434 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



well as those of his dog, led along the road in the 

 direction the turkey had flown. 



"Following the tracks, we finally came to the big 

 pine, which was down hill, on the right of the road. 

 The turkey had fallen to the right of the pine, and so 

 was further from the road than the pine was. Jake 

 and I turned off into the woods, which was open 

 enough for us to have a good view of the ground. 

 Bill went down the road a bit, to make sure that the 

 man with the dog had not turned off further along, 

 then he, too, turned to the right into the brush, and 

 began to investigate. 



"To Bill belongs the honor of finding that bird, a 

 gobbler, too, wattled, bearded and bronzed as only an 

 old gobbler can be. He was a beauty, with not a 

 feather damaged and not a drop of blood on the snow. 

 . . . Was it our turkey, or did it belong to the man 

 who had shot at it ? By this time he was a mile or more 

 on his way, and that turkey certainly did look good. 



"At all events, we took the bird back with us, and 

 if I remember rightly, it weighed just a fraction under 

 twenty-two pounds at Bellwood. There was not a fresh 

 shot mark on the body when I removed the skin for 

 the taxidermist, who found, however, when he was 

 taking the head from the neck, that a single small pel- 

 let, hitting the bird in the head, had cut a large vein in 

 the throat, and the bird had bled internally." 



In Kansas, the Indian Territory and Texas, where 

 the turkeys necessarily roost in the trees growing along 

 the river bottoms, the practice of shooting them on 



