106 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



peculiarly American form of sport, some account of 

 how it is hunted in the southern plains country may 

 be worth reading. The following is an extract from 

 a letter written to me by my brother, in December, 

 1875, while he was in Texas, containing an account 

 of some of his turkey-hunting experience in that 

 State. The portion relating how the birds are 

 coursed with greyhounds is especially markworthy; 

 it reminds one of the method of killing the great 

 bustard with gazehounds, as described in English 

 sporting books of two centuries back. 



"Here, some hundred miles south and west of 

 Fort McKavett, are the largest turkey roosts in the 

 world. This beautiful fertile valley, through which 

 the deep, silent stream of the Llano flows, is densely 

 wooded with grand old pecan trees along its banks ; 

 as are those of its minor tributaries which come 

 boiling down from off the immense upland water- 

 shed of the staked plains, cutting the sides of the 

 'divide' into narrow canyons. The journey to this 

 sportsman's paradise was over the long-rolling 

 plains of western Texas. Hour after hour through 

 the day's travel we would drop into the trough of 

 some great plains-wave only to toil on up to the 

 crest of the next, and be met by an endless vista of 

 boundless, billowy-looking prairie. We were fol- 

 lowing the old Fort Terret trail, its ruts cut so deep 

 in the prairie soil by the heavy supply wagons that 

 these ten years have not healed the scars in the 

 earth's face. At last, after journeying for leagues 

 through the stunted live oaks, we saw from the top 



