march, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
109 
markable that some of the worst look- 
ing mongrels make such good ones for 
the work. To look at them you would 
think that they were only capable of 
eating their bellies full and then going 
to sleep. 
I prefer still-hunting deer to any 
other method of hunting them. When 
conditions are right they feed outside 
the cypress heads early in the morning 
and late in the afternoon. You have to 
be very quick in spotting them, as you 
are usually pretty close when you locate 
them, and they seem to possess an un- 
canny way of discovering you just about 
the time you discover them. As they 
are practically always close to dense 
cover it takes but a few jumps to put 
them out of sight and to safety. 
I OBTAIN the greatest satisfaction 
from the bagging of a fine turkey. 
They are a wily bird and are fre- 
quently more than a match for the 
hunter in a battle of wits, with the re- 
sult that ofttimes just when you feel 
certain of bagging one it will turn the 
tables on you and get away. However, 
if you are fortunate enough to hunt with 
an “old master” turkey hunter, and 
there are such to be found, you 
will surely win success. I have always 
been fortunate, when hunting turkeys, 
in having a guide who was a past master 
in the art — it is an art, and the result 
has been that I have always succeeded 
in making a good bag of the big birds. 
The young turkeys are easy to bag, but 
with the wise old boys it is a different 
story. 
There are various ways of hunting 
turkeys. You can roost them of an 
afternoon and shoot them from their 
perches just after daylight the follow- 
ing morning ; you can stalk them as they 
feed along on a burn, obtaining long 
shots with the rifle ; you can conceal your- 
self in some good spot alongside a burn, 
or on the burn itself, and wait for them 
to come out to feed ; you can conceal your- 
self in some likely place and yelp them 
within range, or you can just hunt 
through localities where they are known 
to range and trust to luck to get a shot. 
For the pure sport and excitement of 
the game I would rather stalk them as 
they feed along on a burn than hunt 
them in any other way, shooting them 
with a rifle, using full jacket bullets. 
In this kind of hunting you experience 
an element of excitement which does 
not enter into the other methods of 
hunting them, yelping possibly except- 
ed. Especially is this true if the burn 
is a large one and there is but little cover 
for you to avail yourself of. Where the 
cover is heavy it is an easy job. Other- 
wise, it becomes necessary to do lots of 
crawling and wriggling along close to 
the ground — Indian fashion — and if you 
have some distance to cover in this man- 
ner you will find that it is not the easiest 
thing in the world, and that you will 
arrive at your chosen shooting point 
with your breath all gone and your heart 
pounding like a trip hammer. 
I well remember the first stalk I par- 
ticipated in. There were 5 young gob- 
blers feeding serenely along when we 
There is some satisfaction in bagging a 
wild turkey 
discovered them from a distance of about 
500 yards. The first 200 yards were 
easily covered, but the next 200 were only 
covered after we had done all kinds of 
crawling and wriggling through the 
grass and low palmetto. I had to shoot 
at about 100 yards, and not having a 
full jacket bullet handy I had to use 
a soft point, which made it necessary to 
shoot at the juncture of neck and body; 
otherwise, the bird would have been 
ruined. Fortunately, my rifle had a set 
trigger and I had a fine place for a rest 
when I shot. The result was that I 
planted my bullet .just where I wanted 
it, and had a fine 14 pound gobbler to 
show for my efforts. 
I T behooves the Florida hunter to have 
both rifle and shotgun along. Let the 
guide carry whichever you do not. 
Deer, bear, bob-cats and turkeys roam 
the same woods, and you are just as 
likely to run across a deer when after 
turkeys and vice versa. Turkeys are 
usually passed up until the venison sup- 
ply is secured, unless they are located 
close to camp. When you have satisfied 
your craving for venison, Bre’r Turkey 
becomes the object of your hunt and adds 
the finishing touch to your trip. If pos- 
sible, it is well to defer the killing of 
your turkeys until the very last part of 
your stay in the woods. They are hard 
to keep fresh, and no one wishes to kill 
a turkey and have it go bad in camp, or 
to take one home that is not fresh. 
A rather novel way of hunting turkeys 
which has been vouched for by more 
than one reliable guide, but which is not 
often indulged in, is as follows: Go out 
early in the morning just before the 
“gobbling season,” or mating time. The 
old ones are evidently somewhat giddy 
and lovelorn at this stage of the game, 
and will sit on their perch for an hour 
after sunrise and gobble loudly at any 
noise resounding throughout the woods. 
Therefore, when the old “Cracker” hears 
an old gobbler gobbling just after day- 
break, he grabs his gun and a club and 
lays a course toward the sound. A 
couple of hard raps with the club on a 
fallen log will produce a hollow, boom- 
ing, which resounds loudly through the 
woods and will cause Mr. Gobbler to 
gobble more, thereby keeping the hunter 
on the right course. This procedure is 
kept up until the hunter is close enough 
to the place where Mr. Gobbler sits on 
his perch to allow him to locate the quar- 
ry. Then it is up to him to successfully 
conclude the stalk or suffer disappoint- 
ment. 
I am very, fond of shooting small 
feathered game, such as quail, doves, 
snipe, etc., and for this work I use a 
twenty-gauge double barrel hammerless 
shotgun, as do many of my friends and 
acquaintances. The “twenty” is a de- 
light to handle on account of its light 
weight, and if the shooter can point it 
right it will fill the old game bag a 
readily as the big “twelve.” 
My idea of a “twenty” is one measur- 
ing to the following specifications : 
Weight, 5% pounds; length of stock 
from rear trigger position, 13% inches; 
drop at butt, 3 inches ; length of barrels, 
28 inches; boring for quail: right — im- 
proved cylinder, left — improved modified ; 
boring for doves, snipe and other birds: 
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