shot, but an exceptional

92 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

set is sometimes heavily covered with both spots
and blotches of the size of buckshot, and even
larger. The majority of eggs of this species in
the U. S. National Museum collection, and such
as I have examined elsewhere, resemble in color-
ation the figured type of M. gallopavo mexicanus,
but average, as arule, somewhat smaller in size.

“The average measurement of thirty-eight
eggs in the U. 8. National Museum collection is
61.5 by 46.5 millimetres. The largest egg meas-
ures 68. 2 by 46, the smallest 59 by 45 milli-
metres.’

At the close of his account of M. g. mexicanus
Bendire states that ““The only eggs of this
species in the U.S. National Museum collection,
about whose identity there can be no possible
doubt, were collected on Upper Lynx Creek,
Arizona, in the spring of 1870, by Dr. E. Palmer,
whose name is well known as one of the pioneer
naturalists of that Territory.

“The eggs are ovate in shape, their ground
color is creamy white, and they are profusely
dotted with fine spots of reddish brown, pretty
evenly distributed over the entire egg. The

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 93
average measurements of these eggs is 69 by 49
millimetres. The largest measures 70.5 by 49,
the smallest 67 by 48 millimetres.

‘The type specimen (No. 15573, U.S. National
Museum collection, Pl. 3, Fig. 15) is one of the
set referred to above’ (loc. cit. p. 119).

This set of three eggs I havepersonally studied;
they are of M. g. merriami, and I find them to
agree exactly with Captain Bendire’s description
just quoted.?

In the Ralph Collection (U. 5. Nat. Mus.
No. 27232; orig. No. 10/6) I examined six (6)
eggs of M. g. intermedia. ‘They are of a pale
ground color, all being uniformly speckled over
with minute dots of lightish brown. These eggs
are rather large for turkey eggs. They were
collected at Brownsville, Texas, May 26, 1894.

Another set of M. g. intermedia collected by
F. B. Armstrong (No. 25765, coll. U. S. Nat.
Mus.) are practically uwnspotted, and such spots
as are to be found are very faint, both the mi-
nute and the somewhat large ones.

Some of the English books contain descriptions of the eggs of our

wild turkeys, as for example “‘A Handbook to the Game-birds.” By
W. R. Ogilvie-Grant. (Lloyd’s Nat. Hist.) London, 1897, pp. 103-111.

94 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

In Dr. Ralph’s collection (U.S. Nat. Mus. No.
27080) eggs of M. g. intermedia are short, with the
large and fine dots of a pale orange yellow. Iex-
amined a number of eggs and sets of eggs of M.
g. osceola, or Florida turkey. In No. 25787 the
eggs are short and broad, the ground color being
pale whitish, slightly tinged with brown. Some
of the spots on these eggs are unusually large,
in a few places, three or four running together,
or are more or less confluent; others are isolated
and of medium size; many are minute, all being
of an earth brown, varying in shades. In the
ease of No. 25787 of this set, the dark-brown
spots are more or less of a size and fewer in
number; while one of them (No. 25787) is exactly
like the egg of Plate VI, Fig. 22; finally, there is a
pale one (No. 25787) with fine spots, few in num-
ber in middle third, very numerous at the ends.
There are scattered large spots of a dark brown,
the surface of each of which latter are raised with
a kind of incrustation. Another egg (No. 27869)
in the same tray (M. g. osceola) is small, pointed;
pale ground color with very fine spots of light
brown (coll. W. L. Ralph). Still another in

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 95
this set (No. 27868) is markedly roundish, with
minute brown speckling uniformly distributed.
There are nine (9) eggs in this clutch (No. 27868),
and apart from the differences in form, they all
closely resemble each other; and this is by no
means always the case, as the same hen may lay
any of the various styles enumerated above,
either as belonging to the same clutch, or at dif-
ferent seasons.

As it is not the plan of the author of the present
work to touch, in this chapter, upon the general
habits of wild turkeys—their courtship, their
incubation, the young at various stages, nest-
ing sites, and a great deal more having to do
with the natural history of the family and
the forms contained in it —it would seem
that what has been set forth above in regard
to the eggs of the several subspecies in our
avifauna pretty thoroughly covers this part of
the subject.

Shortly after the last paragraph was com-
pleted I received a valuable photograph of the
nest and eggs of M. g. merriamz, and this I desire
to publish here with a few notes, although in so

96 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

doing it constitutes a departure from what I
have just stated above in regard to the nests of
Turkeys.

This photograph was kindly furnished me by
my friend Mr. F. Stephens of the Society of Nat-
ural History of San Diego, California, with per-
mission to use it in the present connection. It
has not to my knowledge been published before,
though the existence of the negative from which
it was printed has been made known to ornitholo-
gists by Major Bendire, who says, in his account
of the “‘ Mexican Turkey” in his Life Histories of
North American Birds (loc. cit. p. 118): “That
well-known ornithologist and collector, Mr. F.
Stephens, took a probably incomplete set of
nine fresh eggs of this species, on June 15th, 1884.
He writes me: ‘I was encamped about five miles
south of Craterville, on the east side of the Santa
Rita Mountains in Arizona; the nest was shown
to my assistant by a charcoal burner. On his
approach to it the bird ran off or flew before he
got within good range. He did not disturb it
but came to camp, and in the afternoon we both
went, and I took my little camera along and

THE TURKEY HISTORIC a7
photographed it. The bird did not show up
again. The locality was on the east slope of the
Santa Rita Mountains, in the oak timber, just
where the first scattering pines commenced, at
an altitude of perhaps 5000 feet.’

“A good photograph, kindly sent me by Mr.
Stephens, shows the nest and eggs plainly. It
was placed close to the trunk of an oak tree on a
hillside, near which a good-size yucca grew,
covering, apparently, a part of the nest; the
hollow in which the eggs were placed was
about 12 inches across and 3 inches deep.
Judging from the photograph the nest was
fairly well lined.”’

In order to complete my share of the work, I
will now add here a few paragraphs and illustra-
tions upon the skeletal differences to be found
upon comparison of that part of the anatomy of
wild and domesticated turkeys. This is a sub-
ject I wrote upon many years ago; what I then
said I have just read over, and I find I can
do no better than quote the part contained in
the “‘Analytical Summary” of the work. It is
more or less technical and therefore must be

98 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

brief, though it is none the less necessary to com-
plete the subject of the present treatise.!

1. Asarule, in adult specimens of M. g. mer-
rzami, the posterior margins of the nasal bones
indistinguishably fuse with the frontals; whereas,
as a rule, in domesticated turkeys these sutural
traces persist with great distinctness throughout
life.

2. Asarule, in wild turkeys we find the cran-
iofrontal region more concaved and wider across
than it is in the tame varieties.

3. The parietal prominences are apt to be
more evident in M. g. merriami than they are in
the vast majority of domesticated turkeys; and
the median longitudinal line measured from these
to the nearest point of the occipital ridge is longer
in the tame varieties than it is in the wild birds.
Generally speaking, this latter character is very
striking and rarely departed from.

4. The figure formed by the line which bounds
4Shufeldt, R. W. “Osteology of Birds,’ Education Dept. Bull
No. 447, Albany, N. Y., May 15, 1909. N. Y. State Mus. Bull. 130,
pp. 222-224; based upon a former contribution which appeared in The
Journal of Comparative Medicine and Surgery, July, 1887, entitled “A

Critical Comparison of a Series of Skulls of the Wild and Domesticated
Turkeys.” (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris and M. domestica.)

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 99

the occipital area is, as a rule, roughly semi-
circular in a domesticated turkey, whereas in

M. g. merrrami it is nearly always of a cordate
outline, with the apex upward. In the case of
the tame turkeys I have found it to average one
exception to this in every twelve birds; in the
exception, the bounding line of the area made a
cordate figure as in wild turkeys.

5. Among the domesticated turkeys, the in-
terorbital septum almost invariably is pierced
by a large irregular vacuity; as arule this osseous
plate is entire in wild ones.

6. The descending process of a lacrymal
bone is more apt to be longer in a wild turkey
than in a tame one; and for the average the
greater length is always in favor of the former
species.

7. In M. g. merriami the arch of the superior
margin of the orbit is more decided than it is in
the tame turkey, where the arc formed by this
line is shallowed, and not so elevated.

8. We find,asarule, that the pterygoid bones
are rather longer and more slender in wild tur-
keys than they are among the tame ones.

100 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

9. At the occipital region of the skull, the
osseous structures are denser and thicker in the
tame varieties of turkeys; and, as a whole, the
skull is smoother, with its salient apophyses less
pronounced in them than in the wild types.
There is a certain delicacy and lightness, very
difficult to describe, that stamps the skull of a
wild turkey, and at once distinguishes it from any
typical skull of a tame one.

10. I have predicted that the average size of
the brain cavity will be found to be smaller and
of less capacity in a tame turkey than it is in the
wild one. In the case of this class of domesti-
cated birds, as pointed out above, this would
seem to be no more than natural, for the do-
mestication of the turkey has not been of such a
nature as to develop its brain mass through the
influences of a species of education; its long con-
tact with man has taught it nothing — quite
the contrary, for the bird has been almost en-
tirely relieved from the responsibilities of using
its wits to obtain its food, or to guard against
danger to itself. These factors are still in op-
eration in the case of the wild types, and the

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 101
advance of civilization has tended to sharpen
them.

From this point of view, then, I would say that
mentally the average wild turkey is stronger
than the average domesticated one, and I believe
it will be found that in all these long years the
above influences have affected the size of the
brain-mass of the latter species in the way above
indicated, and perhaps it may be possible some
day to appreciate this difference. Perhaps, too,
there may have been also a slight tendency on
the part of the brain of the wild turkey to in-
crease in size, owing to the demands made upon
its functions due to the influence of man’s nearer
approach, and the necessity of greater mental
activity in consequence.

Recently I examined a mounted skeleton of
a female wild turkey in the collection of the
United States National Museum, and apart from
the skull it presented the following characters:
There were fifteen vertebre, the last one having a
pair of free ribs, before we arrived at the fused
vertebree of the dorsum. Of these latter there
were three coéssified into one piece.

102 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

The sixteenth vertebra supports a pair of free
ribs that fail to meet the sternum, there being no
costal ribs for them. They bear uncinate pro-
cesses.

Next we find four pairs of ribs that articulate
with hemapophyses, and through them with the
sternum. ‘There are two free vertebrae between
the consolidated dorsal ones and the pelvis; and
the pelvis bears a pair of free ribs, the costal ribs
of which articulate by their anterior ends with
the posterior border of the pair of costal ribs in
front of them. :

A kind of long abutment exists at the middle
point on each, there to accommodate the articu-
lation. There are six free tail vertebre plus a
long pointed pygostyle. The os furcula is rather
slender, being of a typical V-shaped pattern,
with a small and straight hypocleidium. With
a form much as we find it in the fowl, the pelvis
is characterized by not having the ilia meet the
sacral crista in front. The prepubis is short and
stumpy. The external pair of xiphoidal pro-
cesses of the sternum are peculiar in that their
posterior ends are strongly bifurcated.

Fig. 24. Nest of a wild turkey in situ. (M.g. merriami.) Photo by
Mr. F. Stephens, San Diego, California.

Oo

THE TURKEY HISTORIC 108

In the skeleton of the manus, the pollex meta-
carpal projects forward and upward as a rather
conspicuous process. Its phalanx does not bear
a claw, and on the index metacarpal the indicial
process is present and overlaps the shaft of the
next metacarpal behind it. In the leg the fibula
is free, and extends halfway down the tibiotarsal
shaft.

The hypotarsus of the tarso-metatarsus is
grooved mesially for the passage of tendons be-
hind, and is also once perforated near its middle
for the same purpose. AsI have already stated,
the remainder of the skeleton of this bird is char-
acteristically gallinaceous and need not detain us
longer here. I would add, however, that the
“tarsal cartilages’ in the turkey extensively

ossify.

CHAPTER V

BREAST SPONGE—SHREWDNESS

r ATURE has provided the old gobbler
witha very usefulappendage. Audubon

: callsit the ‘‘ breast sponge,’’ andit covers
the entire upper part of the breast and crop-cavity.
This curious arrangement consists of a thick mass
of cellular tissue, and its purpose is to act as a
reservoir to hold surplus oil or fat. It is quite
interesting to study its function, and it is a very
important one for the gobbler. This appendage
is not found on the hen or yearling gobbler. At
the beginning of the gobbling season, about
March Ist, this breast sponge is full of rich, sweet
fat, and the gobbler is plump in flesh; but as the
season advances and he continues to gobble,
strut, and worry the hens, his plumpness is re-
duced, and finally the bird becomes emaciated
and lean. Often during the whole day he gob-

bles and struts about, making love to the hens,
104

BREAST SPONGE—SHREWDNESS 105
and at this time he eats almost nothing, being
_ kept alive largely by drawing on his reservoir of
fat. As the gobbler begins to grow lean, his
flesh becomes rank and wholly unfit for food, and
one should never be killed at this time. Itisa
fact that the young male turkeys gobble but sel-
dom, if at all, the first year. Neither do these
young birds possess the breast sponge, or reser-
voir to hold fat, and consequently they are unfit
to mate with the hens. The hens visit the males
every day or alternate days; consequently, if
among the gobblers there are no mature birds,
the eggs laid are not fertile. I wish every hunter,
sportsman, and farmer could read these lines,
and recognize the importance of sparing at least
one of the adult male turkeys in each locality.
The benefit of such a policy would soon be ap-
parent in the increase of the turkeys. I dwell
at length on this point in order to make clear the
necessity of sparing some old gobblers in each
section.

It has frequently been stated that the wild
turkey will not live and propagate within the
haunts of man. This depends upon how the

106 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
birds are treated. No bird or animal can sur-
vive eternal persecution. There is no trouble
about the birds thriving in a settled community,
if the proper territory is set apart for their
use, and proper protection given. The territory
should consist of a few acres of woodland, or of
some broken ground, thicket, or swamp to aftord
a little cover. In sucha retreat, a trio of wild
turkeys may be turned loose, and in a few years,
if properly protected, the vicinity would be
stocked with them.

I have ample evidence that wild turkeys will
not shrink from civilization. It is the trapping,
snaring, baiting, and killing of all old gobblers
that decimates their numbers, not the legitimate
hunting by sportsmen.

The shrewdness of the turkey is shown by his
having no fear of the peaceable farmer at the
plow, no more than the crow or the blackbird
has. The wild turkey will go into the open
field and glean food from the stubble or upturned
furrows in full view of the plowman. This I
have often seen, and I will cite one incident of
this kind, which came under my observation

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Such

BREAST SPONGE — SHREWDNESS 107

some time ago when hunting in the State of
Mississippi. It was a clear, beautiful morning
in the month of March. Three old turkeys were
gobbling in different directions, along a creek
in a swamp, which was about half a mile wide,
with fields on each side. Having selected the
one I thought the oldest and biggest, I ap-
proached it as near as I dared; then, hiding my-
self in the brush, I began to call. In a short
time the other two birds quit gobbling and
came quickly to the call, while the one I had
chosen continued his gobbling, but in the same
place as when first heard. Suddenly I heard
** Put-put”’ directly behind me; turning my head,
I saw, within twenty paces of me, a fine gobbler.
‘Put’? —then he was gone. This caused the
one gobbling in front of me to become suspicious.
He refused to come an inch nearer, and, having
heard that alarm, “put,’’ he began to make a
detour in order to gain a certain heavily
wooded ridge. To do this, without getting too
near the spot where he heard the warning cry of
his comrade, he had to go over a high rail fence,
going through a part of the field just plowed up,

108 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

while the plowman was there at work in his
shirt sleeves, not over one hundred yards away
and in full view of the gobbler. The man was
moving all the time and frequently holloaing to
his mules, ““ Whoa,” ‘‘Gee,”’ or “Haw,” in such a
loud voice that one could hear him a long dis-
tance. The turkey would gobble every time
the plowman would holloa. He appeared to be
perfectly fearless of the plowman, but was em-
ploying all his sagacity to avoid the spot where I
was. I could not understand this at first, but
discovered the reason a little later. The bird
had reached the field and was flanking me, but I
could not see it on account of the undergrowth.
I rose, and by making a detour of about two
hundred yards around the angle of the field,
keeping well in the woods, I finally discovered
the gobbler striding sedately across the field
between me and the plowman, who was busily
engaged in attending to his furrows, still loudly
holloaing from time to time. The gobbler at
intervals stopped, strutted, gobbled, and then
proceeded on its way. Seeing that I could get
no nearer to him, I waited until he was about

BREAST SPONGE — SHREWDNESS 109

to cross the fence, when I dropped by a stump,
lifted my rifle, and waited for him to mount the
fence. This he was some time in doing, but I fi-
nally heard the flop, flop, when his fine form with
long, pendent beard was seen broadside on by me
-on the top rail, about eighty-fiveyardsaway. In
a second the bead of my rifle covered the spot at
the wing, and, as I fired, the bird tumbled dead
into the field. It was a grand old specimen, and
on examining it dry blood was discovered where
a buckshot had passed through its leg. There
was another shot across the rump, and a third
had creased the back of the neck near the head.
In my opinion, the bird hearing the “‘put-put”’
of the gobbler who came up behind me suspected
a hidden enemy, and, having lately been wounded,
thought it best to give suspicious places a wide
berth.

