434 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
well as those of his dog, led along the road in the 
direction the turkey had flown. 
“Following the tracks, we finally came to the big 
pine, which was down hill, on the right of the road. 
The turkey had fallen to the right of the pine, and so 
was further from the road than the pine was. Jake 
and I turned off into the woods, which was open 
enough for us to have a good view of the ground. 
Bill went down the road a bit, to make sure that the 
man with the dog had not turned off further along, 
then he, too, turned to the right into the brush, and 
began to investigate. 
“To Bill belongs the honor of finding that bird, a 
gobbler, too, wattled, bearded and bronzed as only an 
old gobbler can be. He was a beauty, with not a 
feather damaged and not a drop of blood on the snow. 
... Was it our turkey, or did it belong to the man 
who had shot at it? By this time he was a mile or more 
on his way, and that turkey certainly did look good. 
“At all events, we took the bird back with us, and 
if I remember rightly, it weighed just a fraction under 
twenty-two pounds at Bellwood. There was not a fresh 
shot mark on the body when I removed the skin for 
the taxidermist, who found, however, when he was 
taking the head from the neck, that a single small pel- 
let, hitting the bird in the head, had cut a large vein in 
the throat, and the bird had bled internally.” 
In Kansas, the Indian Territory and Texas, where 
the turkeys necessarily roost in the trees growing alone 
the river bottoms, the practice of shooting them on 
