290 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



the Indian having now [1671] destroyed the breed, so 

 that 'tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the 

 Woods/ 



"That the species was formerly found throughout 

 the Cambridge region, there can be no reasonable 

 doubt. Turkey Hill in Arlington may well have de- 

 rived its name from the presence there of this noble 

 bird in early Colonial days. Indeed, Mr. Walter Faxon 

 writes me that an acquaintance of his has seen 'in a 

 manuscript diary of the ancestor of an Arlington man 

 ... an entry of killing some Wild Turkeys in the region 

 about Turkey Hill/ At Concord, less than ten miles 

 further inland, the species had not become wholly ex- 

 tinct at the beginning of the past century. The late 

 Steadman Buttrick of that town, a keen lover of field 

 sports and a man of undoubted veracity, who died in 

 1874, used to delight in narrating how, when a boy, 

 he had made repeated but invariably fruitless expedi- 

 tions in pursuit of the last wild turkey that is known 

 to have lingered in the region about his home. He 

 often saw the bird, a fine old gobbler, but it was so very 

 wary that neither he nor any of the other Concord 

 gunners of that day ever succeeded in getting a fair 

 shot at it. It was in the habit of roosting in some tall 

 pines on Ball's Hill, whence, when disturbed, it usually 

 flew for refuge into an extensive wooded swamp on 

 the opposite (Bedford) side of Concord River. Mr. 

 Buttrick was born in 1796. As he was presumably at 

 least twelve or fifteen years of age before he began to 

 use a gun effectively, it is probable that his experience 



