THE WILD TURKEY 



297 



both in our boats and in steamers, without causing 

 them to fly, and I once, with a party of friends, ran 

 a small steamer within twenty yards of a flock which 

 did not take wing until several shots had been fired 

 at them." 



The turkey, while usually resident in a certain sec- 

 tion, is yet said to be prone to wander, and to be by 

 no means as local in its habits as the bobwhite or the 

 ruffed grouse. Sometimes they will remain in a desira- 

 ble location for a long time and then will leave it for 

 no apparent reason. On the plains the birds used to 

 spend the night roosting in the trees of the bottoms, 

 and after drinking in the morning would wander up 

 on the prairie about the heads of ravines and there 

 feed on grasshoppers and other insects and on sand 

 cherries and tunas, returning in the heat of the day to 

 the shade of the underbrush or even of a cut bank. 



Turkeys feed chiefly on vegetable matter. In old 

 times the saying, that a good mast year was a good 

 turkey year, passed into a proverb. They eat beech- 

 nuts, chestnuts, various acorns, pecan nuts, persim- 

 mons, the fruit of the cactus, all sorts of wild berries or 

 seeds and grains and other vegetable matter, besides 

 all insects. In the central and southern Rocky Moun- 

 tains the fruit of the pinon forms a large part of their 

 subsistence. As determined by the Biological Survey, 

 the turkey's food consists of 15^ per cent, of animal 

 matter and nearly 84^2 per cent, of vegetable matter. 

 Of the vegetable matter, buds and leaves constitute 

 nearly 25 per cent., fruit nearly 33, and other seeds 



