302 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
male birds during the breeding season, and the facility with 
which they may be pot-hunted at that time. 
“ Whilst speaking of the shooting of Turkeys,” says he, “ I 
have no hesitation in relating the following circumstance, which 
happened to myself. While in search of game, one afternoon 
late in autumn, when the males go together, and the females 
are by themselves also, I heard the clucking of one of the latter, 
and immediately finding her perched on a fence, made toward 
her. Advancing slowly and cautiously, I heard the yelping 
notes of some gobblers, when I stopped and listened, in order 
to ascertain the direction in which they came. I then ran to 
meet the birds, hid myself by the side of a large fallen tree, 
cocked my gun, and waited with impatience for a good oppor¬ 
tunity. The gobblers continued yelping in answer to the 
female, which all this time remained on the fence. I looked 
over the log and saw about thirty fine Cocks advancing rather 
cautiously toward the very spot where I lay concealed. They 
came so near, that the light in their eyes could easily be per¬ 
ceived, when I fired one barrel, and killed three. The rest, 
instead of flying off, fell a strutting round their dead compa¬ 
nions, and had I not looked on shooting again as murder with¬ 
out necessity, I might have secured at least another. So I 
showed myself, and marching up to the place where the dead 
birds were, drove away the survivors.” 
Had the kindly-disposed clucking female been absent, an im¬ 
plement made, I believe, from the pinion-bone of the bird itself, 
affords an imitation so perfect of the cry of the Turkey, that not 
the unsuspicious birds alone are lured within reach of men far less 
scrupulous than the worthy naturalist—men who would never 
pause to consider whether the game could be used or not, but 
who would go on killing, like the Tiger or the Grizzly Bear, for 
the mere love of killing, without either skill or excitement—but 
that these gallant imitative gobblers deceive one another, and 
lure up to their log some rival hunter, who, hearing the well- 
simulated cry responsive to his own, and seeing the bushes 
shake, speeds his unerring bullet to the mark, and pays the mu- 
