HUNTING TURKEY WITH A DOG 231 



twenty or thirty hens and some young gobblers 

 on that ridge, I had no suspicion before that 

 there were any old gobblers. Now, reader, what 

 caused me to suspect from these scratchings that 

 old gobblers were about, and that there were two 

 of them was this: there were but few scratches 

 and at long intervals. The scratches were very 

 large, almost two feet across, while the leaves 

 had been thrown five or six feet back, indicating 

 long legs and large feet with a great stroke. I 

 noticed there were two separate lines of scratches 

 some ten feet apart on the main trend ; also the 

 scratches were twenty to fifty yards apart in 

 the direction the birds were going, which indi- 

 cated that the two birds were walking along at 

 a brisk pace and keeping pretty well in a straight 

 line, feeding as they went. 



I believe no man alive or dead has killed more 

 "old gobblers" than I have, and yet the heaviest 

 I ever bagged weighed twenty-four pounds 

 gross. This bird might have reached thirty or 

 thirty-three pounds had he been fat, but it was 

 late in the gobbling season, when the winter fat 

 is run off by constant love affairs, leaving them 



