16 THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING 



Texas, I found the largest breed of wild turkeys 

 I have found anywhere, but in the Brazos bot- 

 toms the gobblers which I found there in 1876, 

 in great abundance, were of a smaller stature, 

 but more chunky or bulky. Their gobble was 

 hardly like that of a wild turkey, the sound 

 resembling the gobble of a turkey under a barrel, 

 a hoarse, guttural rumble, quite different in 

 tone from the clear, loud, rolling gobble of his 

 cousin in the Trinity country. The gobblers of 

 the Brazos bottoms were also distinguishable 

 by their peculiar beards. In other varieties of 

 turkeys three inches or less of the upper end of 

 the beard is grayish, while those of the Brazos 

 bottoms were more bunchy and black up to the 

 skin of the breast. There is a variety of turkeys 

 in the San Jacinto region, in the same state, 

 which is quite slender, dark in color, and has a 

 beard quite thin in brush, but long and pictur- 

 esque. His gobble is shrill. This section is a 

 low plain, generally wet in the spring, partly tim- 

 bered and partly open prairie. It is a great 

 place for the turkey. 



Since the days of Audubon it has been proph- 