There are thousands of acres in the South
which were once cultivated, but which are now
abandoned and growing up with timber, brush,
and grass. Such country affords splendid op-
portunity for the rearing and perpetuation of the
wildturkey. These lands are vastly superior for

110 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

this purpose than are the solid primeval forests,
inasmuch as they afford a great variety of sum-
mer food, such as green, tender herbage, berries
of many kind, grasshoppers by the million, and
other insects in which the turkeys delight. Such
a country also affords good nesting retreats, with
brier-patches and straw where the nest may
be safely hidden, and where the young birds may
secure safe hiding places from animals and birds
of prey; but alas! at present not from trappers,
baiters, and pot hunters. Check these, and the
abandoned plantations of the South would soon
be alive with turkeys.

CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL RELATIONS — NESTING — THE YOUNG
BIRDS

4 HE wild turkey differs in its domestic
relations from the majority of birds,

for it does not take one partner or
companion, or pair off in the spring, as do most
gallinaceous birds. Charles Hallock has stated
that turkeys pair off in the spring. I beg to
differ with Mr. Hallock. The male turkey does
not confine himself to one mate.

He is a veritable Mormon or Turk, polyga-
mous in the extreme, and desires above all
a well-filled harem. He cares not a bit for
the rearing or training of his family; in fact, it
has been alleged that he follows his mates to
their nests and destroys and eats the eggs. This
I do not believe, nor will I accuse him of such
conduct. He is a vain bird and craves admira-

tion, and acts as if he were a royal prince and a
il

112 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
genuine dude, and he will have admiration though
it costs him his life. Heisa gay Lothario and will
covet and steal his neighbors’ wives and daugh-
ters; and if his neighbors protest, will fight to the
finish. He is artful, cunning, and sly, at the
same time a stupendous fool. One day no art
can persuade him to approach you, no matter
how persuasively or persistently you call; the
next day he will walk boldly up to the gun at
the first call and be shot. He has no senti-
ment beyond a dudish and pompous admiration
for himself, and he covets every hen he sees.
He will stand for hours in a small sunny place,
striving to attract the attention of the hens by
strutting, gobbling, blowing, and whining, until
he nearly starves to death. I believe he would
_ almost rather be dead than to have a cloudy day,
when he is deprived of seeing the sun shining
on his glossy plumage; and if it rains, he is the
most disconsolate creature on the face of the
earth.

The methods employed by the wild turkey
hen in nesting and rearing a family do not differ
materially from those of the tame turkey. The

vULISINO'T Ut ospiz v Jo doz UO YsNIq YoY. Ut pozVI0T ISON

SOCIAL RELATIONS — NESTING 113

nest itself is a simple affair, fashioned as if made
in a hurry, and consists of a depression scratched
in the earth to fit her body comfortably, then afew
dry leaves are scratched in to line the excavation.
Again, the nest may be under an old fallen tree-
top or tussock of tall grass, or beside an old log,
against which sundry brush, leaves, and grass
have drifted, or in an open stubble field or
prairie. There is one precaution the hen never
neglects, however slovenly the nest is built; this
is to completely cover her eggs with leaves or
grass on leaving thenest. This is done to protect
them from predaceous beasts and birds, partic-
ularly from that ubiquitous thief and_ villain,
_ the crow.

The eggs, usually from eight to fifteen in num-
ber, are quite pointed at one end, a little smaller
than the eggs of the domesticated turkey, show-
ing considerable variation in size and shape. In
color they are uniform cream, sometimes yellow-
ish, and, when quite fresh, with a decided pink
cast, spotted and blotched all over with reddish
brown and sometimes lilac.

The period of incubation is four weeks. On

114 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

its first appearance the young wild turkey is
covered with a suit of light gray fluffy down,
dotted with dusky spots, and with two dusky
stripes from the top of the head, down the sides
of the back to the rump; but this is soon replaced
by a covering of deciduous feathers, and this
in turn by the permanent suit at molting in
August and September. The first crop of feath-
ers which takes the place of the down grow very
rapidly, assuming in their maturity the precise
shape and color of the subsequent and perma-
nent growth, and at three months the turkey is
in appearance the same as one of nine months.
The young bird of two or three pounds weight
has the same outline of form as the yearling, but
the little fellow in down bears a striking resem-
blance to a young ostrich. The deciduous
feathers mature quickly, and the quill-ends dry
before the young bird is a quarter grown; hence
the feathers grow no more. But the bird grows
until molting-time arrives, when the young fowl,
if a gobbler, will weigh from seven to nine pounds.
The molting season comes on apace, and the bird
is out of humor; for its clothes, as it were, do not

SOCIAL RELATIONS — NESTING 115

fit, the mosquitoes and ticks bite it, and the de-
ciduous quills of the wings begin to get loose and
drop out, one at a time at long intervals, so that
some feathers are growing while others are falling.
This is also true of the body covering. The
tail becomes snaggled and awry, and at the time
the young turkey presents anything buta pleasing
appearance. The molting begins in August, and
it is the last of December before the full second
suit of feathers is completed. It is the irregular
growth of the feathers that often deceives the
hunter as to the age of the fowl. Once a friend of
mine and I, after a morning’s hunt, stopped to rest
and got into our boat. He had three fine tur-
keys, the time being early in November, and
he remarked that he wished he had killed at least
one gobbler to put with his hens. On examina-
tion I showed him that two of his three were
young gobblers and the third an old hen, although
the birds were about the same size and the plu-
mage almost identical.

The tuft or beard does not appear on the
young gobbler even in the Southern climate until
late in October or November, nor have I known

116 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

them to gobble or strut at this early age, al-
though the tame ones sometimes do. The gob-
bler’s beard grows quite rapidly until the end of
the third year, and then slowly until eleven or
twelve inches long, when it seems to stop. It
may be owing to its wearing off at the lower end
by dragging on the ground while feeding; but a
close inspection will not substantiate this, for the
hairs at the extreme end of the beard are blunt
and rounding, and do not indicate wear from
friction. The young gobbler’s beard is two
inches long by the end of November of the first
year of his life. By March it is three inches long
and stands out of the feathers one inch. At the
end of the second year is it five inches long, and
at three years about eight inches long.

Hens have beards only in rare cases, but not
in one out of a hundred will a hen be found with
one and then never more than four inches
long. JI have seen gobblers with two or three
beards, and one at Eagle Lake, Texas, with five
separate, long and distinct beards; but such
cases are freaks. I once called up and killed a
turkey hen on the banks of the Trinity River, in

Hen, wild turkey, and three young. On account of the extreme shyness
of the mother, young turkeys are very hard to photograph

eat

SOCIAL RELATIONS — NESTING 117
Texas, which was covered with precisely the same
bronze feathers that distinguish the gobbler —
the same thick, velvety black satin breast, and
the same beautifully decorated neck and head,
except the white turban cap of the gobbler. She
had a five-inch beard and looked in every way
like a gobbler, except being smaller in size. She
weighed twelve pounds and had the form of the
hen, the legs of a hen, and was a hen, but the
most gaudy and beautiful specimen I ever saw.
Possibly this was a barren hen, as she had all
the visible characteristics of the male, but she
did not gobble, she yelped.

The parasite which troubles the turkey is
much larger than those which infest chickens.
It is yellow in color and crawls rapidly. Tur-
keys have a habit of rolling themselves in dust
and ashes to remove vermin from the skin and
feathers; but I believe a bath of dry wood ashes,
where an old log or stump has been burned, is
preferred by them on account of the cleansing
effect of the ashes.

When the young turkeys are four or five
months old they are fairly independent of their

118 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

mother, and become quite self-reliant, so far as
roosting, feeding, and flying into trees is con-
cerned. They are not, however, entirely inde-
pendent of their mother’s care until fully grown,
but usually the entire brood remains under her
guidance more or less until December or Jan-
uary. At this time the young males begin to
follow the ways of the old gobbler, separating
from the females and going in bands by them-
selves; therefore there are at this time three
classes of turkeys socially (Gf I may use the
term) in the same district. These flocks will
incidentally meet, and will feed and scratch to-
gether for an hour or so; they then separate into
their respective classes and disappear in different
directions with great system and little ado.

CHAPTER VII

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES

NCE I saw fifteen gobblers feeding in
() a hollow between two ridges. I dis-

mounted from my horse, crawling to
the brow of the hill in order that I might peep
over and have a good look at them. I had
no gun with me at the time, so I lay upon
the ground and watched the turkeys feeding
and scratching for about two hours. They were
apparently all of one flock; but finally a party
of nine, all of which were old gobblers, having
long beards that trailed upon the ground as
they fed, withdrew in one direction, while the
other six, which were young or yearling gobblers
and beardless, departed in another direction.
This was done without any signal that I could
discern. A few days later, as I was passing the
same place with my rifle, I found, right on the

identical spot, the same fifteen gobblers, nine old
119

120 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

ones and six young ones, scratching and feeding
as before. They soon began to feed away from
me, and as I saw they were to pass over a ridge,
I fired at the nearest, which was about one hun-
dred and twenty-five yards away, tumbling him
over, and'the rest of the flock ran away. Two
weeks after this incident I was driving in the
same woods for deer. The hounds flushed one
detachment of this flock of turkeys (the nine old
gobblers), which took refuge in the trees; and
my brother, who was on a stand near where they
lit, shot two of the turkeys as they perched in the
tall pines within rifle shot of him. These birds
were noble fellows, weighing twenty-one pounds
each, and they werefat. This was in January.
As shown, the young gobbler will occasionally
associate with the old ones, but he seldom re-
mains long in their company. Why this 1s
so I do not know, as I have never known
them to quarrel, jostle, fight, or disagree in
any way. I have come to the conclusion that
the cause of the separation must be the want
of congeniality between old age and youth.
This division and separation into classes em-

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 121

braces about three months, December, Janu-
ary, and February, and part of March. The
hens are more sociable and gregarious in their
ways than the males, collecting in immense
flocks. The flocks of the gobblers are seldom
more than fifteen or twenty, while I have seen
from thirty to seventy-five hens in a single flock
in which there was not a single male. I imagine
the greater size of the flocks containing females
to be on account of the gobblers being killed
in far greater numbers than the hens. Just
before the time of the final separation of the
sexes, the young males, their sisters, their
mothers, and other old hens that have lost
their broods, associate in a very sociable manner,
traveling and roosting together. Audubon says:
“The turkey is irregularly migratory, as well
as irregularly gregarious. In relation to the
first of these circumstances, I have to state that
whenever the mast in one part of the country
happens to exceed that of another, the turkeys
are insensibly led to that spot by gradually
meeting in their haunts with more fruit the
nearer they advance toward the places of great-

122 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

est plenty. In this manner flock follows flock
until one district is entirely deserted while
another is overflowed by them, but as these mi-
grations are irregular, and extend over vast ex-
panse of country, it is necessary that I should
describe the manner in which they take place.
About the beginning of October, when scarcely
any seed and fruit has yet fallen from the trees,
the birds assemble in flocks and gradually move
toward the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and
the Mississippi. ‘The males, or as they are com-
monly called, gobblers, associate in parties from
ten to one hundred, and search for food apart
from the females, while the latter are singly ad-
vancing, each with its brood about two thirds
grown, or in connection with other families,
often amounting to seventy or eighty individuals
all intent on shunning the old cocks, which, even
when the young brood have attained this size,
will fight and often destroy them by repeated
blows on the head.’ This last assertion of the
great author I feel obliged to criticise. In my
vast experience with the turkey I have never met
with anything to justify such a statement. I

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 123

have never seen an old gobbler attempt to fight a
young one, from the egg to maturity. It is
wholly unnatural from the fact that the old birds
are never in a bellicose temper except during the
love season or gobbling time in the spring, when
jealousies arise from sexual instincts. Not in
any instance, however, have I known of one
turkey killing another. I have often seen two old
gobblers strut up to each other, blow, puff, and
rub their sides together. I watched, expecting to
see a crash, but there was not a motion to strike,
and this was in the love season while there was a
bevy of hens all around. They do not fight in
the summer, fall, and winter, but of course now
and then old gobblers will fight in the beginning
of the mating season.

The young broods and their mothers do not
associate at any time with the old gobblers, ex-
cept as I have described, neither do they run
away from them in fear. If all that Audubon
and other writers say about the wild gobbler
were believed, he would be universally regarded
as the most bellicose and brutal villain in the
bird world; for, according to various writers, he

124 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

spends the greater part of his time making war on
his own kind, besides murdering his tender off-
spring. Certainly there is no bird more affec-
tionate to its female under the same condition,
or more gallant and proud of her company, and
it does not seem likely that he would wilfully
destroy in cold blood his own family.

The old hens that have not succeeded in rais-
ing a brood of their own will join hens who have,
and assist in rearing the young. Again, Audu-
bon says: “* When they come upon a river they
partake themselves to the highest eminence, and
there often remain a day or two as if in consulta-
tion. During this time the males are heard gob-
bling, calling, and making much ado, and are
seen strutting about asif to raise the courage to a
pitch before the emergency of crossing.”

Twill say in this connection that turkeys may so
act in rare instances, if the stream be exception-
ally wide, thus delaying their progress for an hour;
for turkeys do not like to fly under any condi-
tions, nor will they use their wings save when
necessary. But I have never seen a river that
they could not easily cross, starting at the

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ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 125
water's edge, rising as they fly, and alighting
in the tops of the trees on the opposite bank.
Mr. J. K. Renaud, of New Orleans, and I, while
paddling a skiff up a small lake in Alabama, once
counted a flock of sixteen turkeys flying across
the lake some distance ahead of us. We noticed
that they just barely skimmed over the water
and rose to the top of a higher ridge on the oppo-
site side, where they alighted, and not even one
touched the water. This lake was probably three
hundred yards wide.

Audubon says: “Even the females and young
assume something of the pompous demeanor,
spreading their tails and running around each
other, purring loudly, and making extravagant
leaps. I have seen this running round, purring,
dancing, and ‘ring-around a rosy’ in the spring,
but not to any extent at any other time.”

As many of my readers have never had the
opportunity or pleasure of reading the beautiful
and expressive lines of Audubon on the wild
turkey, I will be pardoned if I introduce some
extracts from this great author. He says: “‘As
early as the middle of February they [the tur-

126 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

keys] begin to experience the impulse of prop-
agation. ‘The females separate and fly from
the males. The latter strenuously pursue and
begin to gobble, or utter the notes of exultation.
The sexes roost apart, but at no great distance
from each other. When a female utters a call-
note, all the gobblers within hearing return the
sound, rolling note after note with as much
rapidity as if they intended to emit the last and
first together, not with the spread tails as when
fluttering round the hens on the ground, or prac-
tising on the branches of trees on which they
have roosted for the night, but much in the
manner of the domestic turkey when an unusual
noise elicits its singular hubbub.”’

By this he means, when the wild gobbler on the
roost hears the call of the hen, he gobbles, and
dances on the limb without strutting, the same
as the tame gobbler will gobble when hearing a
shrill whistle or other sudden acute sound, with-
out evincing any amorous feelings; but it is not
always so. I have often seen the wild gobbler
strut on his roost, and I have shot them in such
an act when in full round strut.

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 127

Audubon also says: “If the call of the hen is
from the ground, all the males immediately fly
toward the spot, and the moment they reach
it, whether the hen be in sight or not, spread out
and erect their tails, draw the head back on the
shoulders, depress the wings with a quivering
motion, and strut pompously about, emitting
at the same time successions of pufis from their
lungs, stopping now and then to listen and look,
but whether they spy females or not, continue
to puff and strut, moving with as much celerity
as their ideas of ceremony seem to admit.”

Now, here are some of the greatest errors of
the great naturalist in all his turkey lore, or else
the wild turkey gobbler has materially changed
his ways. ‘The gobblers do not immediately fly
to the call of the hen, and no turkey hunter of
experience will admit this.

There are perhaps instances, extremely rare
ones though, when a gobbler will fly instantly
to a hen on hearing her call, or even at sight of
her. Only in two instances in my life have I
witnessed it, and on both occasions the gobblers
were young birds two years old, and acted a good

128 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

deal like a schoolboy with his first sweetheart —
who smiles and laughs at everything she says
and does. With the young turkey it may be his
first gobble on hearing the quaver of the hen.
He is made crazy, and may unceremoniously
rush to any sound that in the least resembles the
ery of the hen, without a thought of what he is
about or of the possible consequences. This is
generally the kind of gobbler the novice in calling
bags as his first, a two-year-old with a five-inch
beard. |

In the early morning, during the spring, a gob-
bler will fly from his roost to the ground, strut-
ting and gobbling, whether a hen is in sight or
not; this is done to attract the hens, and it is then
you will hear the puffs to which Audubon refers.
This sound is produced by the gobbler in expel-
ling the air from its lungs, at the beginning of the
strut, the sounds and motions of which have
never been satisfactorily described. While going
through the strut the gobbler produces a number
of notes and motions that are of interest; first,
the wings are drooped until the first six or eight
feathers at the end of the wings touch the ground;

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 129

at the same time the tail is spread until like an
open fan and erected at right angles to the body;
the neck is drawn down and back until the head
rests against the shoulder feathers, and the body
feathers are all thrown forward until they stand
about at right angles to their normal place. At
the same time the body 1s inflated with air,
which, with the drooping wings, spread tail, and
ruffed feathers, gives the bird the appearance
of a big ball. Having blown himself up to the
full capacity of his skin, the gobbler suddenly
releases the air, making a puff exactly as if a
person, having inflated the cheeks to their full
capacity, suddenly opens the mouth. As the
puff is given, the bird steps quickly forward four
or five paces, dragging the ends of the stiff wing
feathers along the ground, making a rasping
sound; he throws forward his chest, and, gradu-
ally contracting the muscles, forces the air from
his body with a low, rumbling boom, the feathers
resuming their normal position as the air is ex-
pelled. Three distinct sounds are produced:
* Puff, cluck, b-o-o-r-r-r-m-t.”? At the termina-

tion of the gobbling season the primaries of the

130 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

wings, which are used to produce the cluck, are
badly worn by the continued dragging on the
ground.

