26 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
yet they never think of looking down, and retreating 
through the trench by which they entered, although they 
jump over it every few moments during their ceaseless 
procession. 
This want of thoughtfulness on their part proves fatal 
to them, for they are kept in prison until the trapper ar- 
rives and wrings their necks, or takes them home alive, 
to see if they »re susceptible of domestication. If cap- 
tured young, it does not require much time to make them 
as tame as the ordinary farm-yard variety. 
Audubon says that these ‘‘ semi-civilized ” turkeys will 
not roost with their domestic congeners;” and Bachman 
states that if they are kept away from the latter, and 
bred among themselves, in confinement, the third gen- 
eration will lose their brilliancy of plumage and assume a 
pale-brown color, with an occasional white feather. Al- 
though turkeys are killed in various ways, shooting them 
from baited blinds is the favorite method with some 
persons. The blinds are made of leaves and bushes, 
and are generally crude affairs, as all that is required is 
a shelter sufficiently dense to conceal the movements of 
the hunter. When one of these is built, a trail of grain 
is carried from it into the haunts of the birds, and while 
they are eating the food that is to lead them to death, 
the sportsman sits or stands almost as motionless as a 
statue behind his improvised screen, waits until several 
of them get their heads in a line within range, and then 
blazes away at them. If he uses more than one gun he 
may bag half a dozen, but he is also likely to claim only 
one or two, as they can stand a large amount of lead. 
The negroes of the South frequently have a baited trench 
before their blinds, and when once the birds get into this 
pit of destruction few escape, for the black hunters load 
their guns nearly to the muzzle, and when they fire they 
cut a clean swath through the ranks of their feathered 
visitors. As this is not considered legitimate sport by 
