

THE SENSES OF SIGHT AND SMELL OF THE WILD 
TURKEY AND THE COMMON DEER. 
BY J. D. CATON. 

Ir is claimed for the wild turkey that it has the quickest 4 
and most accurate sight of any known animal. It is a say- 
ing among old hunters that it can detect the human eye 
looking through a knot-hole from the inside of a hollow 
tree. I once observed an incident illustrative of its remark- — : 
able power of sight, and tending to show that its apprehen- * 
E 
sion of scent is correspondingly dull. 
In December, 1847, I was hunting deer on the Vermilion 1 
River, and had been following one from daylight till three 
o'elock in the afternoon, over the breaks and bluffs of the - 
Vermilion River, through six inches of dry hard snow, ~ 
almost as difficult to walk in as dry corn-meal. When near | 
the foot of the bluff, not far below the mouth of Deer Park, 
some distance off, I saw a flock of wild turkeys crossing the — 
river on the ice, and coming directly towards me. My am- | 
 bition immediately fell from a deer to a turkey. I concealed . 
myself in a very dense thicket of underbrush, and soon heard — 
the turkeys approaching with that contented quit, quit, in — 
which they frequently give expression to a happy sense of se- 
curity. My pointer, which was as good at following a deer as 
a grouse, stood at my feet without moving a muscle, though 
his eyes shone like balls of fire when he scented the turkeys 
and heard them pass by. They passed, I should judge by  — 
. the noise, not more than fifty or sixty feet from me, with- - 
out taking the least alarm. About fifty yards distant there — 
was a bare spot of considerable extent, near the brow of the 
bluff to which their course would evidently take them, where 
Il promised myself a sure shot. I rested my gun against a 
small tree that I ie: make no perceptible motion before — 
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