“While thus occupied,’ continues Audubon,
‘“‘the males often encounter each other, and des-
perate battles take place, ending in bloodshed
and often in the loss of many lives, the weaker
falling under repeated blows inflicted upon their
heads by the stronger. I have often been much
diverted while watching two males in fierce con-
flict by seeing them move alternately back and
forth as either had obtained a better hold, their
wings dropping, tails partly raised, body feathers
ruffied, and heads covered with blood. If in
their struggle and gasps for breath one of them
should lose his hold, his chance is over, for the

other, still holding fast, hits him violently with
his spurs and wings and in a few moments brings

him to the ground. The moment he is dead the
conqueror treads him underfoot; but what is
stranger, not with hatred, but with all the emo-
tions he employed in caressing the female.”

I differ with Audubon, not in the case of the
conqueror using affectionate conduct upon a

(92

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 131

fallen foe, should he get him down, as that is
truly a freak with them; but I have not seen such
a performance with wild birds, although I have
noticed the domestic gobbler act similarly toward
the body of a dead wild gobbler that I had placed
before him on the ground. I have very often
brought such a bird into the presence of a tame
one, when, at the very sight of the dead bird
on my back, the tame one would begin to droop
his wings, purr, bow his neck, and bristle for a
fight, and at once pounce upon the dead bird,
even pounding me until I laid it down and allowed
him to vent his rage by pounding it. After this
he would begin to strut and gobble, and the red of
his head becoming intense he would go through
thecaressing motions. More often though, under
the circumstances, the tame bird would, at the
sight of the dead wild gobbler, retire a little way
and strut in a furious manner for an hour or two.
This does not apply to one instance or individual,
but many times in many places. I must differ
with Audubon as to the results of these conflicts
ever being fatal. I have seen many encounters
as he describes, but have never in all my life seen

132 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

one gobbler killed by another, or even crippled,
although I have seen two or three birds fight
together for hours at a time. Nor have I ever
found a gobbler dead in the woods as a result of
such an encounter, or even in a worried condi-
tion. Ihave killed many old gobblers and found
their heads and necks covered with blood, with
spur punctures all over their breasts; but this
never stopped them from gobbling, nor are these
wounds deep, as the spur, which is an inch and a
quarter long in the oldest of them, can only pene-
trate the skin of the body after passing through
the heavy mail of thick, tough feathers.

Another proof that the gobblers in my hunting
grounds were not killed this way is that I should
have missed them. How would you know? you
might ask. In the same way that a stock owner
knows when he misses a yearling from his herd.
Being constantly in the woods, I knew every
gobbler and his age (at least the length of his
beard) within a radius of several miles, although
there be three in one locality and five in another.
During the time they were in flocks or bands, if
one were missing, surely I would find it out ere

ASSOCIATION OF SEXES 133

long; and it has never yet happened that, when
one was missing, I could not trace it to a gunshot
and not toturkey homicide. I will not flatly dis-
pute that there have been such incidents as cited
by Audubon, met with by others; but I do claim
that murder is not common among turkeys, and
such incidents must be extremely rare, or I would
have witnessed them. I can see no way by which
one turkey can kill another; for, as I have said
before, the spur is not long enough except to
barely penetrate the thick feathers, and the bit-
ing and pinching of the tough skin on the neck and
head could not cause contusion sufficient to pro-
duce death, nor are the blows from the wings
sufficiently severe to break bones.

CHAPTER VIII

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD

O BIRD on earth can boast of more or a

N greater variety of enemies than the wild
turkey. The chief of them all is the

genus Homo, with his sundry and sure methods of
destruction. After man comes a host of wild
beasts and birds, including the lynx, coyote,
wolf, fox, mink, coon, skunk, opossum, rat, both
golden and white-headed eagles, goshawk, Coo-
per’s and other hawks, horned owl, crow, etc.,
all of whom prey more or less upon the poor birds
from the egg to maturity. There is never a mo-
ment in the poor turkey’s life that eternal
vigilance is not the price of its existence. Still,
many pass the gauntlet and live to a great age,
the limit of which no man has discovered. I
have been a lifelong hunter of all sorts of game
indigenous to the Southern States, and I have

never seen or heard of a wild turkey dying a nat-
134

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 135

ural death, nor have I heard of any disease or
epidemic among them; and were it not for the
eternal war upon this fast-diminishing species,
especially by man, they would be as plentiful now
as fifty years ago.

The first in the list of natural.enemies of the
turkey, if we admit the testimony and belief of
nearly every turkey hunter, is the common lynx
or wildcat, often known as bobcat. Many
hunters believe that of all the enemies of the wild
turkey the wildcat is the chief. In all my experi-
ence I have never seen a turkey attacked by a
cat, nor have I ever seen the skeleton of a turkey
which had been killed and eaten by cats. Ihave
never seen a cat crouching and creeping up on a
turkey, nor have I had one of them come to me
while calling, and I have had more than fifty
years experience in turkey hunting in all the Gulf
States where the catiscommon. Numerous per-
sons of undoubted veracity, however, have as-
sured me that they have seen cats creep up near
them while calling turkeys, and in some instances
the evidence seems conclusive that the cat had no
other business than to steal up and pounce upon

1386 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the turkey. Like any other carnivorous beast,
the lynx may partake of turkey as an occasional
repast, if they are thrown in his way, but this is
an exception and not the rule.

My brother, who is a well-known turkey
hunter in Mississippi, has furnished me with the
following incident: As he sat on the bank of a
small lagoon, in the early morning, with his back
against a log that lay across the lagoon, calling
a gobbler which was slow to come, he heard the
soft tread of something on the log very near his
head, on the side next to the lagoon. Turning
slowly, he saw a large cat within three feet of
him, apparently having crossed the water in an
attempt to spring upon the supposed turkey that
had been yelping on that side. When my brother
faced the cat, it beat a rapid retreat, and my
brother, springing to his feet, waited until the
cat left the log, thus turning its side toward —
him, when he fired, killing it on the spot. There
is little doubt but that in another minute the cat
would have jumped on my brother’s head. An-
other time he was sitting calling a gobbler, when
suddenly he heard a growling and purring noise

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 137

in the cane near him. Presently there ap-
peared three large cats, but they seemed to be play-
ing or having a love feast, as they walked about,
sprang upon each other, squalled, scratched,
springing up the trees, then down again, until
he broke up the fun by a couple of shots that
laid out a brace of them. Another time he was
calling a gobbler which was gobbling vehemently,
when suddenly there was a great commotion
among the turkeys, clucking and flying up in
trees. A cat then appeared out of the cane and
was shot.

Now, does this prove, in either of the last two
cases, that the cats were trying to catch the tur-
keys? Bynomeans. For, had the cats been try-
ing to get a turkey, they would not have shown
themselves. I believe the cats were simply
lounging about in quest of rabbits or squirrels,
and happened to pass near the birds, which
became frightened at the appearance of so un-
canny a visitor. In the last incident, had the
cat been attempting to seize or pounce upon
the turkeys, they would not have gobbled again,
but would have left the place in a hurry. An-

138 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

other reason why I claim that wildcats do not ha-
bitually feed on turkeys is, that one may find a
given number of turkeys in a piece of woodland,
and never miss one from the flock, unless trapped
or killed by a gun —that is, after they are grown.

I will cite another incident connected with
the habits of the lynx or wildcat that came
under my observation while in quest of wild tur-
keys in the State of Alabama, in company with
my friend John K. Renaud, of New Orleans, an
enthusiastic and inveterate sportsman. We
were in the Tombigbee Swamp, and one morning,
while sitting together in a fallen treetop, calling
turkeys, our backs against a log, I felt something
soft against my hip. As it felt a little warmer
than the earth should feel, I pulled away the
leaves with my hands, and there lay an immense
cane rabbit dead. Upon pulling it out, I found its
head was eaten off close to the shoulders, with no
other part touched. This was the work of a
lynx. Two days after, we were sitting by an-
other log, not over a hundred yards from the first
spot, and for the same purpose. I found therea
similar object, a large rabbit freshly killed and

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 139

half eaten, the head and forepart of the body
gone. That was the work of acat. There were
plenty of turkeys frequenting that ridge every
day, but never one of them was taken by a lynx,
as I knew positively just how many gobblers and
hens there were in that piece of woods.

I do not think wildcats ever eat the eggs of the
turkey when they come across a nest of them; they
may catch the sitting birds, but all other animals
named in the foregoing list eagerly eat the eggs,
if they are lucky enough to find the nests; this
is also true of the crow, who, on locating a nest,
will watch until the mother leaves it in search of
food, when it will quickly destroy as many eggs
as possible. All the animals and birds named will
catch the young turkeys, and the larger birds
and animals will kill grown turkeys when they
can catch them.

Snakes give the turkey very little trouble. I
do not believe any snake we have can swallow a
turkey egg, except possibly the largest of the
ecolubers (chicken snakes). I have never met
one that was guilty of it, although I have seen
them swallow the eggs of the tame turkey.

140 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Mr. John Hamilton, who has had great experi-
ence as a turkey hunter, tells me of seeing horned
owls catch turkeys in the Brazos Bottoms in
Texas, a number of times, as follows:

On going into the woods before daylight, and,
taking a stand near some known turkey roost,
to be ready to call them on their leaving the
roost, he has,anumber of times, been led directly
to the tree in which the turkeys were roosting
by a horned owl who was after a turkey for
breakfast. By walking quietly under the tree,
and getting the birds outlined against the sky,
he could see what was going on. Turkeys pre-
fer to roost on limbs parallel to the ground, and
the owl, selecting a hen perched on a suitable
limb, would alight on the same limb between
her and the trunk of the tree, moving sedately |
along the limb toward the victim, and when very
near her would voice a low “‘who, who.’ The
turkey, not liking the nearness of suchaneighbor,
who spoke in such sepulchral tones, would reply,
“Quit, quit,’ and move farther out on the limb.
After a few moments the owl would again sidle
up to the hen, repeating his first question, “Who,

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 141

who.” “Quit, quit,’ would answer Miss Turkey,
moving a little farther out on the hmb. This
would be kept up until the end of the limb was
reached and the turkey would be obliged to fly,
and then the owl would catch her. From per-
sonal observation I know horned owls always
push chickens from the roosts and catch them
while on the wing.

A great destroyer of the turkey is rain and
long wet spells, just after they are hatched in the
months of May and June. I have always no-
ticed that, if these months were reasonably dry,
there would be plenty of turkeys and quail the
following fall. After all, the weather controls
the crops of turkeys more than all else.

_ The local range of the wild turkey varies in
proportion as the food supply is generous or
scanty. If food is plentiful, the turkey remains
near where hatched, and does not make exten-
sive rambles, its daily journeys being limited to
a mile or so, and often to not a fourth of that dis-
tance. I can not agree with writers who claim
that wild turkeys are constantly on the move,
travelling the country over with no intention of

142 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

ever stopping. Of course, when the food supply
is limited and scant, as during the seasons of
dearth of mast, the turkeys are necessarily com-
pelled to wander farther in order to secure suf-
ficient food; but they will always return to their
native haunts when their appetites are appeased.

In the early morning, all things being favor-
able, their first move after leaving the roost is in
search of food, which search they undertake
with characteristic vigor and energy, scratching
and turning over the dry leaves and decaying
vegetation. Two kinds of food are thus gained:
various seed or mast, fallen from the trees
and bushes, and all manner of insects, of
both of which they are very fond, and which
constitute a large part of their food supply.
There is no bird of the gallinaceous order that
requires and destroys more insects than wild
turkeys. They will scratch with great earnest-
ness over a given space, then, all at once, start
off, moving rapidly, sometimes raising their
broad wings and flapping them against their
sides, as if to stretch, while others leap and skip
and waltz about. Then they will go in one di-

The chief of all his enemies is the ‘‘Genus homo’”’

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 143

rection for some distance. Suddenly, one finds
a morsel of some kind to eat, and begins toscratch
among the leaves, the whole flock doing like-
wise, and they will keep this up until a large
space, perhaps half an acre of land, is so gone
over. What induces them to scratch up one
place so thoroughly and leave others untouched
would seem a mystery to the inexperienced; but
close observation will show that such scratching
indicates the presence of some kind of food under
the leaves. It may be the nuts of the beech, oak,
chestnut, chinquapin, black or sweet gum tree,
pecan nut, grape, or muscadine seed. If one will
observe the scratchings, it will be seen that they
occur under one or another of such trees or vines.
Thus they travel on, stopping to scratch at in-
tervals until their crops are filled.

Under certain conditions, wild turkeys are
compelled to seek numerous sources to ob-
tain a supply of food, as when there is a failure
of the mast crop, which affords the principal
supply of their food, or when there is an over-
flow of the great swamps or river bottoms, which
turkeys so often inhabit. When such over-

144 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

flows occur, the turkeys are either forced to take
up their abode in the trees, or to leave their feed-
ing ground and retreat to the high lands that are
not overflowed. In the latter case there is little
trouble in procuring food by scratching in the
dry leaves or gleaning in the grain fields. But
turkeys are hard to drive from their haunts, even
by high waters, and more often than not they
will stubbornly remain in the immediate locality
of their favorite swamps and river bottoms by
taking to thetrees until the waters have subsided;
they will persistently remain in the trees even
for two or three months, with the water five to
twenty-five feet in depth beneath them. At
such times they subsist upon the green buds of
the trees upon which they perch, and the few
grapes and berry seeds that may remain attached
to the vines which they can reach from the
limbs. It is truly remarkable how long these
birds can subsist and keep in fair flesh under such
conditions. ‘There is a critical time during these
overflows, when turkeys are hard pressed in that
they may obtain sufficient food to sustain life;
this is when the rivers overflow in December,

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 145
January, or February, before the buds have ap-
peared or have become large enough to be of any
value as food. Under these conditions they
must fly from tree to tree until they reach dry
ground, or starve to death.

Although I have never known of a gobbler
being thus starved to death, I have seen them so
emaciated they could hardly stand. One inci-
dent of this sort I will relate: I found four very
large old gobblers in an overflowed swamp on the
Tombigbee River in Alabama, and as it was in
February, it was too early in the year for herb-
age to begin the spring growth. The river had
overflowed the bottoms suddenly, and it was a
long way to dry land, perhaps three miles, so the
turkeys could get little or nothing to sustain life.
I shot one of these gobblers, not thinking of their
probable condition, and found I had bagged a
skeleton.

If the bottoms are not over three miles wide,
turkeys will usually, on approach of rising water,
start for the dry ridges farther back from the
river, and there remain until the waters steal
upon them, when they will fly into the trees.

146 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Sometimes a ridge is an island at sundown when
they go to roost, but is covered during the night,
and when the morning comes there is no dry land
in sight for the poor birds to alight upon. This is
bewildering to them and presents a new state of
affairs. If there be an old mother hen in the flock,
she will at once take in the situation, and by
certain significant clucks and a peculiar cackle,
which is a part of their elaborate language,
she will take wing and fly two or three hundred
yards in the direction of dry land, alighting in the
trees, when, after a rest, with another cluck or
two, the party will continue in the same direc-
tion. This is kept up until the dry land is
reached, when, with wild acclaim and a general
cackle of exultation, they all alight on the ground
and proceed at once, at a fearful rate, to scratch
up the leaves in search of food.

The hunter, aware of these habits after the
swamps begin to overflow, will lose no opportu-
nity for an early visit to the hummock at the mar-
gin of the backwaters. The turkeys do not re-
main near the edge of the overflow for any length
of time, but very soon extend their range farther

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 147
into the high forests and fields. They seem to
know instinctively that it is unsafe to linger near
the edge of the water.

In case the overflow occurs in March or April,
when the trees are full of fresh buds and blos-
soms, the turkeys have an easy time, living in the
treetops, fluttering from branch to branch, gath-
ering the tender buds and young leaves of such
trees as the ash, hackberry, pin oak, and the
yellow bloom of the birch, all of which are favor-
ite foods, while of the beech and some other trees
it is the fringe-like bloom they eat. They will
remain in the trees out of sight of land for months
if they have plenty of buds and young leaves to
eat, and keep in fair flesh; but the flesh is not so
palatable as when feeding on mast or grain.

I once knew a flock of fifteen turkeys to re-
main in trees above an overflow for two months.
I could see them daily from my cabin on the bank
of a lake in Alabama, and could sit at my table
and watch them fluttering as they fed on the
hackberry buds. They were in sight of a dry,
piney wood, and a flight of three hundred yards
_across a lake would have taken them to the dry

148 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

land, but not once did they seem inclined to go
toit. They remained in the trees until the water
went down, and the next I saw of them was in an
open plantation, with the lake on one side and
the river on the other. The water had barely
left the surface in places, and it was muddy and
sloppy. They never once went to dry land, but
returned to their swamp haunts as the water
abated.

