WILD TURKEY-SHOOTING. 



By JAMES GORDON. 



THE wild turkey, Meleagris Gallopavo, the noblest species of 

 American game birds, is common throughout the South and 

 West, and yet is so wild that its habits are but little known. 

 The writer, although an experienced hunter, finds each year some- 

 thing new to learn concerning its peculiarities. 



Our wild turkey takes little care in the preparation of a nest. I 

 have often found them sitting on the bare ground in exposed posi- 

 tions. Yet they are very tenacious when sitting, and will allow a 

 man to approach quite near before they will leave their eggs. It is 

 generally believed that our domestic turkey owes its origin to our 

 common wild turkey, M. Gallopavo. Even the great ornithologist 

 Audubon falls into this error. Our domestic turkey is derived from 

 the wild turkey of Mexico, Meleagris Mexicana, which is a coarser 

 fowl than the wild turkey of America ; but it is easily tamed, while 

 the American turkey, like the Indian, is untameable. They can, 

 indeed, be made quite gentle, when hatched by a barn-yard fowl 

 and fed from the hand, but such is their propensity to ramble that 

 they ultimately stray off and become wild again. 



If you have never seen a wild turkey, do not take his plebeian 

 cousin of the barn-yard for a model, for they are very unlike. His voice 

 is as different as the crow of the game-cock from the Shanghai. The 

 domestic turkey's gobble is coarse and disagreeable, while the gobble 

 of the wild turkey is as shrill and clear as the note of a cavalry 

 bugle. When heard at early dawn in the still forest, it is singularly 

 sharp and piercing. It seems to strike upon the senses rather than 

 upon the ear, penetrating the nerves of the hunter with a thrill of 



