FOREST AND STREAM 
841 
A Method Followed at One Time in the Southwest, When Turkeys Were More Plentiful. 
On “Getting Lost 5 ’ 
The Best Thing to do, Beside Keeping Your Head, is to Shut Your Eyes 
And Try to Swing the Horizon Right Again 
still waited. Full five minutes I stood hoping 
once more against hope for another shot and 
then Frank appeared well out across the open 
woods, a turkey slung down his back and I 
stepped out and called several times before get¬ 
ting his attention and waving for him to wait 
I went over to step off my shot, as an excuse 
for the miss, to be sure, and had gone about 
two-thirds of the seventy-four steps when up 
went my wounded bird from where she had been 
hiding since I fired and had not moved a foot. 
There were the feathers as we afterwards found. 
I saw she was hit hard and thought to see her 
come down but she gathered strength and I had 
to tumble her with another shot. 
Frank was some surprised to see this perform¬ 
ance until we each had told our tales of the 
hunt, and then we concluded that he had shot 
one of the two I had first seen while we were 
after quail and that my bird was of another lot 
that had been scattered earlier and probably was 
one that he had heard yelping when he had re¬ 
turned for me; it being so soon after the dog 
had flushed, those birds would not be calling so 
soon after an alarm. 
Both of our birds were young hens and mates 
to a T; each weighed eight pounds and 
were fine handsome birds. It was a good ending 
to a fine hunt, we both agreed as we stroked the 
glossy bronze backs, sitting down by them on 
the brown grass, each fellow declaring it just 
rounded out a mighty good Christmas day and 
when we reached home and found Tom with no 
game, we gloated some and boasted right loud 
of our turkey hunt, knowing how many times he 
had beaten us at the same game. 
Turkey in the Snow—A Favorite Way to Get 
Them in Sections Where the Snow Falls Is 
to Track Them Down—It Requires 
Both Skill and Endurance, But the 
Lady Won. 
I often think how easily one can stray from 
camp, and if without a compass, be lost in the 
wilderness. While hunting on Lake Superior, 
one autumn some years since, I endured such an 
experience, and the bitterness of it has always 
remained fresh in my memory. While passing 
over the corduroy road of thirteen and a half 
miles which lies between the town of Ontonagon, 
Michigan, and the Minnesota copper mines, my 
attention was allured from the road by the 
melodious whir-r-r-r, whir-r-r-r of a brace of 
partridges. Stepping aside into the thicket, I 
followed as fast as possible the retreating sound, 
and after a tedious tramp through briers and 
swamp, I finally brought them to bag. In the 
excitement of the chase I had given little or no 
heed to the path or to the clouds that were fast 
gathering overhead. Starting back into the di 
rection I supposed the road, I travelled, it 
seemed to me, double the distance that would 
have revealed it, but no familiar path did I find 
—in fact, I was amazed in discovering that I 
was back on the same ground on which I had 
started. There was no reason in the thing, no 
reasoning against it. The points of the compass 
had been as clear in my head as if I saw the 
needle, but the moment I was back all seemed 
to be wrong. The sun, which occasionally re¬ 
vealed itself, shone out of the wrong part of 
the heavens. I climbed one of the tall trees, 
but the very stillness of the landscape on which 
I gazed seemed to mock me. I was not a novice 
in woodcraft, and could follow a trail readily. 
I examined the bark of the trees to see which 
side was the roughest, and then singling out a 
number, judged of the point of the compass 
the majority leaned, and plunging into the 
thicket, made another and another attempt. I 
well knew the danger of losing my self-control, 
and sitting down on a rotten log, I covered my 
face with my hands, and waited until I felt calm 
and self-possessed again. I have no idea how 
long it was, but when I arose the sun was nearly 
obliterated by the clouds, which soon began to 
discharge their contents, in sympathy for my ill- 
luck, and to reach my destination I must make 
all speed. 
I immediately struck a “bee line” in the direc¬ 
tion which my reveries had designated as the 
right path, blazing the trees with my hunting 
knife as I hastened along. Soon I espied an 
opening, and dashing onward, what was my joy 
to find the old corduroy road, which never looked 
more welcome in its life. J. Me. 