On one occasion, as I was going down the river
in my skiff, I saw and passed a great number of
wild turkeys, one hundred or more, in small flocks
in the timber near and along the river banks.
The adjoining swamps were overflowed, with no
land above the water. Most of these turkeys
were sitting in cottonwood trees immediately on
the river banks or a little way out in the tim-
ber, eating the buds. Many of them were in the
trees that hung over the river, and, although
most of the trees were leafless, thus exposing the
turkeys to view, they remained there quite
unconcerned while steamboats passed right by
them. As I had three turkeys already in my
boat, I felt no desire to molest them as I drifted

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 149
by and under them. I passed right under some
fine gobblers on their perches, not over thirty
feet up, and they only looked curiously down at
me; they seemed to be busily engaged in feeding,
and sailed from tree to tree, keeping up a great
stir and racket. It is a beautiful sight to watch
a flock of wild turkeys budding, especially on
beech buds. The branches of the beech trees
are long and so limber that the birds with all
their efforts can barely hold on to the tiny twigs
while they gather their food; hence they are kept
in a constant wobble and flutter, bobbing up and
down with their wings spread out to sustain an
equilibrium, and their broad tails waving and
tossing, bringing them into all manner of atti-
_ tudes, thus enabling the hunter to see and hear
them a quarter of a mile through the timber.
Some get upon very small limbs, then stretch out
their long necks and pick the buds; others will
spread out both wings for support and lie prone
on a bunch of twigs while they feed. There is
little or no trouble for the hunter to approach a
flock so engaged and pick off his choice. They
are so bent on eating that they take no note of

150 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

what Is going on around them; even if over dry
land they will often remain in the trees half a
day eating buds, if other food is scarce, and when
tired or satiated they will sit calmly on some
large limb and go to sleep or preen their feathers.
This is one of the best opportunities afforded the
crafty hunter with his good rifle to steal up be-
hind a tree and deliberately drop one, as at this
timetheleavesare too small to afford much cover,
and the turkeys are exposed to open view, giving
the prettiest shots imaginable for the rifle. While
this is one of the most successful and easiest ways
of securing turkeys, there are few hunters who
know enough about it to take advantage of
it. Persons will often pass under trees in a tur-
key locality, when suddenly one or more turkeys
will fly out. The hunter looks up, but sees only
the turkeys on the wing, and cannot understand
why they were in the trees at that time of day,
as he has not flushed any. He wonders how
they came to be there and does not know they
were up there budding, having probably been
there all the morning.

The budding season lasts but a short time, if

ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD 151

the birds are not forced to it by an overflow. On
dry land it lasts a month or six weeks, for by
that time the buds have matured into full-grown
leaves, and are too old and tough for the birds to
eat.

CHAPTER Ix

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING

4 TER obtaining a supply of food, the wild
~™ turkeys become moody and careless,
lounging about the sunny slopes if the

weather be cool, or if it be hot, seeking the
shade of the hummock or thicket, preening their
feathers or wallowing in the dust. They thus
pass the middle hours of the day in social har-
mony and restful abandon. About three or four
o’clock in the afternoon the line of march is re-
sumed in the direction of the roosting place, and
they gather their evening meal as they journey
along. They are excellent timekeepers, usually
winding up the day at one of their favourite
roosts; but in case this calculation is faulty and
sundown overtakes them a mile or so from the de-
sired spot, they will start on a run in single file, the
old hens leading, and keep going rapidly until

their destination is reached. They will then stop
152

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING 153
suddenly in a close group, peer about, uttering
low purring sounds, while having a breathing
spell from the long run. Having regained their
composure, the old hens will sound several clucks
in rapid succession, terminating in a gutteral
ceackle, when the whole of the flock will take
wing. With a wild roar, up they go in different
directions, alighting in the largest trees with sel-
dom more than two or three turkeys in a single
tree. If they are not satisfied with their first
selection of a roosting place, they will fly from
tree to tree until a satisfactory place is found;
then they settle down quietly for the night.

Wild turkeys have a preference for roosting
over water, and they will often go a long way in
order to secure such a roost. The backwater
from the overflowing streams, when it spreads
out widely through the standing timber of the
river bottoms, affords them great comfort; also
the cypress ponds to be found in our Southern
river districts. They evidently fancy that there
is greater safety in such places.

The turkey is happy when it can traverse the
ridges, glades, and flats in a day’s ramble from

154 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

one watercourse to another, having a roosting
place at one ridge one night and the next night
atanother. This sort of arrangement suits them
admirably, as they dislike to roost in the same
trees two or more consecutive nights. I have
known them to make such regular changes as
to roost in three or four different places in a
week, bringing up at the same place not exceed-
ing once or twice a week, and that on or about
certain days. ‘These are facts peculiar to the
wild turkey, especially if localities are favorably
arranged. But often they will roost very many
nights near the same place. If the range is un-
limited, however, they will seldom roost oftener
than twice a week at a given spot. There are
exceptions though, for I have known positively
of old gobblers who took up their abode at a
certain spot and roosted, if not in the same tree,
in the same clump of trees, night after night and
year after year with the persistent regularity of
the peacock, which will roost on the same limb of
a tree for ten or twenty years if undisturbed.
When an old gobbler does take to this hermit-
like custom, he is the most difficult bird to

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING 155
bag in the world. His life seems immune from
attacks of any nature, and he seems to know the
tactics of every hunter in the vicinity of his range.
He keeps aloof from any old logs or stumps
where an enemy may lurk, and never gobbles un-
til daylight, so that he can take in every inch of
his surroundings. I have killed from four to six
old gobblers, in a given range, while trying to bag
a certain stubborn old chap whose vigilance and
good luck have saved him from bullets for years;
but through patience and dogged persistence
in the hunter he succumbed at last. Although
some hold out longer in their reserved and re-
tired course, I can truthfully say that I have yet
to encounter one that can not be brought to the
gun by fair and square calling. Many experi-
enced and worthy hunters will criticise this as-
sertion, and are honest in their convictions that I
am in error; but I will take the dissenter to the
haunts of the most astute old gobbler he may
select, and call the turkey right up to the muzzle
of his gun, or near enough tosee the glint of his eye.

A flock may be met one morning on the skirts
of the backwater from an overflow river bottom,

156 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

probably a flock of hens and gobblers together.
There would be a great commotion among them
and a general mixing up, yelping, and gobbling.
On visiting this place the next morning one would
not be seen or heard. Crossing to another lake
or backwater, one might find the whole flock, or
possibly the gobblers, with nota hen around. IH
in the gobbling season, and the males are gob-
bling, in less than half an hour the hens would be
among them, but if not in the gobbling season
the former may not meet the latter again for a
month, as in the spring the sexes have no more
attraction for each other than were they birds of
entirely different groups. Except in the spring
you may flush and scatter a flock of hens and
gobblers, and after a reasonable wait begin to
call with the notes of the hen. Not a gobbler
will answer or notice you at all, but the hens will
reply by yelping, squealing, and clucking. The
gobblers meantime are as stolid as an Indian and
as silent as a dead stump. Wait until the hens
have gone, then begin the lingo of the gobbler
and you find another result.

Usually there are plenty of wild turkeys in the

trees

In

y to roost

ill go a long wa
ter

They w
growing 1

n wa

y

An ideal turkey countr

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING 157
Southern river bottoms, in fall and winter, and
there they remain until driven to the uplands
‘by overflows, where they must subsist on pine
mast, or remain in the trees over the water, and
live on the young buds and tender leaves. Ihave
repeatedly noticed this in the Tombigbee swamps
in the State of Alabama. Those that do not go
to the hills and pine forests will hug the margin of
the overflow until the waters subside, when they
will immediately return to their former haunts,
however wet and muddy. When incubating time
comes they seek the higher, dryer, and more
open places, grassy and brush-covered abandoned
plantations, there to carry out the duties of
reproduction.

Aiter the season of incubation is at an end the
gobblers cease, almost entirely, associating with
the hens, collecting, as the summer advances,
in bands of from two to adozen.. Thus they re-
main all through the summer, autumn and win-
ter, acting the réle of old bachelors or widowers,
and never separating unless disturbed by an
enemy. The females care for and rear the young
broods, returning to the swamps or hummocks

158 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
in the fall, where their favorite food has matured
and shed.

One of the last seasons I spent in the vicin-
ity of the Tombigbee country in Alabama there
were no grapes or muscadines in the bottoms,
but a good pin oak crop of acorns, such as
the turkeys like. In the higher woods there was
a heavy black gum and berry crop, and there
the turkeys were, while in the oak bottoms there
was scarcely a flock.

During the summer months, old gobblers, like
old bucks, having banded together, become very
friendly and attached to each other, feeding in
perfect harmony. They stroll together wherever
their inclinations may lead them, and are then
very shy and retiring. One seldom sees them
in the summer, but when they do it is generally
in an open prairie or old field, eating blackberries,
wallowing in an old ash hole, or chasing grass-
hoppers. These old bachelors do not get fat
until fall, although they have an ample supply
of food. They are lean and ugly and forlorn
looking until after the molting season is over,
in August and September, and their new bronze

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING 159
suits are donned; they then begin to fatten, and
by December are in excellent condition of flesh
and feathers, continuing to improve until the
gobbling season returns next spring. ‘These
confirmed old bachelors will not associate with
the other turkeys, but the old hens that have
had their nests broken up and have reared no
broods will associate all winter with the young
broods and their mothers. I have often observed
that these old patriarchs, as a rule, never associ-
ate with any other age or sex of turkeys. In
summer you will often see an old gobbler or two
with a flock of hens early in the morning; but see
the same flock three hours later and he is not with
them. Intheearly morning hours of spring, while
there is a general gobbling and strutting parade,
all ages and sexes mingle in the exuberance of the
season and hour; but when this outburst of frolic
and revelry is over, the different bands return
to the sterner business of the day, that of search-
ing for food. ‘The old gobblers remain gobbling,
strutting, gyrating round, picking at and teasing
each other, or strumming now and then with the
tip of wings, until a riot is precipitated and a

ss

i60 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
‘fight ensues, in which two become engaged, while
the more peaceful or timid quickly leave the
vicinity. The gladiators then begin a tug of
war, and after a few blows and jams with wings
and spurs, one seizes another by the loose skin
of the head, which is very limp, affording an ex-
cellent hold; then No. 2 gets his opponent by the
nape of the neck, and they pull, push, and shove,
standing on tiptoes, prancing and hauling away,
each endeavoring to stretch his neck as high as
possible, as if determined to pull the other’s head
off, while both necks are twisted around each
other, their wattles aglow with the red sign of
anger, while their hazel eyes sparkle with wrath.
They writhe, twist, and haul away, until perhaps
a quarter of an acre of earth is trampled, and
keep it up until the foolish combat ends from
sheer exhaustion, when one of them runs away.
The victor, if not too much used up, having
recovered breath and strength, will set up a gob-
bling and strutting that will cause the leaves of
the trees to tremble. He thus proclaims his
victory and assumes the réle of monarch of all
he surveys.

A hermit. It would take an expert turkey hunter
to circumvent this bird

HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING 161

By these fights one gobbler establishes his
claim as lord of a certain range, which no other
gobbler will dispute during the rest of the season.

Sometimes, though rarely, I have known an
old monarch to take a companion gobbler into
the very bosom of his harem, however strange
this may appear. I have known of half a dozen
instances of this nature where two old gobblers
have formed an inseparable alliance and remained
together staunch friends for years. Hens are
seldom seen in their company and they are ex-
tremely difficult to call. I hunted one such brace
three years, killing many other gobblers in the
long effort to bag these two; never did I call them
within gunshot, until one day by some accident
they got separated, when it was no trouble to call
and kill one of them; the other is, for all I
know, alive now.

Such fights as I have described break up the
social ring of old bachelors, and until the love
season is over each male takes up a range to him-
self, calling to his side as many of the females
within hearing of his voice as will come to him.
Several gobblers can be heard in the morning

162 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

gobbling within a radius of a few hundred yards,
but each keeps to himself, and by frequent and
persistent gobbling and strutting secures the
society of such hens as may favor him with their
presence.

After the disbanding of the old gobblers is the
best time in the whole season to bring them to
call, as they will come to almost any call, yelp,
or cluck; except the mogul himself. His bigotry
and vanity render him most indifferent to the
seductive coquetry of the females, much less
to human imitators. Being assured of, and
satisfied with, a well-filled harem, he gives little
care to the discordant piping of the hunter, or
even the gentle quaver of a hen.

In this latitude — from 30 degrees to 33 de-
grees north — the gobbling season begins about
the first week of March, ending the last of May,
embracing about three months, though the time
depends much on the thermal conditions of the
spring. If the weather be dry and pleasant the
season will not last as long as if wet and chilly.

CHAPTER X

GUNS I HAVE USED ON TURKEYS

HE rifle is, par excellence, the arm for

hunting the wild turkey under nearly

all conditions. It matters little what

calibre rifleis used. Years ago when I began to

hunt turkeys the muzzle-loading round ball rifle

was the only arm thought fit, and it surely did
the work well and satisfactorily.

It is said that Davy Crockett when a boy was
compelled by his father to shoot enough game in
the morning to supply his dinner, and was allowed
one load of powder and aballtodoit with. If he
missed and got no game he got no dinner.

In the old days the .38 calibre, shooting a
round ball, was about the proper size, with not
too much twist in the rifle; one twist or turn in
five feet was about the thing. Those rifles were
reliable and did not lacerate the flesh unless too

much powder was used.
163

164 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Next came the breech-loading rifle with small
charge of powder and heavy bullet; like the Win-
chester model *66 and Frank Wesson’s single
shot. These guns shot with remarkable correct-
ness at short range, especially the Frank Wesson
rifie; but none of them had enough velocity to
do as fine shooting as is required in turkey shoot-
ing above 75 to 100 yards. With me the .38
calibre Wesson rifle did more certain work on
old gobblers than any other rifle I have ever
seen or used, nor was the powder charge suf-
ficient to tear the flesh severely, but it would
drive the bullet through two old gobblers.

The next best gun, and the best all-round
shooting gun I ever used on turkeys was a .32-20
Winchester, model ’73, but this gun tore the
flesh badly.

The points to be desired in a turkey rifle are
these: A bullet that will kill under ordinary
conditions and at the same time leave a mini-
mum trace through the bird; and a flat trajec-
tory for fine shooting at 125 or 150 yards, as that
is as far as one will be apt to risk a shot at them.

I found that the .32 calibre killed as well as

GUNS I HAVE USED ON TURKEYS 165
the .50 calibre — I mean the .32-20 — if the shot
was placed right. It must be remembered that
the skin of birds is very thin and delicate; the
flesh under it, especially the breast, is extremely
tender and juicy, and a rifle bullet passing
through it with great velocity will spatter the
flesh like soft butter, the bullet having mush-
roomed against the thick, hard feathers, or even
on striking the flesh itself.

I believe the best rifle that could be made for
turkey shooting would be .30 or .32 calibre, with
about 15 grains of powder, and the weight of the
‘bullet reduced as much as possible without in-
jury to accuracy. It would have ample force
and not tear the flesh and give even greater pene-
tration than the .32-20. A turkey rifle should
not mushroom its bullets, for, although the tur-
key possesses remarkable vitality, he is easily
killed if shot in the right place.

As to shotguns, there is little choice so far as
the shooting is concerned. Any good modern
choke bored gun will answer — the choked being
greatly to be preferred, as it concentrates its
shot — which is a desirable quality in scoring —

166 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

on the head or neck, the only mark for a shotgun
onaturkey. No. 6 is by all means the size shot
for this purpose; one barrel with No. 6 for the
head, the other No. 3 or 4 for the body, is the
proper thing.

Wing shooting turkey is so out of line with
my idea of turkey hunting under any conditions
that I have little to offer in that respect. To
see a big, fine gobbler with his rich bronze plu-
mage all messed up by shot and grime, legs and
wings all broken and bloody, dangling about, is
a disgusting sight to the true turkey hunter.
The turkey is not built or in any way adapted to
being so shot, but there are men so nervous and
excitable that they cannot still-hunt turkeys.
Such men must be going all the time, and their
only chance is to scare up the birds and shoot
them on the wing. They are not of the stuff
that make good turkey hunters, and they will
never succeed, no matter how they try. They
have no patience to wait on the movement of a
turkey when coming to the call, but can sit
around a hotel all day spinning yarns, talking
politics, and perhaps playing cards all night.

GUNS I HAVE USED ON TURKEYS 167
This type of man can never become a quiet, con-
templative, thoughtful turkey hunter.

Unless killed or wing broken, a turkey may
receive while on the wing a mortal hurt and yet
be lost, for it has such vitality that it will prolong
its flight to such a distance as to be lost. At short
range turkeys on the wing are easily dropped
with a shotgun, but then the whole body is
usually filled with shot. Hallock says: “If the
hunter be so fortunate as to get within reach
of a turkey, let him take deliberate aim at
the head if he has a rifle, but the possessor of a
shotgun should cover the whole body.” Tome
this seems absurd, for it is the reverse of this that
I would suggest to successfully kill the bird.
Should the man of average nerve and excitability
take aim at the head of a turkey with a rifle he
will missit. I have done it myself under certain
conditions, and under ordinary circumstances I
would not suggest that any sportsman take such
chances.

The turkey hunter who uses his rifle gets
more real enjoyment out of the sport than with
any otherarm. He gets more chances to kill the

168 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

bird, because of the greater killing range of
the rifle, and consequently is surer of his game,
particularly if he is a marksman with a cool
head, steady hand, and good vision. If one de-
sires to be a first-class, all-round turkey hunter,
my advice is to employ the rifle, and when a
turkey is found, aim for the body, and that part
of it that covers the vitals. If you do not do
this you are likely to see your game running
away as fast as his legs can carry him, for, unless
your bullet has passed through his body, striking
a vital part, the bird is likely to escape. If cir-
cumstances are such that you cannot procure a
rifle, or are wedded to a shotgun, I should advise
the use of No. 6 shot, and would reeommend aim-
ing at the head of the bird, unless they are young
birds and quite near enough to make sure your
shot. Do not use buckshot if you can procure
any other. Should you use No. 5 or 6 shot and
aim at the head, you will be surprised to learn at
what range you can killaturkey. Some hunters
who use a shotgun prefer No. 6 in one barrel and
No. 4 in the other, using one for the head and
the other for the body. The reason that I do

GUNS I HAVE USED ON TURKEYS 169

not recommend the use of buckshot in turkey
hunting is because the vital parts of the turkey
are very small, and at forty yards the chances of
reaching these parts with buckshot are slim.
Those who have tried buckshot at this range
note that they have knocked their birds over
nearly every time, but are surprised to see them
get up and run away. This never happens if
the sportsman uses a good rifle and places his
bullet in the right place.

