In the spring, at courting time, the gobbler expands his body plumage, erects and 

 spreads his fan-like tail, swells up the naked head ornaments, and with drooped wings 

 struts and rattles the wing feathers and gobbles to attract and impress the female, as 

 does the familiar barnyard turkey. He is polygamous and displays during the spring 

 season at his chosen post, where he is visited by successive females. 



The female steals away to make her solitary nest. This consists simply of a few leaves 

 in a hollow on the ground, by some log or thicket. In it she lays her eight to fifteen pale 

 buffy or pinkish eggs, which she incubates for twenty-eight days. The down-covered 

 chicks follow the female as soon as they are dry after hatching. For the first fortnight 

 she broods them at night, on the ground, but after that, when night comes, they fly to 

 some low branch with the parent and huddle beside her. In the autumn the birds 

 assort into new flocks, the females, the young males, and the old gobblers joining their 

 separate bands. 



In colonial days large numbers of wild turkeys were captured in a simple, ingenious 

 trap. A crude log cabin was made, leaving chinks open between the logs, especially in 

 the roof. Then an entrance was made by digging a trench down to and under the log 

 wall and up inside the trap. Com was scattered about outside the trap and a trail of 

 corn was laid in the trench and into the trap, where an abundant supply was placed. 

 The turkeys followed the trail of grain in the trench, under the wall, and into the trap. 

 Finally, replete, they tried to find their way out but they never stumbled on the ex- 

 pedient of ducking out the downward way they had come in. 



Formerly, at least, the sportsman with his gun, and perhaps before him the Indian 

 with his bow and arrows, used to decoy turkeys within shooting range by imitating the 

 turkeys' calls in the mating season. In this it was not the skill of shooting or stalking 

 that was important, but the choice of a place from which a turkey would be likely to 

 call, with sufficient cover to hide the hunter. There he had to remain still enough so as 

 not to be seen by the bird, and finally, with the aid of a leaf, or the wing bone of a hen 

 turkey, he had to be able to imitate the call of a gobbler ("talk turkey") so that the 

 male was deceived into approaching a prospective mate or a potential rival. 



i!S»*— . 



35 



