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 pifion 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% per cent. of vegetable matter. 
Of the vegetable matter, buds and leaves constitute 
nearly 25 per cent., fruit nearly 33, and other seeds 