CHAPTER XI

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE-— WHY DOES THE
GOBBLER GOBBLE

O LEARN to imitate the cry of a turkey

; is no great feat, if you have something

to call with and know the sounds you

wish to imitate. One can become proficient in
the use of the call with reasonable effort; but to
expect to call intelligently, without a proper
knowledge of the interpretation of the notes pro-
duced, is as absurd as to read a foreign language
and not know the meaning of the words. Un-
less you know the meaning of the gobble, the
yelp, and cluck, in all their variations, you cannot
expect to use the turkey language intelligently.
Without such knowledge you will fail to interest
the bird you try to call, unless by accident or
sheer good luck you brought the cautious thing
within sight. It is not desirable, though, that we

depend upon luck; one should prefer skill in
170

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE 171
calling, so that he can at all times depend with a
degree of certainty on accomplishing his purpose
of fooling the bird. I was once hunting with a
friend, and as we sat together by White Rock
Creek calling an old gobbler; two or three other
hunters, at different points but within hearing,
were also calling, keeping the turkey continually
gobbling. My friend asked why I did not call
oftener, fearing the others would decoy the tur-
key away fromus. I told him that I had already
put in my call and the gobbler understood it, and
the other fellows were calling by simply making
sounds with no apparent meaning or reason, and
when the gobbler got ready he would come to
us. I then took out my pipe and had a smoke.
Meantime the calling by the other hunters was
going on at a terrific rate, and the gobbler was
apparently tickling their ambition with his con-
stant rattle and strut. Ere long he came di-
rectly to us and we shot him.

I have known men who could in practice yelp
almost as well as the turkey, but when attempt-
ing to call the wild bird would do little better
than the veriest novice. If such persons’ con-

172 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

fidence and ability to call did not fail them,
their judgment would, and the opportunity would
be spoiled by some absurd act.

It is not so much what one should do in eall-
ing, but what one should not do, as it is better
to leave things undone unless done right. This
subject requires the most minute and careful
knowledge of turkey lore, and will require much
of your patience before you are proficient, and I
trust you will find in these lines more for your
contemplation than you might suspect.

The conditions under which you call are daily
varied, while the methods to be employed each
time are quite complex. In spring the males
are gobbling, and the love-call of the hen is then
the one to use. In the fall and winter, when the
turkeys are in flocks and do not gobble, this not
being the love season, you do not then make
love-call, but such as suits the occasion and the
temper of the game.

First, as to gobbling: We will analyze that
feature, as it involves great interest to the
hunter. Asa matter of fact, more people hunt the
turkey during the gobbling season than at any

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE 173

other time, and strange to say get fewer turkeys,
simply from the fact that the call is not under-
stood.

Why do they go in quest of turkeys at that
season? For the reason that they are much more
easily located, as the gobbling of the turkey in-
dicates its whereabouts, removing the necessity
of spending much time in search of them; hence,
were it not for the gobbling many hunters would
never attempt to hunt the birds, knowing too
well it would be useless.

The first and most important thing that you
should impress on your mind is, that the turkey-
cocks gobble for a reason.

Why does the gobbler stand in one spot and
make a great ado? Every turkey, whether born
in Florida or Mexico, does the same, and at
the same period of the year, because his gobbling
and strutting is to let the hens know where he is,
and if he keeps it up every hen in hearing will
come to him. The gobble of the male turkey
is his love-call. In the early spring, when na-
ture begins to unfold its latent energies and de-
velop its dormant resources for creating new life,

174 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the old gobbler feels its impulses, and is not
slow in asserting his place as leader of the grand
aggregation of noisy choristers that make the
deep solitudes of the forests ring to the echo.
From some tall pine or cypress he loudly pro-
claims the approach of dawn. “ Gul-obble-obble-
obble, quit, quit cut,’’ comes the love-call from his
excited throat, so suddenly and unexpectedly
that all the smaller species within a hundred
yards are dazed with fright. I often thought
that, if he possessed any faculty of humor, he
must be greatly amused at the commotion he
creates all by himself.

He stands erect on his high perch, peering in all
directions to determine the next thing to do, or to
ascertain the result of that already done, and it
often happens that this is the last and only gobble
he will produce that morning, owing to its being
accidental. But he will stand upon the limb of
his roost quietly looking about, and after preen-
ing his plumage for a few moments, and seeing
that no enemy lurks near, he stoops, spreading
his great curved wings, and silentlyasasummer’s
breeze leaves the tree and sails to the earth fifty

durvo 0} yor ut sorjd [nyWYSyop y “TIM Ie WeoI SIoTqqo’ pjo dy} I9YM vULISOT UT SpoomM 3Ig

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE 175

to seventy-five yards from his perch. He stands
perfectly still some moments until satisfied all is
well, then he carefully places the tip of one wing
on the other across his back once or twice, and
walks slowly away to feed. A few mornings
later, if the air be crisp, clear, and not too cold,
he will gobble lustily many times before he flies
down, for the first warm days of spring begin to
arouse his animal instincts and he longs for the
society of his mates.

He is now in the prime of turkeyhood, in his
finest feather and flesh. He is fat and plump,
hence this is the stage at which the hunter, most
of all, prefers to bag him; but he is no easy game
to secure just now.

If he ever were afraid of his own voice, step, or
shadow, it is at this time; but the forest is ringing
with a din of bird song, and it is impossible to
restrain his impulse to “‘gzl-obble-obble-obble.”’
Making one or two quick steps, he raises his
head and says “put-put,’ then stands per-
fectly still, his great hazel eyes scanning every
leaf or bird that moves.

Why does he gobble? It is the call of nature

176 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

to break up his loneliness and secure the society
of his mates. Turkeys do not mate in pairs, they
are polygamous, loving many wives.

I wish to direct attention to the common and
erroneous belief, even among expert turkey
hunters, that it is the call-note of the hen that
brings the sexes together. This is incorrect.
It is the call of the male. It was after years of
study that I discovered this fact, which, once
plain to my mind, assured my success as a tur-
key hunter. I found that the gobbler was doing
the same thing I was doing; I was struggling with
all my ability and tact to draw him out, while
he was playing the same game on me; it was a
question of who had the greater patience. If I
remained and insisted on his approach, he would
yield and come to me. Here is his customary
method: At the very break of day, the weather
being favorable, he begins to gobble in the tree
in which he is roosting. The gobbling is pro-
duced at very irregular intervals, sometimes
with long, silent spaces between, at others in
rapid succession. Some turkeys gobble a great
deal more than others. Some will gobble but

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE Le

once or twice before they come down, and gob-
ble no more that day; others will not gobble
until they fly down, and then keep it up for
hours. Some will gobble all day from sunrise
to sunset. All these various idiosyncrasies the
knowledge of the hunter must meet. Some will
come to the yelp or cluck at the first imitation
of the sound, while others will take hours to make
up their minds whether to come at all. Take
it all together, the gobbler has most obstinate
ways, purposely or not; the wily hunter must
bring all his faculties to bear if he would outwit
him.

If the old turkey begins to gobble on the roost
at the early dawn and to strut (although all do
not strut in the trees), he will gobble, watch, and
wait, hoping he may catch sight of the female —
located by her responsive yelp or cluck — that
may be roosting in a tree near him, or one ap-
proaching on foot or flying toward him through
the timber. If not so- fortunate, he will usually
fly to the ground, scan the surroundings with his
keen eye a moment or so, then drop his wings,
spread his semicircular tail, strut, and gobble.

178 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Then he lets his dress slowly down as the spas-
modic paroxysm subsides, listens, and looks,
gobbles a time or two, listens again, and struts,
and soon. If he sees no hen or hears no sound
resembling that which he desires, he begins to
calmly walk toward his feeding grounds, gobbling
at long intervals; he then usually stops for the
day. This applies to the first weeks of the gob-
bling season, and he is quite easily called then,
as it is too early for the hen to crave his atten-
tions; but later it all changes.

The hens seek his presence as the procreative
impulses begin to stir them. The gobbler then
willtake up a chosen territory in a certain piece of
woods, the most favorable to required conditions,
and roost in the vicinity nearly every night,
that is, in case he has secured a fair harem of
six or eight hens; but if he is not so fortunate he
will run all about the country, having no special
place to spend the night. But now we are
contemplating the gobbler who has been so fortu-
nate as tosecure a fair-sized harem, and has con-
fined himself to one locality, in which he will
peaceably and contentedly remain all the gob-

LEARNING TURKEY LANGUAGE 179
bling season. I have heard them gobble late
in June when they have one or two hens with
them, who evidently have had their nests and
eggs destroyed and are again associating with
the males. It is usual for the hen to visit the
gobbler every morning, staying in his company
only for a short time; and when she departs he
follows her slowly a few steps, then begins to
strut and gobble violently until she is out of
sight. He knows his complement of hens, and
does not cease to strut and gobble until all hens
come to him; he then quits gobbling and strutting
and steals away tofeed on tender leaves, buds, and
grasshoppers. At such times the hunter, by pip-
ing seductive quavers, may tickle his vanity and
stir anew his passion, when he will stop in his
hunt for food and commence to gobble, strut, and
gyrate enough to exhaust your patience, but if
you call properly and are cool and quiet he will
come.

The turkey’s gobble is easily heard at a dis-
tance of from one to two miles if the air 1s still
and clear.

These are the rules that apply to turkeys in

180 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

general, but there are exceptions; for instance,
some old gobblers never secure the favor of even
one hen during the whole season, but will run
and prowl the country over, seeking such stray
females as may be met with, even visiting the
grangers’ domestic flocks, which is not an unfre-
quent circumstance in settled neighborhoods.
These solitary old birds when met with are easy
prey to the expert caller.

CHAPER XII

ON CALLERS AND CALLING

4 HERE are in use by all hunters who
still-hunt the turkey, instruments used

for imitating the call-notes of this bird;
a few lines on these useful implements will not
be amiss here.

The box or trough call, the splinter and slate,
the leaf call, all have their merits, and can be
made to imitate the different notes of the hens
and young gobblers. The leaf call is simply a
tender leaf from particular trees, held between
_ the lips, and when well executed, the call with it
is good. The box call is said to make excellent
imitation of the hen call, but I have yet to see
one that satisfied me. The box call is made by
taking a piece of wood, preferably poplar, or some
other soft wood, about four inches long, two
inches deep, by one and a quarter thick. Mor-

tise a square hole in this block, leaving the ends
181

182 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

one half inch thick, one side one eighth, the other
quite thin. The mortise is one and a half inches
deep. A piece of slate some four inches long by
half an inch wide is drawn across the thin edge of
this boxin various positions, and one skilled inthe
use of this call can obtain very good results. The
call most in use by the backwoods turkey hunters
in the Southern States, and one that causes the
death of more turkeys than all other call devices
put together, is simply the hollow wing bone from
the second joint of a hen turkey, with both ends
cut off to allow free passage of air. One end is held
with the lips in such a manner that the inside por-
tion of the lips covers the end of the bone. The
breath is then drawn in sharply, and when one
is skilled in its use the different call-notes of the
hen turkey can be produced perfectly. There are
several other devices much after this order, but
I have never found use for any of them; in fact
their defects prompted me to invent a eall of
my own, which I prefer. First, get the smaller
bone from the wing of a wild hen turkey: the
radius of the forearm. Hallock says the larger
bone, but he is wrong. The bone should be thor-

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 183
oughly cleansed of allits marrow. After cutting
off nearly one half inch from each end of the bone,
the ends are made quite smooth with a file, all
rough surface removed, and the bone finished
with fine sandpaper or emery. The round end
of this bone is packed and glued into the end of a
piece of reed cane joint two inches long and
three-eighths in diameter. Then a nice nickel-
plated ferrule or thimble is fitted on the cane to
prevent splitting, and the sloping end 1s wrapped

JORDAN S TURKEY CALL

with silk. Next, get another joint of cane that
the first piece will just fit into and glue them
tightly together; then cut off until the right tone
isproduced. The flat end of the bone is used as
the mouth-piece. The end of the bone that is in-
serted in the cane is wrapped with tissue paper
wet with glue and pushed firmly into the cane
three quarters of an inch, and care must be taken
to make this call air-tight at the joints; when the
glue dries, it will be strong, air-tight, and durable.

184 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

The bands or ferrules are intended to make the
instrument doubly strong, as well as to improve
its looks. It is a tedious job to make a good
call, but when you have one properly made, it
will last a great while, and I think this particular
call is the best in the world. |

There is one objection to the box, slate, or
similar calls: they make quite a noise near by
but can not be heard any distance. The instru-
ment I make can be heard a half or three quarters
of a mile away.

This call is used by taking the flat bone end
between the lips and by measured sucking motion
the notes are produced. The cluck is produced
by placing the tip of the tongue on the end of the
mouth-piece, and giving a sudden jerk and suck.
This, according to my opinion, is the most nat-
ural cluck that was ever made by any instru-
ment, and it can be modulated so as to seduce
or alarm at the will of the operator.

It is necessary to practise the use of a caller
until proficiency is attained, the same as you
would do in playing a flute or violin. Calling,
in my opinion, is the most important thing to

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 185

be considered when in quest of the turkey, and
the knowledge of how to do it 1s difficult to im-
part to others.

There are four distinct calls of the wild turkey
one should become familiar with to become an
expert turkey hunter; these are the call of the
young hen, the old hen, the young gobbler, and
the gobble of the old male bird. The latter is
almost impossible to learn, and I have seen but
two or three men in my life who could imitate the
gobble. The sound is made with the throat, and
I know of no way it can be taught. The notes of
the hen turkey consist of a variety of quaver-
ing sounds such as are given by the domestic
fowl, but which require study and practice, with
the best devised caller, to imitate. The plain
yelp or “keow-keow”’ are the chief notes to learn,
and once mastered and employed in concert
with the ecluck, will usually be all that is neces-
sary in calling turkey, be it a flock of scattered
individuals or an old gobbler (in the gobbling
season), but it would avail nothing on the lat-
ter at any other time. ‘“‘Keow-keow-keow,”’ or
cut’’— these are the

ee 55 33 (a9

“keow-kee-kee,”’ “‘cut,

-186 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

variety of notes, and each has its meaning,
however singular that may appear. The
turkey has no song, and the notes it employs
are either conversational, call, distress, or alarm
notes.

Early morning, when they are dropping down
from their roost, is the best time to study their
language as well as their habits. Ii you go near
a flock of tame turkeys and begin to yelp and
cluck, they will reply and keep it up as long as
you do, so you can soon learn their language.
If the turkeys be wild ones, keep well out of
sight, for they will stand no familiarity. I
am not, however, a stickler about keeping out of
sight when calling. I prefer to sit in front of a
tree that is on the side from which the turkey is
expected to approach, rather than to get behind
it. I sit in front of the tree in such a manner
that a turkey with the keenest eye in the world
will not identify me, if properly fixed, clothed,
and motionless. The explanation of this is that
the gobbler is not looking for a person, but for
another turkey; and as it can think of but one
thing at a time, it sees nothing that does not

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 187

resemble that which it is in quest of; but if you
move, its keen eye will quickly detect you.

The turkeys seem to have no special power of
smell, so if the hunter’s clothes are gray or drab,
he may sit at the base of a tree, and by keeping
quiet, the turkey will many times come within
ten or twenty feet, and, although looking directly
at him, will fail to make him out and walk lei-
surely away.

I once had a flock of wild turkeys come very
near me, and some of them jumped up and stood
on the log I was resting my back against; one
hen was within three feet of me, and she stood
for a few minutes purring and looking me over,
finally leaping off. Then a young gobbler came
in front and took a good look at me. He
seemed to have a suspicion that I was not a
stump, for he walked back a little and stopped
to meditate. Not being satisfied with his first
investigation, he came up again and took a better
look; after satisfying himself he walked leisurely
away. He looked so quizzically at me that I
could searcely refrain from laughing. At the
same time these inquisitive birds were looking

188 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

me over, my rifle was trained on an immense
gobbler within eighty yards strutting in plain
view. Upon him my attention was chiefly fas-
tened, and in a few minutes the old fellow came
to bag. A dead grass colored suit is not so good
for a turkey hunting suit as one gray or brown.

If the game you seek be an old gobbler, and the
time spring, you will employ the call fully as
much as when calling the scattered brood in fall
or winter. I generally use the plain, quaint,
easy measured yelp or quaver and cluck of the
female; this same call has a hundred variations,
butitis not necessary that youemploy all of them.
The simple “cluck-cluck-cluck” and now and
then plain “‘keow-keow,”’ when properly done, is
generally effective. I have called as loud as I
could, so as to be heard a mile away, while an
old gobbler was standing near enough for me to
see the light of his eyes without alarming him.
Again I have called very low, just as a test, with
the same result. Sometimes the old bird is un-
usually cautious; then the less calling the better; .
then, after you have engaged the attention of the
turkey so that it will stop and gobble and strut,

rk

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 189

the less you call him the better, for the reason
that in gobbling and strutting it is using all its
own persuasive power to draw you to him,
thinking you area hen. Under these conditions
so long as you continue to call or reply he will
remain and gobble, and insist on your coming to
him. But if you have commanded his attention
and stop calling and wait, he will make up his
mind to come toyou,as he has come to the conclu-
sion that the hen is indifferent to his company
and is moving away from him; this will excite his
anxiety and cause him to make haste toward you.

