a^ 



A VETERAN TURKEY-STALKER. 249 



them at once to distinguish enemies from friends or 

 neutrals.' 



The hunting gear with which my friend exercised 

 his peculiar pastime was simple, though sufficient, con- 

 sistinof of his rifle and his ' caller '—-the musical in- 

 strument being constructed from the smaller of the 

 two bones in the middle joint of a hen turkey's wing. 

 So skilled was he in its use, that he was sometimes 

 heard to boast that he ' could beat a turkey at talking 

 his own language,' and I myself can bear witness that, 

 during the time I sojourned with him, he never failed 

 to kill turkeys whenever he went out into the forest 

 wuth that intentioD. 



The morning after my arrival at his house we were 

 both on our way to the forest, where he had promised 

 to show me how to call up a turkey. From the general 

 tenor of his conversation it seemed that, although he 

 had killed them early in the autumn, when they were 

 not full grown, as well as in later months, when he 

 hunted them with his trained turkey dogs, yet the 

 sport most to his taste, and, in his opinion, the only 

 legitimate style of turkey-killing, was to call up some 

 crafty old gobbler and fool him. 



* It does me good,' said he, ' to call up a cute old 

 chap that's up to every dodge ;— that's the sort I like 

 to have to deal with ; and I'll bet a Spanish mule to a 

 rotten pumpkin, I drill a hole through him with a rifle 

 bullet before I have done with him.' 



