Extermination of Wild Turkey in Iowa. 89 



took its name. I have seen a train of them, two to four 

 abreast, extending from the river's bank to the forest a quar- 

 ter of a mile away. 



"A great many of these turkeys were trapped, the trap a 

 crude affair, but effective, to the extent that one night my 

 husband secured twenty-four of them. The trap was simply 

 an area, about ten feet square, enclosed and covered. A 

 trench extended from the outside, and gradually descending, 

 ran under the wall, opening on the inside. Through this 

 trench the turkeys walked, led on by the corn that had been 

 generously sprinkled there." 



Levy Springer, also a pioneer of 1836, contributed the fol- 

 lowing : " Deer and wild turkey were plenty, and I have 

 seen as many as ten or a dozen of the latter at one time 

 playing on a high point not over 150 yards from our house. 

 They used to frequent that point in the spring of the year, 

 but they were generally poor and we did not bother them." 



Hon. Robert Ouigley, at present senator from this district 

 to the Iowa legislature, relates, that when a small boy he 

 was present at the killing of the last Wild Turkeys on Buck 

 Creek. They were two gobblers, weighing twenty and 

 twenty-two pounds respectively, and were shot by his uncle, 

 David Griffith, about the year 1853 or 1854; also that after 

 that date a few other birds of this species were taken at dif- 

 ferent points near the Turkey River. From this it appears 

 that a game bird, preserved in great numbers by the conser- 

 vation of the Indians, did not survive the coming of the white 

 man longer than twenty years. It is noteworthy that this is 

 exactly half the period it took to bring the species to the 

 verge of extinction in New England, according to the writ- 

 ings of John Joselyn, as recently quoted by Mr. E. H. For- 

 bush in his " Game Birds, Wild Fowl and Shore Birds." 



Concerning the species Dr. P. R. Hoy is quoted in " The 

 Birds of Wisconsin " as saying that the winter of 1842 was 

 practically fatal to them, " snow was yet two feet deep in 

 March, with a stout crust, so that the turkeys could not get 

 to the ground. They became so poor and weak that they 