Under such circumstances, and they occur very
often, the hunter will very soon note, after he has
quit calling, the gobbler will gobble oftener,
more furiously, and strut with greater vigor.
This is the time when most turkey hunters make
a fatal mistake, for if you call after the gob-
bler starts toward you, he will stop a while at
that point, and go through all the maneuvers
he has been worrying you with for some time,
march back and forth to his recent stand and
give you another hour or two of waiting, or -
perhaps he will go away to return no more.

190 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

Do not make this mistake, but keep still, wait,
and watch. Let the gobbler do the gobbling
and strutting, and you do nothing but keep your
eye on your rifle sights and watch for his ap-
pearance. When he suddenly stops gobbling
and strutting look sharp and keep your gun
leveled in the direction from which he 1s ex-
pected, but by no means have your gun in sucha
position that you will have to move it after the
turkey is in sight. Some men have a habit of
moving their guns about, although they have
their heads and bodies hidden and quiet. They
might as well get up and say “hello.” |

If a gobbler stops, and gobbles and struts in
one place some time, while you are calling him,
this is good evidence that he will come to you,
if you have but patience and keep quiet; nine
hunters out of ten, however, take the opposite
view of it, and for the lack of good understanding
of the turkey, and of patience, get up and go
home at the very time when success would have
crowned their efforts. Now, if a hen has gone to
the gobbler, as will often occur, and they are out
of your sight in the brush, you will know this to

ysniq 94} ysnory} ATMOS Sur[va}s JoTqqGos pjo sy} Mes UOOS J

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 191

be the case by the long interval between gobbles;
if it be fifteen to twenty minutes, you may be
certain a hen is with him.

You cannot always be sure that a cessation of
gobbling is for the purpose of attending the hen
or of coming to you, but you will soon find out if
you wait, as the turkey is sure to strut and
gobble near the place after the caress is over;
this has been my experience hundreds of times;
in fact it is characteristic and habitual, and it
rarely happens otherwise. Here is an instance:
Two young men accompanied me once to a creek
near the margin of a large prairie in Texas to see
me call an old gobbler. At the dawn of day the
gobbler broke forth into a lively gobbling, when
we proceeded to an old fallen pine log to call
him. Having waited for him to fly down from
his roost, I began the regulation series of calls,
clucks, etc. The turkey was a great gobbler
and did his share of it, but he would not come
immediately to the call. After a while one of
the boys remarked that he heard a hen yelping
near the gobbler, and then all gobbling ceased,
and the boys remarked he had gone off with the

192 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

hen. I said, ‘““No, he is there yet.” This si-
lence lasted fifteen or twenty minutes, while the
mosquitoes were covering the faces of the boys;
but they were bent on seeing the play out and
would squirm and rub off the pests, then listen
and look, as they lay prone on the pine straw
and peered over the log. Once in a while I
would yelp, but no response came until the
gobbler’s attention to the hen had ceased; he
then began to gobble again as vigorously as
though nothing had occured. Then I began
calling again, but he would not come to me, and
soon another hen came flying and lighted in a
tree near him, and a moment or two aiter flew
down to him. This caused another long wait.
When through with the second hen there was
another long strutting and then another hen
paid him avisit. By this time the boys had be-
come impatient, and were anxious to go home;
the mosquitoes were biting them severely and
their stomachs were craving nourishment; so
was mine, but I knew what I was about, and ina
low whisper remarked: “Boys, if you can en-
dure it no longer we will go home, but it is hard

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 193
to have come this far before daylight, six miles,
and have such a fine gobbler within our grasp,
then give it up and go home without him.”

“Oh, well,’? both said in a whisper, “if you
think you will get him, we will stay all day.”’

“That is all I ask,’ I replied. ‘“‘On these
terms he goes home with us.”

By this time the gobbler had finished his
attention to the third hen and was gobbling
furiously in the same spot. I began to call again
and the gobbler responded lustily. Having
given him a few well-meant calls, I put the caller
in my pocket. Seeing this move, one of the
boys asked me if I was going to give up. “No,”
I replied, “‘it is his turn to parley and he willcome
now if no other hen comes to him, so you fellows
keep still as death, but keep a careful watch.

Very soon, after a series of rapid and excited
gobbling, all was still. My rifle got into posi-
tion, and I whispered to the boys to peer over
the log, but to keep their heads still, as the gob-
bler was coming and would soon be in sight.
The woods had been burned and the low scrub
In our region was black and charred, save small

194. THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

spots that had escaped the fire. I soon saw the
white top of the old gobbler’s head stealing
slowly through the dead brush a hundred yards
away, but the boys could not see him until he
walked upon a small mound some three feet
in height, that brought his whole form above the
dead bushes. His feathers were all down, lying
close to his body, and his long beard hung low;
a noble bird he was. The most thrilling and
picturesque object to my eye is the long beard of
the turkey; just as the big horns of a buck are to
the deer hunter. In a low whisper I asked the
boys if they saw him. “Yes, yes,” both an-
swered in a trembling whisper. ‘Then the rifle
cracked and the bird sprang into the air and fell
back dead. The two boys, wild with delight,
sprang to their feet and went crashing through
the burned underbrush to get hold of the fallen
turkey. One of the young men, quite a hunter,
remarked: “That beats all the maneuvering
with a gobbler I have ever seen and was well
worth the long ride to witness.” So presenting
him with the big twenty-two pound bird, we
went home.

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 195
As soon as possible select a place to call from.
To a novice there is no special rule by which one
can at all times be governed in calling old gobblers.
Each bird is possessed of some pecularity differ-
ent from its neighbor, and ali individual varia-
tions the hunter must meet with good judgment.
When out very early in the morning in the vicin-
ity of turkeys, get some elevated position, a ridge
if possible, and, as the dawn is breaking, listen for
the gobble. The first sounds one is apt to hear
are the hooting of the owls; the next, as the light
grows apace, is the note of the cardinal, found in
all southern woodlands. As a roseate glow be-
gins to replace the gray dawn, one will hear the
** gil-obble-obble-obble.”’” It may be within one
hundred yards of you or perhaps a mile away.
You should wait until the turkey gobbles again
to be certain of his direction, then make all haste
to him, and get as near as you wish before he
flies down from his roost. When within one
hundred and fifty yards of the gobbler, stop,
and be careful lest he sees you, as his ever watch-
ful eyes look everywhere, especially at things on
the ground.

196 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

As soon as possible select a place to call from.
To a novice an old treetop or log is best, but to
me the front of a tree is preferable, with an open
space in front that the gobbler may come into
to be shot. But whatever the place selected,
get into position as soon as possible, and let it
always be an attitude that will not cramp you
should you have to remain a long time, and where
you can have easy action for your arms and gun.
That is why I prefer the side of a tree next to
the game.

If the gobbler is still gobbling after you have
seated yourself, sit quietly until he flies down;
that is best. But if you cluck or yelp to him
in the tree, let it be but once or twice to attract
attention and no more; no matter how much he
gobbles, you must keep still until he leaves his
roost, and even then wait a few moments for him
to gobble or strut, which he is sure to do on reach-
ing the ground, after taking a look around.
After this you can give him a cluck or yelp, or
several of them, no matter how many, provided
they are well delivered. If you are not yet an
expert at calling, best make as few calls as pos-

ON CALLERS AND CALLING 197

sible; for he will surely reply by either gobbling
or strutting, or both. Do not be in a hurry, for
generally he is in no hurry, but has all day to
worry you, and will surely do it if you continue
calling after you have said enough. If you de-
sire to get your shot at the gobbler as early as
possible, call as little as you can after you have
got him interested. If you continue to yelp
every time he gobbles, he will stop in one place
and gobble anywhere from two to six hours, ex-
hausting all your patience and temper.

In selecting a place to call from, there is one
caution that should never be forgotten: never
get behind a tree so that you will have to look
from one side to point the gun; the turkey is sure
to see you and run away before you can shoot.

CHAPTER XIII

CALLING UP THE LOVELORN GOBBLER

HERE is a wide difference between the

: old gobbler and the young gobbler, and
the tactics to be employed in hunting

them are quite different. At two years old
he can be distinguished by his beard, which is
then about five inches in length, the tip hay-
ing a burned appearance; his spurs are about
five eighths of an inch long, are not pointed,
while the average weight of the bird is about six-
teen to eighteen pounds. At three years this
burned appearance disappears and the beard is
seven or eight inches long, straight, black, and
glossy, the spurs being an inch or more and
pointed. The bird may now be considered full
grown, and weighs from nineteen to twenty-two
pounds. Henceforth there is no way I know of to

tell his age. He continues to grow for several
198

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 199

years, taking on fat as he gets older, while the
beard will attain to a length of twelve to thirteen
inches, when it wears off at the tip on account of
dragging on the ground while the bird feeds.
But the beard does not indicate the size of the
turkey, as some very small gobblers have ex-
tremely long ones. The largest turkey I ever saw
had an eight-inch beard and weighed twenty-
four pounds even though quite lean; he would
have weighed thirty-one or thirty-three pounds
if he had been fat, and he may have been twenty
years old, for he was known to have inhabited
one locality for more than fifteen years.

You must first ascertain where the gobblers
are to be found, and then be on the ground be-
fore there is the least sign of daybreak to select
a place where you can sit hidden and in comfort.
If satisfied that gobblers are in the vicinity, wait
until dawn approaches, and if then you do not
hear them, hoot like the barred owl. If there is
an old gobbler within hearing, nine times out of
ten he will gobble when the owl hoots; but if you
get no response, “owl” again, or give a low
cluck; the old gobbler may be on his roost within

200 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

sight of you. If still no response, cluck louder,
and repeat at intervals, adding a few short,
spirited yelps; if you fail, move quickly a
half or quarter mile away and call loudly with
a cluck and yelp or two. Proceed in this man-
ner until you have traversed the range of your
proposed hunt. In this way I have encountered
several old gobblers in a morning’s tramp, while
there was not one within hearing of the point
first selected.

If turkeys have begun gobbling at dawn,
you must choose a place to call from. My
choice is in front of a tree a little larger than
one’s body, facing the turkey. If possible have
your back to a thicket with open ground in
front, or you may prefer to get behind a log or
stump, or in a fallen treetop. Do not make a
blind, for the obstruction will hide the game
which is as apt to approach from one direction
as another; generally the unexpected way. Hi
you sit out in an open place by a tree, and stick
up two or three short bushes in front, he will
never see you until near enough for you to shoot.

If the old gobbler is in the tree before you take

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 201

your position, do not approach nearer than one
hundred to one hundredand fifty yards of him; he
may possibly see you or he may fly behind you,
or alight at your side when you call, and run
away before you can shoot. This may look
like a small matter to consider, but you will find
it amounts to much in dealing with old gobblers,
as I have learned from experience. I have had
them fly right over my head, so close that I could
have touched them with my gun barrel, or alight
at my side and run away in a twinkling. One
flew so near my brother once as to flip his hat
brim with its wing. The most remarkable in-
stance I ever knew occurred to a Mr. Daughty
in Alabama. He was calling a turkey that was
gobbling in a tall pine, and finding the call would
not bring him down, Mr. Daughty took off his
old brown felt hat and gave it a flop or two over
his knees. Before he had time to think the gob-
bler was upon him, and he had todrop his gun and
ward it off with his hands. He told me the gob-
bler had stretched out his feet to alight on his
head and frightened him so he never thought of
his gun, and was so dazed that the gobbler was

202 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

gone before he recovered his wits. I once called
one down, and as he stretched his legs to alight,
he saw me, and with a loud “‘put-put,”’ checked
his flight and shot up like a rocket.

A gobbler will invariably alight within fifty to
seventy-five yards of the roosting tree, according
to the height they are perched from the ground;
therefore one hundred and fifty yards is suff-
ciently near if your purpose is to call; but if you
intend to stalk and shoot him in the tree, you
will do best if you show no part of your body;
and especially keep the gun barrel out of sight.
Many hunters will hide themselves but expose
their gun, which is a great mistake, as the bird
will surely see the glint of light on the barrel.

It is best, in my opinion, not to call while the
gobblers are in the trees, for the reason that the
gobbler is expecting the hen to come to him; and
it will often happen that as long as you call, so
long will he remain in the tree and gobble and
strut. I have had gobblers sit on their roost
until 9 o’clock and gobble because I kept yelp-
ing.

Having got into position, wait until your

“Cluck,” “put,” “put,” there stands a gobbler, within twenty paces to
the left; he has approached from the rear

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 203

nerves are cool. The turkey hunter must have
time. Give a low, soothing cluck, then listen
carefully, as the turkey may gobble the instant
he hears the cluck; perhaps two may answer,
but we will confine our attention to one. Ifa
two-year-old bird, he will gobble before he thinks;
but we will not allow you such an easy job as a
two-year-old. Suppose the gobbler is three years
or over — he will straighten up his long neck and
listen some moments. He is not sure it was a
genuine cluck, but he thinks it was, and duly
drops his broad wings, partly spreads his tail,
and listens; then, “‘ Vut-v-r-r-o-0-0-m-m-i”’ comes
the booming strut, and “‘ Gil-obble-obble-obble,”’ if
he dares this it is to elicit a call or cluck from you
to make sure he is not deceived. Now call,
“Cluck, cluck, keow, keow, keow,”’? at once he
answers “Gil-obble-obble-obble’’ two or three
times in a breath so loud and shrill that it rings
out like thunder in the quiet of the forest. Now
give a low quaver, “‘Keow, keow, keow,’’ just
audible to him, yet low, then stop right there.
He will yell out in a fierce and prolonged rattle
that will make the squirrels quit their feeding

204 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

and spring to the trunk of the tree, and arouse
the herons from the margin of the rivers and
swamp ponds. Then comes the heavy booming
strut, and if he gobbles again, be quiet and let
him talk to his heart’s content. Unless you yelp
or cluck at this time, he becomes more and more
nervous and restless, and even dances on the
limb. Keep quiet; he will now give a few lusty
gobbles, and then there is a short pause. Look
out now. There is a rustle in the tree, a flip,
flip, and you see his big dark form leave the tree
and sail to the ground, giving his broad wings
a flop or two to ease up the impetus, and as he
strikes the earth a cloud of leaves arise in a cir-
cle to settle around him. The royal bird straight-
ens up his matchless form, and while his fine
hazel eyes scan the surroundings, you gaze with
admiration at his symmetry and beauty. More
likely than not he has alighted to one side; if so,
beware! Probably, too, if the woods are not
very open, you will not see him on the ground
and must judge as to his movements.

If there be but one gobbler, wait a few minutes
after he is down, as he is listening and watching;

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 205

then make a few yelps softly, but rapidly, and a
cluck or two. He will gobble and strut vehe-
mently. Be sure your cluck is a perfect assem-
bly cluck, or he may take it as an alarm “put.”
Your cluck, if made at all, should have a reas-
suring accent, or better not attempt it, depend-
ing on the yelp or quaver. The cluck and “‘put’’
are so nearly similar in sound to the ear that
they are difficult to distinguish; but one isa call
note and the other is an alarm, hence it were
better to omit both rather than disturb the con-
fidence of the bird you are calling. While the
two notes are impossible to describe in words,
they can readily be produced by an expert caller
with a good instrument. Give the gobbler two
or three quick little yelps, “Keow, keow, kee,
kee,’ in a kind of an interrogatory tone; this is
sure to make him gobble and strut, or probably
to strut only. I prefer that he strut, although
the gobble is more exhilarating to one’s ear, but
does not signify as much. The strut is the
better sign every time; it shows he has leisure
and passion.

Your “Cluck, keow, ku-ku,” brings forth at

206 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

once ‘Gil-obble-obble-obble. Cluck-v-r r-o-0-0-mi.
Hush, hear that? “ Cut-o-r-r-r,” “Cut, cut keow,
keow, keow.’ What is it? Is some one else
calling? No; the sound is too perfect. Hark!
how he gobbles and struts with renewed vigor,
for it is the siren note of the real hen who has
gone tohim. You might as well now keep quiet
for fifteen or twenty minutes, for he will not
answer as long as he is with a hen. As soon as
she is out of sight, however, he will listen to you.
Here, reader, is the most important lesson to be
learned and the most valuable in all turkey lore
— patience.

