A Sportsman 7 



manner without seeking the place of ingress. This sim- 

 ple method is often followed with nnich success. 



We occasionally in the autumn caught turkeys in 

 the cornfields, where they were seen, attracted by the 

 com in husk pendent upon the stalks. This was 

 done by chasmg with dogs. Those hard pressed 

 behind would take flight over the fence into the 

 woods beyond, but those in advance would run to 

 the fence to get through, and finding they could not, 

 as the fences about the field were of rails zigzag 

 and hog-proof at the bottom, in their close quarters 

 nmning along the fence for possible openings and 

 vmable to rise abruptly enough to get over, would be 

 seized by the dogs. 



One day, while riding through the woods and ap- 

 proaching a settlement, I came upon a flock of turkeys 

 which moved about near me with so little alarm that 

 I thought it domestic, but having, after leaving 

 them, a suspicion that it might not be, inquired at 

 a near-by house and found that it was a wild one. 



Prairie chickens were in great plentifulness at that 

 time, and I can remember seeing the farm fences 

 so loaded with them on frosty mornings as to be in 

 danger of breaking down. On one occasion when I 

 accompanied some older hunters upon the plains for 

 chicken shooting we filled the wagon body with birds. 

 The prairie chicken — pinnated grouse, — indigenous over 

 a large area of the middle-western country of the United 

 States, existed in great waves of plentifulness in the 

 grain regions of Illinois at this time — 1849, — which in 

 abundance gradually diminished as the State became 

 settled up, and the wave of plentifulness extended 

 westward. 



