THE WILD TURKEY 



If there is any member of the feathered tribe en- 

 titled to the designation of royal game bird, it is the 

 wild turkey. This magnificent bird, whose size and 

 cunning challenges at once the admiration and the skill 

 of the sportsman, is a native of North and Central 

 America, and found in its wild state in no other part 

 of the globe. The ocellated turkey, the Central Amer- 

 ican species, is even more gaudy in plumage than the 

 peacock, but as it is not found within the territorial 

 scope of these 'articles, I shall leave its resplendent 

 colors to scintillate in its own tropic sun, undescribed. 



Of the North American turkeys the scientist recog- 

 nizes four varieties. The Meleagris sylvestris of the 

 eastern states, except Florida, the Meleagris sylvestris 

 osceola of Florida, the Meleagris sylvestris elliotti of 

 the Rio Grande district of southern Texas and north- 

 eastern Mexico, and the Meleagris gallopavo of Arizona, 

 New Mexico, part of Colorado, and west and south 

 through the larger portion of old Mexico. It is of this 

 last species that I shall write. 



THE MEXICAN WILD TURKEY 

 (Meleagris gallopavo) 



Outside of the progenitors of our common barnyard 

 fowl, there is no wild bird that mankind has domesti- 

 cated whose distribution in its domestic state has be- 

 come so wide as that of the wild turkey, and none have 

 been so highly prized as an article of food. It is from 

 the Mexican wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, that all 

 of our domestic turkeys have descended. First cap- 

 tured in Mexico by the early settlers of that country, 

 they were taken to the West Indies and there domes- 

 ticated as early as 1527, for Oviedo, in his "Natural His- 

 tory of the Indias," speaks of the wild turkey having 

 been taken from Mexico to the islands and there being 

 bred in a domestic state. From the West Indies they 

 were taken to Spain, France and England, and again 

 brought back to America as domestic fowls. In 1541 

 they must have been scarce yet in England, for in an 

 edict promulgated by Cranmer in that year, the "tur- 

 key cocke" was named as one of "the greater fowles," 

 and which "an ecclesiastic was to have but one in a 

 dishe." By 1573, however, they must have become quite 

 plentiful, for in that year Tusser mentions them as the 

 most approved "Christmas husbandlie fare." 



Inasmuch as there were no settlements of either Eng- 

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