Fifteen minutes is usually ample time with
the lusty turkey. You keep up the call and
tease at proper intervals until sufficient zeal is
restored, which can be determined by the vigor
of his gobble; then do not call any more, no mat-
ter what he does. Keep still and watch his
manceuvres, and presently he will begin to gobble
and strut with great stress, gyrate, and swerve
from side to side, right to left, his big tail, doing
everything to fetch the new hen whose voice he
hears; but you must not break the spell by any

it made me

so near 1

-obble,

obble Ke
twenty paces of me was the gobbler

-obble-

“Gil
thin

d there wi

Suddenly there was a
jump, an

_ a = — ———— a a ee le,

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 207

false move. All at once he stops and everything
is still again. Maybe another hen has come
to his court, maybe not. But do not yelp or
cluck; he may be coming to you, for he knows
precisely where you are, and if he is not caress-
ing another hen he is surely approaching you.
This may take fully an hour, sometimes six.
“Cluck, put, put,’ there stands a young gob-
bler within twenty paces to the left: he has ap-
proached from the rear. Make no motion. He
has not identified you. “Put, put.” Keep still.
Put, o-r-r-r-r.” He begins to step high, turn-
ing to one side, then to the other. “C-r-r-r-r.”’
He pulls out the tip of one wing and places it
on the other. Note that. He is going to walk
away. “Put, c-r-r-r-r.’ He is gone; but let
him go, and good riddance, for he has created a
distrust in the old gobbler’s mind that will take
some time to remove. You are now compelled
to change your place and call again. “‘Gil-
obble-obble-obble.”’ Gracious! he is off to the
right and fifty yards nearer. If there is suffi-
cient cover, make a detour of from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred yards and get ahead

208 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

of him; then sit down, give a yelp or two, and
end with a cluck. That will reassure him at
once, and he will most surely gobble in reply; if
so, you sit still. Have your rifle in readiness so
that no move be made when he comes into view.
Very likely you have waited some time since he
gobbled last, and apparently he has quit all
strutting. There is another ominous pause, but
you are ready for him and on the sharp lookout.
You are sorely vexed, but your good judgment
keeps you alert while the other hunters have
long since gone home.

** Gil-obble-obble-obble.”” | Sh-e-e-e-e. There
he is within thirty paces to the right at a half
strut. Whatabird! See his noble bearing, the
bronzed coat, the glint in the keen eye. You
can’t move now, for he sees you, but he has not
made you out. Be still and let him pass behind
that big oak, then turn quickly before he comes
into view again. Ah! that low green bush has
obscured him; he has passed out of sight and
does not reappear. Your nerves begin to run
like the wheels of a clock with the balance off.
Your disappointment is inconsolable. “‘Gul-

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 209

obble-obble-obble,’’ nearly one hundred yards on
his way. This is discouraging, but the educated
turkey hunter never gives up so long as a gob-
bler will argue with him.

Get up at once and make a rapid detour, tak-
ing in two hundred yards; get ahead of him again
and on his line of march. Then sit down and
call as soon as possible to attract his attention.
This done your chances are as good as ever.
“* Gil-obble-obble-obble.”’ You have estimated
well. The gobbler is one hundred yards back
yet, which gives you a breathing spell. He be-
gins to rehearse the old réle of gobbling and
strutting, but with greater force, as he has had a
long rest. Now give another call and cluck to
see where he is; no response, and you are becom-
ing as restless as a raccoon robbing a yellow-
jacket’s nest, and crazy for just one more call;
but I advise not; have patience, and wait. An-
other call would only cause delay if not other
harm. He is the one now to get nervous, for
that hen may escape. A crow gives a sudden
caw in a neighboring tree, and, ““Gzul-obble-obble
obble,”’ says the turkey, now only seventy-five

210 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS?HUNTING

yardsaway. Butyouaresilent. Again comesa
long pause, and you think he has detected you
and gone. A red tail hawk darts screaming
through the timber, and, “‘Gzl-obble-obble-obble
cluck v-r-r-r-o-o-m-t,’ goes your bird thirty yards
nearer; then all is silent again. He has made a
strenuous effort to draw your call, but you are
deaf. Another long pause and you are in a
tremor all over. He has quit making any noise,
and the stillness is painful for, save a solitary red
bird trilling his carol in yon elm, and a gray squir-
rel nibbling the buds on that slender maple, all is
still. Two chameleons are racing on the log
behind which you are crouching, and, springing
suddenly to the dry leaves, they startle you with
the clattering they make, so highly strung are
your nerves; but you dare not move.

Why this insufferable silence? The gobbler is
coming, but when will he appear? Your rifle
is in position, cocked, your eye running along
the glistening barrel, but that is all of you which
is allowed to move. A distant dead tree falls
with a heavy thud that shakes the earth. “Gul-
obble-obble-obble,’’ breaks upon your ear and sends

THE LOVELORN GOBBLER 911

a thrill through your nerves, and the timid squir-
rel wiggling and scampering to his hole in a hol-
low gum. The sound comes from the oblique left.
Your eyes turn slowly that way. Ah! there
he stands, half erect, half concealed in the brush.
You see the white top of his head, the crimson
wattles of his arched neck, the long beard and
the glint of his eye, for he is only forty paces
away; but do not fire, as the least twig may de-
flect the ball. He has not made you out, al-
though in plain view, nor will he, unless you
make a sudden move.

You have carefully brought the rifle to bear on
him. He is meditative and somewhat listless;
but note that tail going up: he is going to strut,
and that will bring him into an open space.
“Cluck v-r-r-r-o-o-o-m-1."’ There! he is broad-
sideon. See that crease that runs along his neck
ending near the butt of the wing? Drop your
bead on the butt of the wing opposite where that
crease ends. That will kill him every time, as
behind lies his heart; while if you aim for the
centre of the body the bullet will go through the
viscera, making a mess of it, and while a fatal

212 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

wound, he may get away and be lost to you, for
it will not always knock him down. If he stands
quartering, aim at the centre of the breast next
to you. It will at once be fatal. If the back is
presented, which is not once in a hundred times,
draw upon the centre of it. Unless turkeys are
very plentiful, and you care little about losing a
good chance, don’t shoot at his head with a rifle.

CHAPTER XIV

THE INDIFFERENT YOUNG GOBBLER

F ALL stages, conditions, and pecul-
() larities of these fowls, the young
gobbler is the most difficult to under-

stand. He is absolutely unique, hence you
must employ entirely different tactics when
you go in quest of him. He has little educa-
tion, but he possesses a great native shrewdness,
and I have sometimes thought him more difficult
to get than either the old gobbler or hen; this
may be a fool’s luck, or it may be the result of
stupidity or reticence, but I have killed ten old
gobblers to one young one. As I have before
stated, while the young males are with their
mothers and sisters in the flock there is little
difficulty in bringing them to the call after the
flock is scattered. But after the separation of
the sexes they are extremely hard to call, for the

reason that they have abandoned the society of
213

214 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the females altogether, and do not pay any atten-
tion to their voices. Lack of information and a
reckless carelessness have caused the loss of
many young gobblers that otherwise might have
been secured. After the young males have been
separated some time from the females, and are
banded together, they are hard to find and hard
to bag when found. Instead of flushing at once
into the tree at the approach of an enemy, they
usually take to their legs and run some distance
before stopping, making their pursuit difficult
and unreliable. If once flushed and scattered,
and the hunter understands how to call them, he
can usually get one or two out of the flock if he
is familiar with their peculiar ways. Thus after
December we have three distinct classes of tur-
key society, the old gobblers, the young gobblers,
and the hens; and no matter what the number of
them is, they persistently maintain this separa-
tion the rest of the winter.

The soft, gentle quaver of the hen has no effect
on the ear of the young gobbler at this season,
and he will hearken to no other note or call than
that of the young gobbler. Even were a flock

THE INDIFFERENT YOUNG GOBBLER 215

of hens to pass beneath the tree on which he is
perched, he would regard them with no more
interest than he would a flock of crows; hence
neither the hen nor her yelp would be a decoy to
him, but the call of another young gobbler will
enlist his attention. The call of the young gob-
bler, like that of the average boy as he is develop-
ing into manhood, is changeable and erratic; at
times it 1s ridiculous from its awkwardness, and
hard to imitate or even to identify. It consists of
an irregular hoarse and discordant croak anda
coarse muffled cluck that sounds like an acorn
falling into a pool of water, or the gentle tap of a
stick on a log. If this yelp or cluck is properly
and timely made, it will bring the young gobbler
to the hunter, but usually he is in no haste to
comeeventhen. They have ample time to spare
for all their movements, and it requires the great-
est patience and dogged determination of which
a sportsman is capable to sit and wait their pleas-
ure; but if the hunter has a band of young gob-
blers well scattered, if he has a good caller and is
expert in its use, and will make up his mind to
sit quiet and talk turkey, he will usually be re-

216 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

warded. He should use only one or two low,
coarse clucks, well measured and some time apart;
then the low, muffied “Croc, croc.” The young
gobbler may be sitting on the limb of a tall
cypress, hidden from view by a festoon of Span-
ish moss; or, if ina pine, hidden by the limbs, as
still as a part of the tree. “Croc, croc,’ and one
low, hoarse cluck, as if a nut had struck the bark
of a dead log in falling, are the only sounds you
dare tomake. He is not so reckless in regard to
the call or answers as the hens, and not so ner-
vous. While hesits and contemplates, he meas-
ures notes; so that you have to be careful if
you would fool him. Now eall, “Croc, croc.”
His fears begin to dissipate, and running his
beak through his feathers, he makes his toilet.
This over, he slowly raises his long neck and head
and replies, “‘Croc, croc.” “Cong, cong, croc, croc,
cluck.”’ He turns his head with one side earth-
ward, and gives himself a convulsive shake —
“Croc, croc.’ Heliftsup one foot and then slowly
puts it down; lifts one wing, placing its tip on
top of the other, then slips that one out and laps
it on the first. ‘‘ Croc, croc, kee, kee.”? We looks

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THE INDIFFERENT YOUNG GOBBLER 217

around again to be reassured. Now there is a
rustle in the top of the tree, and you see the
leaves move, for he has turned on the limb and
you may see a portion of his body. You dare
not shoot or risk a bullet through that brush.
Wait. “Croc, croc’’; he walks along the limb a
few feet, but you still get only glimpses. “Croc,
croc,’ and down he sails to the earth. A cloud
of dry leaves arises around him and settles again
as he closes his broad wings and straightens up.
Now is your chance; bag him.

When the young gobbler once makes up his
mind to go to your call, there is little or no stop-
ping on his part. He walks boldy along, as if he
had no fear of anything. But be careful; he will
see you surely if you make an unnecessary mo-
tion, and there is no compromising a mistake
with him. Hisadieuisfinal. Heisa bird of the
fewest words at any time, and stands upon the
idea that absolute silence is safety. His habits
are exclusive and retiring, seldom showing him-
self in openings, although at times he is fond of
open pastures or prairies where he can see all
around him.

CHAPTER XV

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG

DO NOT believe there is any safer way of
| bringing a turkey to bag than by the judi-
cious employment of a good turkey dog, and
by that I mean a dog trained especially to hunt
turkeys. The hunter, too, who employs a dog
must know and act his part well to be successful.
Of all times to hunt the wild turkey with a
dog, the autumn and winter months are the best.
The dog should be a natural bird dog, either
pointer or setter. My choice, next to the point-
ers or setters, are the terriers, either Scotch or
fox. The Scotch terrier makes an excellent
turkey dog, due to its intelligence, patience, cour-
age, and snap.
I have had dogs lie by my side when turkeys
were gobbling and strutting within a few feet,
and never move a muscle until the gun was fired,

when they would be upon the bird instantly.
218

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG 219

If you employ a dog in gobbling time, he must
be thoroughly educated to distinctly know his
part, which is to keep at heel or lie at your side
and watch without a sound until the bird is called
to gun and shot; then the dog is allowed to go
and seize the quarry if it is not killed by the shot
and making off with a broken wing.

In Alabama I once saw a large gobbler coming
slowly to my call over a pine hill about ninety
yards away. I fired at him with my rifle as he
was moving in a full strut. At the shot, my
gobbler tumbled over, but quickly got up and
made off at a lively run with one wing hanging.
I started after him, at the same time calling to
my brother (who was below me on a creek, call-
ing another turkey) to let go his dog. Ina
moment I saw a gray streak shoot out from the
thicket on the creek, and start up the hill
in pursuit of the running gobbler. It was my
_ brother’s Scotch terrier, and within one hun-
dred and fifty yards the dog overhauled the
gobbler, to my great satisfaction, and held
him until I arrived. Had I not had the services
of a dog at this time the turkey would have

220 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

escaped, as he could get up the high, rocky slope
faster than I.

It is best to take a young dog six or eight
months old. The training is easy enough, pro-
vided the preceptor knows his part. Like edu-
cating a dog for quail, he must get the rudiments
before he ever sees the live game, for once a
lesson is spoiled a dog is also spoiled. Give him
a few lessons before taking him into the woods to
hunt turkeys. He must know the turkey is his
quest ere he is let loose; and donot loose him until
you have found unmistakably fresh signs; for one
mistake at such a time will take months to repair.

Teach him to lie down, the same as in quail les-
sons, no matter if he is a pointer, terrier, or hound.
Having taught him to lie down, take him walking
where there are trees, logs, and fences, and every
now and then suddenly sit or squat down by some
tree or fence, calling him quickly to you by soft
words and motion of the hand. Make him lie
down close to your hip, better the left side if
you are right handed, so that by any unexpected
move he may not destroy your aim at a critical
moment. Teach him to lie on his belly or with

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG Q2)1

his head prone between his forepaws. This
is easily done, and will insure a motionless atti-
tude as a turkey is approaching. If he whines
under excitement, as some will, tap him lightly
with a small switch on the head; this will also
make him put his head down, and he will soon
understand the meaning of it.

Next get a dead wild turkey, hen if possible,
as it is lighter. Take the dog into the yard or
field where there are no dogs or children to
bother him. Let him play with the turkey a
little, while you encourage him, then have some
one drag the turkey from him by the head a
short distance, while you hold and encourage the
dog to go. Let the turkey be hung up in a tree
or bush out of his reach; then let him go and take
the trail and tree the bird, and encourage him to
bark and jump against the tree. Then have it
fixed so that after he has jumped and barked a
while you can fire a gun or pistol and the carcass
falls to the ground and he pounces upon it. Re-
peat this as often as you have an opportunity.
You may keep a wing cut off at the second joint,
using that for several lessons before it becomes

2229 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

tainted, but by no means allow him to tear the
wing or bite the flesh of the turkey. You might
set him after a tame turkey now and then, but
this might bring him some day to grief by a load
of shot from your good neighbor.

Take the dog with you on a few hunts in the
woods for turkeys. If you find a flock, put him
after them at once and let him flush them, which ~
he will hardly fail to do. Thén, if you can kill
one over him, your turkey dog is well-nigh made.
Having had your turkeys flushed, you can walk
slowly and cautiously in the direction they flew,
looking into every tree, and you will soon see one
or two of them perched upon a limb. To get
your bird now is easy if you have a good rifle;
and you had better not be out if you haven’t
one, as no kind of shooting requires better marks-
manship than turkey shooting, especially in the
timber. Having treed your turkey, you may get
several shots, and meantime the dog is allowed
to trot around and bark as he sees fit, as the more
noise he makes the more is the attention of the
birds diverted from you to him; but after you
have looked among the trees in a few hundred

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG 293

yards of the flush, if you have not secured your
bird, select a good place to call. Sit down with
your back against a tree, or behind a log or fallen
tree if that suits you better. Sit quite flat and
low, bringing the knees nearly up to the eyes.
Call the dog to you at once by a whisper and wave
of the hand, and make him lie snugly at your
side, looking in the direction you look.

After a few minutes, when everything is still,
you begin to call at short intervals. Now and
then a low yelp, at first, and if you get a reply,
cease calling until the results begin to show up,
either by one or more turkeys coming to your
eall, or in their collecting together in another di-
rection, which is more likely to be the case, from
the fact that the mother hen is doing more effec-
tive calling than you, or they are inclined to go
that way anyhow. In sucha case you must get
up at once and proceed in the direction you see
them flying. Go quickly to where they are col-
lecting. Put the dog after them again and into
the trees they will go; you then proceed as at
first and continue these tactics until you have
got what you want, or have lost them entirely.

924 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

This is excellent and exciting sport, and the
dog loves it and soon becomes an expert in the
chase. But of all methods of hunting the tur-
key it is the most disastrous, next to baiting, not
so much in thenumber of birds killed, but the tur-
key has a great dread of a dog, and if too fre-
quently chased by one it will drive the birds
out of the locality. It should seldom be prac-
tised in the same locality or upon the same flock
of turkeys more than once in a season.

The rifle is preéminently the gun to employ in
this method of hunting, and there is a great sat-
isfaction in taking a fine bird from its lofty perch
in a tall pine, gum, or cypress at one hundred to
one hundred and fifty yards, where it would be
safe from any shotgun.

Dogs trained to hunt turkeys must not be al-
lowed to run squirrels, hares, deer, or any wood-
land game. It makes no difference as to quail or
prairie game, but in the timber his work belongs
to the turkey alone.

In teaching the young dog to grasp a turkey,
it should be trained to seize the bird by the neck
every time, and not touch the body, as his teeth

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG Q25

will lacerate the tender skin and tear the flesh —
a thing no true sportsman would tolerate. It is
easy to teach the dog not to mouth the game by
making him take the neck in his mouth every
time an opportunity is afforded. If he takes hold
of the body, or mouths the feathers, make him let
goand take the neck. He will soon learn this.

The common fox hound also makes a good tur-
key dog, and takes naturally to it, but he is too
noisy. A turkey dog must not yelp or bark on
the track before he sees the birds as the hound
does. ‘Turkeys are alarmed easily and prefer to
run instead of to fly, and if the dog barks on the
trail they will run for miles, all the time probably
not one hundred yards in advance of the dog.
So the dog for turkeys must keep silent until in
sight of them, and then bark savagely until they
are all flushed. This the pointer, setter, or ter-
rier will do. Be sure to encourage your dog to
bark at the turkeys in the trees.

