WILD TURKEY SHOOTING. , 395 



weighed over 40 Ibs, while another shot by his com- 

 panion weighed nearly 50 Ibs. * 



There can be not doubt that 50 Ibs is a great weight 

 for a single bird, and that such a bird must be an 

 altogether exceptional example ; nevertheless we think 

 we have had a bird in our hand, killed near Tampico 

 in Mexico, which could not have been very much less 

 than that, though there were no means of weighing 

 it at hand. The weight of these birds however, depends 

 greatly on age old cocks being far the heaviest; and 

 certain it is, so far as our observations go, that the 

 turkey thrives better in or near the torrid, than in the 

 temperate zone, f Everywhere however it is one of 

 the wildest and wariest of birds, and is rarely seen 

 very far from heavy jungle, or forest : indeed it merely 

 leaves the shadow of the trees for the purpose of 

 feeding, and makes back at once to the heaviest cover, 

 on the slightest symptom of danger. The wild turkey 

 may therefore be distinctly classed as a regular denizen 

 of the forest (of the edges of the forest that is) as it 

 invariably returns to its coverts to pass the night. 



Turkeys are very hard to get near by day, and it 

 often taxes the ingenuity of the smartest woodsman 

 to circumvent an experienced gobbler. 



" All his senses (says Colonel Dodge) are exquisite : and 

 in sense of smell, he is scarcely equalled by the elk." 



* Wild Life in Florida, by Capt. F. T. Townshend (2nd Life Guards) , 

 1875, PP- 75-293- 



\ This sub-tropical and tropical variety of the wild turkey is known 

 among ornithologists as the Meleagris Mexicana, which in England is 

 generally regarded as the ancestor of the Cambridgeshire breed of 

 turkeys. The turkey is supposed to have been introduced into Europe 

 by 1530. The first mention of it in England was in 1541 and by 

 1573 it had become an item of Christmas " husbandlie fare" (See 

 Encycl. Brit., gth Edition, Vol. xxiii, pp. 657 8). 



