464 Wright, Early Records of the Wild Turkey. [q^ 



to be very scarce in the southern states, are plentiful in those to the 

 westward. In the most uninhabited parts they are so tame as to be 

 easily killed with a pistol-shot. In the east, on the contrary, and 

 particularly in the neighbourhood of the sea-ports, they cannot be 

 approached without difficulty: they are not alarmed by a noise, 

 but they have a very quick sight, and as soon as they discover the 

 hunter, fly away "with such rapidity, that it takes a dog several 

 minutes to come up with them; and when they see themselves on 

 the point of being caught, they escape by taking to flight. The 

 wild turkies generally remain in the swamps, and by the sides of 

 rivers and creeks, and only come out in the morning and evening. 

 They perch on the tops of the highest trees, where, notwithstanding 

 their bulk, it is not always easy to see them. When they have not 

 been frightened, they return to the same trees for several weeks in 

 succession." And, of the turkey on the southwestern prairies or 

 plains near the Upper Red River, Long says,^ " We daily saw — 

 turkies; but these animals had acquired all the vigilance which 

 results from the habit of being often hunted, and the entire want of 

 thick forests, and even of solitary trees or inequalities of the surface 

 to cover the approach of the hunter, rendered abortive most of our 

 attempts to take them." 



The aborigines have several methods of capture. According to 

 T. Flint (1. c, p. 73) "The Indians and western sportsmen, learn a 

 way to hunt them by imitating the cry of their young." Several 

 other devices or practices of the Indians will appear in the following 

 excerpts. In 1627, Isaac De Rasieries writes of the turkey in New 

 Netherlands as follows : ^ " There are also very large turkeys living 

 wild; they have very long legs, and can run extraordinarily fast so 

 that we generally take savages with us when we go to hunt them ; 

 for even when one has deprived them of the power of flying, they 

 yet run so fast that we cannot catch them unless their legs are hit 

 also." » 



In writing of Capt. Brant in the Niagara region, P. Campbell 

 remarks, that ^ " they rode on through the woods, and at last fell in 



1 James, Edwin. Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains — . Phila., 1823, 

 2 vols. Vol. II, p. 96. 



> N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls. New Ser. Vol. II, p. 354. 



' Campbell, P. Travels in the Interior Inhabited Parts of North America in 

 the Years 1791 and 1792. Edinburgh, 1793. pp. 202, 203. 