Audubon says: “In the spring when the
males are much emaciated by their attention
to the hens, it sometimes happens that, in plain,
open ground they may be overtaken by a swiit

226 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

dog, in which case they squat and allow them-
selves to be seized, either by the dog or the hun-
ter, who has followed on a good horse.”’ I have
heard of such occurrences, but I never saw an in-
stance of the kind. Good dogs scent the tur-
keys when in large flocks at a great distance; I
may venture to say half a mile away, if the wind
is right. Should the dog be well trained to the
sport, he will set off at full speed on getting the
scent and in silence until he sees the birds, when he
instantly barks, and, running among them, forces
the whole flock to take to the trees in different
directions. This is of great advantage to the
hunter, for, should all the turkeys go one way,
they would soon leave the perches and run again;
but when they are separated by the dog, a per-
son accustomed to the sport finds the birds easily
and shoots them at pleasure.

No turkey is going to run very long ahead of a
dog, if the dog is in sight and chasing him. A
pack of mouthy beagles, or an old, slow deer-
hound, giving mouth continually, might keep a
turkey in a trot until fatigued; it is possible then
that a quick, swift dog like the Scotch terrier or

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG Q207

the pointer might rush on and catch him. But
the first impulse of the turkey, on the near ap-
proach of an enemy, is to fly and not to depend
on its legs; though on seeing an enemy at some
distance, turkeys will run away and not fly at all.

In the open prairie it is quite another matter.
On seeing a turkey or flock of them on a wide
prairie, one can, by riding in a circuitous direc-
tion, as if passing in ignorance of them, get near
and start them into a trot, and keep them trot-
ting by keeping between them and the nearest
timber. In this way, although you ride slowly,
you will soon run them down. The first indica-
tion of exhaustion to be noted will be the drop-
ping of their wings, and when the hunter sees
that, he knows that they cannot rise to fly; he
then closes in and easily rides the birds down.
This is, or used to be, a favorite sport with the
cowboys of ‘Texas, in which they sometimes em-
ployed a lariat, catching the birds as they would
a calf, or shooting them with a revolver. Incase
neither the revolver nor lariat is handy, they take
a bullet, partly split with a knife, and then let
the tip of their cow whiplash into the cleft of

2283 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

the bullet; clamping the lead tightly on the lash.
Thus armed, they pursue the turkeys until they
drop their wings, when, dashing among them,
they strike the neck of the turkey with the lash,
a foot from the end of the tip, whichsends the bul-
let whizzing around the neck four to six times;
and ere the turkey can recover, the cowboy dis-
mounts and secures it,

If there is snow on the ground there is little
trouble in following the turkeys by their tracks.
I have done but little of such hunting, as sufficient
snow seldom falls in the South to make good
tracking. When you hunt turkeys on the snow,
all there is to do is to find their tracks and follow
them carefully until the birds are seen; then ob-
serve the same tactics as in stalking them on the
bare earth.

In the South they are unprepared for much
cold, and at such times will likely be found
grouped together on the sunny slopes of hills,
or behind some log or fence, to avoid the bitter
winds, especially if the sun is not shining. They
will then often remain on their roosts half a day
rather than alight on the cold snow.

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG 229

If you attempt to stalk an old gobbler when he
is gobbling it is quite easy if you learn the course
he is taking and get ahead of him and simply
wait. Some men hunt no other way and are suc-
cessful; but it requires the greatest care, and a
thorough knowledge of the woods you are in, so
that you may take advantage of ridges, ravines,
gulches, thickets, ete.

When you have discovered a flock of turkeys
at some distance from you, stop and wait a few
moments. If they are feeding, and you are un-
observed by them, carefully note in what direc-
tion they are moving. It is hard to tell if they
are going or coming two hundred yards away, but
there is one way by which their movements can
readily be determined and that is by their color.
If they are approaching, you will notice the black-
ness of their breasts; or rather the birds will
appear almost black; and if a majority so appear,
you may be sure they are coming; in other
words, if you see one or two of them straighten
up, and they look quite dark or black, you can
then be certain of their approach. On the other
hand, if you notice that they look a lightish gray

230 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

or brown color, they are going the other way.
But do not be deceived, as sometimes a flock has
stopped to feed, and they will be turning and fac-
ing in all directions while so engaged; occasion-
ally one will straighten up, flop his wings, and
look back. Have an eye to the band and you
will see if many of them look black or gray. If
there are gobblers in the bunch, note their breasts
which are blacker than the hens.

There is another way to find the direction in
which the turkeys are moving if you cannot see
them. When you have found fresh signs in the
woods, note the scratches carefully to see which
way most of them incline. This is easily deter-
mined by the direction in which the leaves are
thrown by the birds’ feet. Sometimes, if the
scratches are made late in the evening, they will
look fresh the next morning and thus deceive
the oldest hunter. I once saw scratches on an
open pin oak and cane ridge; then others at
twenty paces, and again at fifty paces still others.
After a careful examination of the scratches, I
concluded there must be two old gobblers that
had made the signs; and, although I knew of

HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG 231

twenty or thirty hens and some young gobblers
on that ridge, I had no suspicion before that
there were any old gobblers. Now, reader, what
caused me to suspect from these scratchings that
old gobblers were about, and that there were two
of them was this: there were but few scratches
and at long intervals. The scratches were very
large, almost two feet across, while the leaves
had been thrown five or six feet back, indicating
long legs and large feet with a great stroke. I
noticed there were two separate lines of scratches
some ten feet apart on the main trend; also the
scratches were twenty to fifty yards apart in
the direction the birds were going, which indi-
cated that the two birds were walking along at
a brisk pace and keeping pretty well in a straight
line, feeding as they went.

I believe no man alive or dead has killed more
“old gobblers”’ than I have, and yet the heaviest
I ever bagged weighed twenty-four pounds
gross. This bird might have reached thirty or
thirty-three pounds had he been fat, but it was
late in the gobbling season, when the winter fat
is run off by constant love affairs, leaving them

232 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

greatly reduced in weight. This specimen was
killed in Trinity County, Texas, where I have
found the turkeys to average heavier than any-
where else I have hunted.

Audubon said the wild turkey would soon
become extinct in the United States, sixty or
seventy years ago; but to date his prophecy has
failed in so far as the Southern or Gulf States
are concerned. Although here as elsewhere
hunted and persecuted without consideration,
they are remarkably plentiful still. There are
localities in the Gulf States that will not be cleared
up or ultilized for agricultural purposes in ages
to come—if then. The immense swamps —
annually overflowed — great hummocks, and the
broken, untenable pine hills, will afford suitable
retreats for the turkey for generations to come.

Wild turkeys are less understood by the aver-
age sportsman or even naturalist than any other
of our game birds. It is common to read of the
acute olfactory powers of the turkey; that he
scents the hunter at one hundred to three hun-
dred yards; the truth is it must be a pungent
odor to have a turkey detect it at ten paces.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SECRET OF COOKING THE TURKEY

,» F MATTERS with which the average
‘ sportsman has to do, there is none so
little understood as that of cooking

game, and especially the turkey. Thousands of
sportsmen go into the hunting camp expecting to
play the réle of cook without the knowledge of
the simplest requirements and as a consequence
are in perpetual trouble and disappointment on
account of the blunders that are the inevitable
results of lack of information. In the solitude of
the forest the hunter should not be at loss for
methods of cooking even if he has but a frying-
pan; a log for a table; his plate, a section of bark
or large leaf.

The turkey is supposed to be a bird of dry
meat, but this is so only when all juices are
boiled or baked out of it. The usual manner

in which turkeys are cooked is by roasting or
233

234 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
baking. If the turkey is an old one, the first
process is to parboil until the flesh is tender;
then it is stuffed with sundry things, such as
bread-crumbs, oysters, shrimp, shallots, onions,
garlic, truffles, red and black pepper, wine and
celery to destroy the natural flavor of the bird.
It is a mistake to disguise the rich, delicate flavor
of turkey meat with the odor of fish, but it is
done and called roast turkey.

If the turkey is a young one, cook it in the
way usual to stove-baking, after first filling its
cavity with a suitable dressing of bread-crumbs,
pepper, salt, and onions chopped fine, moistened
with fresh country butter. This is the best
dressing that can be made, and will detract
nothing from the flavor of the bird nor add to
it. If an old turkey, parboil it until the flesh
is quite tender, then stuff and bake.

In the forest camp I neither bake nor roast
the turkey. Imagine a gobbler dressed and ly-
ing on a log or piece of bark beside you. Take
a sharp knife, run the blade down alongside the
keel bone, removing the flesh from one end of
that bone to the other. By this process each

THE SECRET OF COOKING THE TURKEY 235

half breast can be taken off in two pieces. Lay
this slab of white meat skin side down, then be-
gin at the thick end and cut off steaks, trans-
versely, one half inch thick, until all the slab is
cut. Now sprinkle with salt and pepper and
pile the steaks up together; thus the salt will
quickly penetrate. Do not salt any more than
you want for one meal; the meat would be
ruined if allowed to stand over for the next meal
before cooking. Just as soon as the salt dissolves
and the juice begins to flow, spread out the steaks
in a pan, sprinkle dry flour lightly on both sides
evenly, taking care to do this right, or you will
get the flour on too thick. Give the pana shake
and the flour will adjust itself. This flour at
once mixes with the juices of the meat, forming
a crust around the steak, like batter. Have the
frying-pan on the fire with plenty of grease, and
sizzling hot so the steak will fry the moment it
touches the hot grease. Put the steaks in until
the bottom of the pan is covered, but never have
one steak lap another. If the grease is quite
hot the steak will soon brown, and when brown
on one side, turn, and the moment it is brown

236 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

on both sides take out of the pan. By this
method you retain almost every particle of the
juice of the meat, and at the same time it isbrown
and crisp, and will nearly melt in the mouth.
The flour around the steak does not only prevent
the escape of the juice, but also prevents any
grease penetrating the meat. If you like gravy,
have the frying-pan hot and about a teaspoonful
of the grease in which the meat was fried left in
it; take a half pint of cold water and pour into the
pan. Let this boil about five minutes, when you
will have a rich, brown gravy, which season with
salt and pepper and pour hot over the steak.
You don’t want a thing else to eat except some
good bread and a cup of creole coffee. Having
eaten turkey thus cooked you would not care
for baked or roast turkey again.

The bony portions of your turkey may be cut
up at the joints, and all available put into a pot
or saucepan having a lid, with a few slices of
pork or bacon for seasoning, or fresh butter. No
matter how fat any game isa little pork improves
it. Put in a pod or two of red pepper and adda
little water; let this boil and simmer until quite

THE SECRET OF COOKING THE TURKEY 237

done. Iam giving directions now for making a
stew. For the thickening, take an onion or two
and cut into small pieces, a pod of red pepper
broken up, a tablespoonful of flour sifted, and
some salt. Put all into a pan and pour in a
cup of cold water, stir until the lumps of the flour
disappear, then put the mixture into the pot
with the turkey. Stir occasionally until it boils,
and if there is not sufficient gravy in the vessel
where the stew is cooking, add more water. Boil
thirty minutes, then serve. In this stew you get
the finest and most wholesome dish imaginable,
and at very little expense and trouble.

There are many who can prepare food but
never understand the reasons for doing things.
Not one in a hundred knows why meal, flour, or
cracker-crumbs are put on fish or meat while
frying. They tell you it helps to brown the
flesh; 1t does no such thing, but prevents brown-
ing while the meat is being cooked. Leave off
the flour or meal, and by the time the meat is
cooked it will be dry and hard as pine bark and
as indigestible. When fish is rolled in flour or
meal, the fish is not browned, but the covering is.

CHAPTER XVII

CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS

URINGthe past ten years, while the sea-
1) son was open on wild turkeys, I have
made a rule to leave the gun at home and

hunt the turkey with the “‘camera”’ instead.

On countless occasions I have sat on the bank
of a beautiful creek in Alabama watching and
waiting for these noble birds to appear and pose.
Time and patience, that’s what it takes; likewise
to know the ways of the bird.

On one occasion I had found their great tracks
on the sandbank, and, noting it as a favorite
crossing, made an impromptu blind to mask
the camera lest the birds get the least
glimpse of it or myself. It took me over two
months to get an opportunity for the picture
which I secured at last one afternoon as the sun
was getting low. I had been calling at inter-

vals, and just when least expected, there they
238

CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS 239
were, moving slowly but watchfully toward
the creek and across the scope of the lens. My
finger was quick to reach the button as they
stepped to the sandy bank, and turned to note
that no enemy lurked behind. The click of the
shutter startled them but little, and they walked
quietly away. I knew I had a good negative,
as the late afternoon sun shone brightly on their
gorgeous plumage, and they were barely fifteen
feet from where I sat.

Not one man in a million has ever had the
opportunity of viewing one of these birds in life
inthe woods atten to fifteen feet — nor ever will,
and to these I hope the photographs will be a
pleasure; for to see a ten-year-old gobbler so near,
when he is not frightened — and you with-
out gun or other means to injure him — so you
may enjoy the most majestic bird the eye of
man ever rested on, is not only a feast for the
eye, but a pleasant memory that will be with
you forever.

In November, 1899, in Alabama,I began to hunt
with the camera, and for six months — with the
exception of one day only, on which a terrific

240 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

storm raged — not a day passed that I was not
after turkey pictures, sometimes not seeing one
in two or three weeks, then again encountering
twenty-fivetofortyin oneday. Ispoiled several
hundred plates in this time, snapping at every
chance that occurred. There is no possibility
of a time exposure on such sensitive birds, and one
twenty-fifth of a second is scarcely quick enough.
Often the click of the shutter, so like the snap of
a gun when missing fire, sent them whirling into
the air orscattered them, pellmell, afoot. I have
stalked and crawled to their scratching places
and sat concealed with camera masked on an
old log or in a hollow stump, till sundown; all
day, and the next and the next.

I have made three or four exposures in a day,
gone home, developed the negatives, and found
nothing on them but shadows — taken in shade;
but at other times there was the just reward
when all the plates came out with every image
“perfect.” Then, again, it would rain almost
daily for a month or two. Still I went, camera
slung over my shoulder, covered with a rubber
sheet, hoping for sunshine.

CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS QAI

Once I discovered a bearded hen and tried
five weeks to catch her with the lens, and never
saw her but twice during that time. The next
season I found her again in company with three
other hens. I called them within ten or twelve
feet. This time it had been sunlight all day,
but just a minute before they came near enough
a thin haze covered the sun. Still, I pressed
the button and got a dim negative of her and
of one of her playmates, and have not seen her
since.

To successfully photograph wild turkeys the
greatest care must be taken in having a blind
perfectly natural in appearance. Once in the
blind, do not move; never mind the wind; wild
turkeys cannot smell you any farther than you
can them, but they can outsee anything except
the heron, crane, and hawk, and you must get
within fifteen or twenty feet of them in the bright
sunshine, or no picture. Find their scratching
places and hide behind a log, or make a blind of
brush and green leaves, etc. Be sure to hide
all the camera save the disk of the lens, and they
will see that nearly every time. I have had

242 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

them discover the lens and approach within two
feet and peer at it with curious wonder, whine
and purr, until satisfied it would not harm them,
then walk serenely away.

At times when I saw a flock or an individual
feeding at a distance, I would take my call and
invite them to advance, “‘stand up and look
pleasant,” and if in the humor they would often
comply. I have a friend living in New Orleans
with whom a hundred happy hours have been
spent in the camp, wild woods, and along the
stream, chiefly in quest of these noble fowls.
He and I have exchanged letters once a week for
the past quarter of a century. Of course I re-
gale him with every new photograph taken of
turkeys. One day I mailed him several that
set him afire, and on a certain day friend Renaud
came to me with his old 10-gauge which has
served him thousands of times.

The next morning when day broke we sat on
the crest of a pine ridge adjacent to the hum-
mock bordering the “‘Big-bee”’ river swamps,
over which the turkeys roosted at night. Ere
long the gray of the eastern horizon began to

CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS QAS

meltintoa rosy hue, and suddenly out of the deep
swamp came the shrill, gutteral but mighty
pleasing “*Gzl-obble — obble, obble,” of a tur-
key, echoing along the slopes and through the
vales of the surrounding forests.

After a while we heard him gobble on the
ridge, so I took my call and began to pipe a few
words in turkey vernacular, which the old gen-
tleman seemed to comprehend by the way he
gave ready reply. By this time the turkeys had
all flown down, several gobbling in as many
directions. Several were approaching slowly,
and we could hear them below the crest of the
hill. Luck favored us, so far as nothing yet had
disturbed them, and they gradually came nearer,
until presently a remark from my companion,
“Old Gobbler in sight?”’ “See him coming,
two of them, yes, three’; and on they came,
their great black breasts glowing in the bright
sun, while their long beards swung from side to
side.

Suddenly, when within thirty paces of us, one
of them spied Renaud’s new drab corduroy cap,
which contrasted vividly with the black and

244 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING
charred log behind which wewere hid, and “ Put,”’

‘“put;”’ all were gone, helter-skelter.
Renaud’s heart was broken — mine wrecked.
“Why in the d-dickens didn’t you shoot?” I
asked, mad as a hornet.

“IT wanted to get them in position to get the
two largest ones.”

“Gee! you ought to have made sure of that
fellow with the immense beard, and chance
another on the rise or run;’’ but just as we were
waxing into a fine quarrel, R. remarked in a
whisper, “They are coming back.”

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘‘and several others with
them — some old ones and some yearlings; so
make no mistake this time, and be sure of one of
the old ones.”’

They were very near now, and as I made a low
call all stopped and some gobbled; then on they
came in a careless manner, neither strutting nor
exhibiting any special passion.

I quickly got in my camera work, and ducked
my head in time to see the beautiful things walk-
ing away from the gun; then two well-measured
reports — and the smoke clearing away showed

CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS 245
two grand old patriarchs flopping over on the
pine straw and soon lying still. I am not sure
which was the proudest — I as particeps crimints
or he as executioner.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

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