WILD TURKEY HUNTING. 17 
bird where it is constantly sought for as game, from 
where it securely lives in the untrodden solitude. The 
turkey will, therefore, succeed at times in finding a 
home in places comparatively “ thickly settled,” and 
be so seldom seen, that they are generally supposed to 
be extinct. Under such circumstances, they fall vic- 
tims only to the very few hunters who may be said to 
make a science of their pursuit. 
“TJ rather think,” said a turkey-hunter, “if you 
want to find a thing very cunning, you need not go to 
the fox or such varmints, but take a gobbler. I once 
hunted regular after the same one for three years, and 
never saw him twice. 
“T knew the critter’s ‘yelp’ as well as I know Mu- 
sic’s, my old deer dog; and his track was as plain to 
me as the trail of a log hauled through a dusty road. 
“T hunted the gobbler always in the same ‘range,’ 
and about the same ‘scratchins,’ and he got so, at last, 
that when I ‘called,’ he would run from me, taking the 
opposite direction to my own foot-tracks. 
“ Now, the old rascal kept a great deal on a ridge, at 
the end of which, where it lost itself in the swamp, was 
a hollow cypress tree. Determined to outwit him, I 
put on my shoes, heels foremost, walked leisurely down 
the ridge, and got into the hollow tree, and gave a 
‘call,’ and boys,” said the speaker exultingly, “it would 
have done you good to see that turkey coming towards 
me on a trot, looking at my tracks, and thinking I had 
gone the other way.” 
