Dec. 7, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
721 
Getting a Christmas Turkey 
By AMOS 
M Y first trip on the Mississippi was with my 
father when I was a lad of ten, but the 
last trip was the best I ever have made. 
It followed a canoe trip of the Mississippi from 
its headwaters in Hernando De Soto Lake in 
Northern Minnesota, north into Lake Itasca and 
through the State Park, thence southward as the 
river flows; followed it so that I could say I 
had made the entire trip from source to mouth. 
We had stopped at Hickman, Ky., for sup¬ 
plies during a certain morning. At noon we 
started for any good point further south that 
would give us a Christmas turkey. Past many 
Government river improvements being put in, 
through some interesting goose country, watch¬ 
ing the thousands of ducks and countless cranes, 
all headed our way to spend the winter in a 
milder clime, we sped during the afternoon. The 
Mississippi River Commission’s map gave us an 
idea that we might find one at Island No. 10. 
Sometimes we could not distinguish the islands 
shown on the map by any surrounding water. 
But we caught the inlet of water from the 
Mississippi just in time and made for it. lhe 
cut-off, a small stream fed by the main river 
and again wedding it twelve miles further 
down, was called Winchester chute. We drop¬ 
ped into it and hove the anchor, planning to 
spend the night, fill water casks and see what 
the prospects were for hunting. Up on the point 
formed by the cut-off and the river were the 
shacks of a dozen fisher folk. They had floated 
into their locations forty feet above the present 
stage of water while the river was on its an¬ 
nual tear during the spring. 
The mudhook had no more than touched 
bottom before a delegation from the shanties 
BURHANS 
riddle with my smile, but he did not catch it. 
"Plenty of ’em in the summer." 
"I'm sorry I cannot be here in the summer 
when you need it, but you better take a bit of 
the cure now,” and with that I reached under 
the southwest end of my pea jacket and resur¬ 
rected the cure. Plis face beamed. 
"I might ask about the turkey shooting here 
in the bottoms if I had the time to stop and take 
it in,” I ventured as an opener to a subject near 
my heart. 
"Take my advice and stop here now while 
you're here.” Perhaps more of the cure was 
what he wanted to meet. 
"Why so?” I was innocent in my query. 
"I see a flock of seventeen out on the bar 
t’other night as I cum along from tendin' the 
light.” He cared for a Government lamp on 
the river. 
“That sounds encouraging. I suppose I 
might take the time now as well as any.” 
"Sure. Take it now. I ain’t able myself to 
git out much, but I’ll send the lad. He’s as good 
as me, anyhow. He kilt the bigges’ one in these 
parts last winter.” 
That settled it. I had to stay. The thing 
was arranged to begin the following morning, 
and I went down to the well, filled the casks, 
wallowed through the mud to the tender, carried 
the water aboard and sorted the shells I would 
carry. 
At daybreak we shifted the cruiser to the 
bank of the chute so the wife could call on 
the folks in the shanty and have other means 
of divertisement while the captain hunted a 
Christmas turkey. The lad in question, a shy 
youth of some ’teen summers, who looked as if 
a number of “shakes” more would kill him for 
good, came carrying his ten-gauge. Rightly 
loaded, there is no use for a turkey arguing 
with a shoot stick like this, especially under a 
hundred yards. The whole case rests with the 
gun, and the eye behind it. A No. 6 or 8 buck¬ 
shot fairly well placed in the vitals of that two- 
legged Christmas delicacy transfers him to the 
commissary department for a brief period be¬ 
fore he enters the happy strutting grounds where 
hens are aplenty and hunters nil. And it takes 
a ten-gauge of proper bore and choke to accom¬ 
plish this desideratum, according to the market 
hunters of the section we were in. 
Picking up my sixteen-gauge I crawled out 
on the forehead hatch and loosened the dink, for 
we had to cross the swift chute and thus get on 
the island where the turkeys were supposed to 
be. The island was inhabited by a few negroes 
and some elm peeler hogs. The hogs were in 
the ascendency. They could get under the angle 
where a man could not, and the chances were 
all in their favor if one tried to run them 
down. We set out for a path that led down 
the river bank, through a patch of corn and 
into more brush and timber. The latter w.as 
so dense one could not see more than a few 
yards ahead. Every step forward not made in 
the path was a sure turkey alarmer, for the 
earth was covered with brittle twigs and fallen 
leaves. 
I had thought the best manner of pursuit 
was to locate their night drinking place and se¬ 
cure ourselves among the brush, maintaining 
silence until such time as we should let the guns 
loose and pick up the cripples and the dead. 
But it was not to be such an easy matter as 
this even. The lad led the way. He knew where 
he was going. Lower and lower became the 
jungles, the trees denser and denser. Birds of 
all kinds flew off at our approach. I believe I 
came out to make sure we were not game war¬ 
dens. The spokesman came aboard, sampled our 
sure cure for snake bite, left and assured his 
companions we were “right.” As we mentioned 
some time ago, they were catching their fish in 
Missouri and selling in Kentucky. I think Plick- 
man was their market. Probably this was not 
all that worried them. Setting off with the 
tender for water, we found a shack back among 
the cottonwood's. A split log fence surrounded 
it. Behind the yard as far as the eye could 
reach was corn and then more corn, all of the 
scraggly sort which an Iowa farmer would laugh 
at and shake his sides over for a month. Ill 
bred hogs rooted in the yard under the dwell¬ 
ing. A pack of curs challenged our approach. 
In a cage a wild goose honked. And then our 
survey of the shanty and its wards came to a 
cease. 
"Hullo, stranger.” The front door had 
opened and a stoop-shouldered man of sixty 
came out, thin of face and pale, cob pipe in 
mouth and a sickly smile trying to steal out the 
corners of his mouth. “Who might you be?” 
“I’m after water, neighbor. What’s the 
prospects ?” 
“Purty good. Well’s down by the chute. 
Never goes dry and mebbe not so good as you’re 
used to, but fair, anyway.” 
“Ever have snakes hereabouts?” I looked 
at him and tried to give him the key to the 
THE AUTHORS CRUISER WANDERLUST. 
