A TVIUD TURKEY INCIDENT. 
To the Editor of Fokest a;kd Sxeeam: 
R eading- the story about wild turkey 
hunting as told by Mr, H. H. Shel- 
don in Fokesx akd Sxeeam, started a 
reminiscent mood and I thought perhaps 
the readers of Foeesx axu Sxeeam might 
be interested in what I might have to tell 
along this line. Although the incidents 
happened more than half a century ago, 
they are fresh in my memory yet. 
' The fall of 1864 found the writer at 
Fort Rice, in what is now North Dakota, 
aome forty miles below where Bisunarck 
now is, in the service of Uncle Sam. For 
some unknown cause, appareutl}', a large 
number of the boys were taken down 
with typhoid fever after the command 
had returned to the Fort from a raid 
after the Sioux through the Bad Lands 
and Yellowstone River country, and when 
the march was resumed down the river 
from Sioux City, four of us young boys 
were left behind in the hospital, being 
too sick to be taken along. Some of 
the 30th Wisconsin Regiment who had 
been doing guard duty at the Fort were 
ordered home, and instead of marching 
down they built several large flatboats, 
or scows, and made the trip down the 
Missouri River in them, and we four 
men were invited to accompany them, so 
we went down with Company F. 
Some of the old boys are living yet, 
and I hope this may catch the eye of 
one of them, mainly because 1 am go- 
ing to digress a little and remind them 
of the baked beans we had. Did you 
ever eat beans baked in the ground? If 
you have not you do not know what a 
good baked bean tastes like. IVc were 
three weeks making the trip from Rice 
to Sioux City, a distance placed at some 
nine hundred miles, and we had baked 
beans for breakfast nearly every morn- 
ing during that time. The beans were 
boiled during the day on a stove on the 
boat. The boats were always tied up 
for the night about sundown, and as .soon 
RS we landed two men were always ready 
to dig a hole some three feet deep in 
the soft earth. There was plenty of dry 
wood, and a fire w’as kept burning in 
the hole until it was full of live coals. 
Half of these coals were then scooped 
out with a long-handled shovel, the ket- 
tle of beans set down in the hole and 
the coals shoveled back and then dirt 
thrown on top. In the morning the ket- 
tle was dug out and we had — hot don’t 
talk about it 
One night we tied up at a point some 
half a mile above the then small village 
of Vermillion, on the opposite side of 
the river, and fortunately right where a 
^ large flock of ;wild turkeys were just 
going to roost, and when it had gotten 
too dark to see to shoot, the Wisconsin 
hoys had bagged, with their Springfield 
rifles, thirteen fine birds, and we feasted 
on turkey for several days. 
After considerable delay at Sioux City 
we four Minnesota boys finally got 
started by mule team for home. Before 
starting, the writer learned that one of 
the mule drivers had a shotgun, and we 
asked him if we might use the gun if 
wo got some ammunition, and he said, 
yes. We left Sioux City in the after- 
noon, our route being up Ihe Floyd creek. 
After we bad gone some six or seven 
miles we left the wagons, crossed the 
creek and followed np on the east side 
where there w-as not much timber, ex- 
pecting to find some ducks. Just as we 
rounded a bunch of brush and a bend 
in the creek, there, in plain sight, and 
but a few rods away, was a fiock of 
turkeys running across a beaver dam. 
The gun was brought to my .slioulder, 
but instantly lowered again, for the ques- 
tion was: arc they wild turkeys or not? 
The other three boys yelled; “Shoot, 
shoot.” So I brought the gun up again, 
and without really taking aim pointed 
it at the string of birds and fired one 
barrel, and one fine bird fell over. The 
others rose and flew off into the woods. 
The boys retrieved the bird and we. stood 
looking at it and adiniiing it when we 
noticed two men st:irt out from a bouse 
that stood on a rise of ground some 
quarter of a mile away, and come di- 
rectly for us on the run. We were scared, 
and did not know just what to do. Some 
were in favor of running, but I said: “No 
use in running. If we should reach camp 
they can come and get us, so lei us stand 
right where we are until they come up, 
and if we have committed a wrong take 
our medicine.” When the men were a few 
rods from us the. leader said: “Well, you 
got oue, did you?” “Yes, I said, we got 
one.” “How many were there?” he asked. 
We knew, for we had counted them as 
they flew awav. “Tl’.irtcen.” T answered. 
“The same flocic my brother saw this 
morning and tried to drive home, thinking 
they were my tame turkeys.” 
Perhaps there were not four relieved 
boys. Thus, I killed my first and last 
wild turkey, but had I known they were 
wild I could just as w'ell have had three 
or four with the two l;arrels. 
C A. BexxexT, Minn. 
THE RABBIT AGAIN. 
To the Editor of Foeesx axd Sxeeam: 
I N the July number of Forest axd 
Stream there is an article on the use 
of ferrets which seems to me unfair. 
First I must say that the statement 
that tha rabbit does "no harm to trees” 
is simply not so. The rabbit is a browser 
and lives mainly on trees and bushes 
during a large part of the year. It is 
only in comparatively rare instances that 
it does damage to any other tree and 
bush crops. In nurseries it is an un- 
mitigated nuisance. Three or four rab- 
bits c.-uised about two hundred dollars 
damage in my nursery a few years ago. 
The trees were none of them killed but 
were simply barked so as to be unsalable. 
Here, as in most parts of New' York 
State, it is impossible to take cottontail 
rabits in any way except by the use of 
ferrets: that is, except for the occasional 
one which may happen to be killed by a 
snap shot as it starts for the nearest 
hole. No rabbit will run more than a 
few' hundred yards without taking refuge 
under ground. This makes it impossible 
to hunt them with dogs unless we can 
develop a breed of dogs small enough 
to follow them into the holes. If hunting 
rabbits with ferrets is prohibited it 
should also be made unlawful to hunt 
birds with dogs. The rabbit driven out 
of a hole by a ferret has fully as good 
a chance as the bird flushed by a reason- 
ably good shot before a dog. A good 
many years ago 1 had spent nearly the 
w'bclc hnnling season with much enjoy- 
ment trying to get some ruffed grouse 
wliich lived in various patches of woods 
near home. One day I very foolishly 
toolc a neighbor and his dog over the 
ground and he killed the five birds in 
five shots. Not one of them iiad the 
lease chance for life. The whole business 
was mechanical. The dog would mark 
down the bird, the man w'ould come up 
until he was about a rod away. The 
bird would fly and come down within a 
few seconds. It was. almost as much 
sport as it would be for me to kill a 
chicken for dinner. I am a poor wing 
shot or I might have killed possibly three 
of thes 1 birds durin.g the fall under cir- 
cumstances that would have been worth 
remembering. IMany times I have flushed 
them, shot, missed, marked down, figured 
which way the bird went after it got out 
of sight, flushed again, etc. A whole half 
