FOREST AND STREAM 
5 37 
His Majesty, The Wild Turk Of The South 
Peculiarities of One of the Greatest Game Birds on the Continent, with a Few Observations Setting 
Forth the Best Way to Go After Him 
By G. B. Buchanan. 
SK any group of Southern 
sportsmen in “conversazione 
ensemble,” what is their fa¬ 
vorite game and the major¬ 
ity will, I think, say the fa¬ 
vorite is wild turkey. Cer¬ 
tain it is a good many will 
say so. Of course, from time 
to time you find your bear “bug,” and also your 
quail “bug,” and also your fox “bug;” and of 
course there never was a typically Dixie com¬ 
munity which did not have among its inhabit¬ 
ants a representative of that motley crew which 
finds its chiefest delight in trailing Br’er ’Pos¬ 
sum and Massa ’Coon across the face of Nature. 
Of course, a bear “bug,” warmed perhaps to 
the task by a little “Old Mountain,” may re¬ 
count some exhilarating experiences of his 
hunts. Brother Quail Man may too. And of 
course, I do not wish to leave out those daunt¬ 
less souls who face with high courage the chill 
shiver of the wind-swept blind out on “the 
point” when ducks are coming in, or going out, or 
going by, whichever “flight” the hunt hits. 
But over against these vocal Marathoners our 
turkey hunter sets up a mighty thunder of de¬ 
scriptive melody which ought to make any eye 
water, however unique the private efforts of 
the eye owners may have been. For to the 
turkey hunter comes an unusual number of 
those thrills that make association with Kip¬ 
ling’s immortal Red Gods so much a recreation 
and joy. 
For instance: “That ole gobbler.” I do not 
specify any particular one. Every old turkey 
hunter has one, you see, and each historic bird 
possesses its own particular charms. One will 
have a double beard. (I saw one once that had 
three beards.) Another will have a toe missing— 
caught in some steel trap set in runways for 
mink, coon, etc. Once in a while the turke> 
hunter bobs up with a memorable “white” gob¬ 
bler. Some times they make it a ghost turkey 
—it goes down kind of creepy if the tale is told 
under conditions favoring the creeps. The 
white gobbler is a favorite thriller. I, person¬ 
ally, never saw one. There is no doubt they 
have been found, though, as I have at least one 
authentic record of such, though this particular 
bird was a lady instead of a man. After the 
white gobbler the next best bet in the story line 
is “when I found I left my yelper at home and 
called up that big one with my pipe.” Did you 
ever hear that? Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a 
corker. 
However, ’tis not all of hunting to tell tales, 
although talking it over in after years is per¬ 
haps as much of hunting joy as any other one 
feature of the sport. You cannot talk, though, 
till you have done something to justify the 
vocality. And to do something in the outdoors 
Observe That His Regal Majesty Leaves The Food Question Entirely to Mrs. Turk. 
usually is predicated upon knowing how. Turkey 
hunting is no exception. Quite the contrary. It 
takes a great deal of skill to bag wild turkey 
in one of the ways that seem to lend themselves 
to the ideals of true sportsmen. There are 
many methods for killing turkey which are so 
simple as to be butchery—tracking in snow, 
killing young half grown birds, killing in mating 
time, pens, baits, etc.; there are only a few, not 
more than three, at most, which it seems to me 
are anyway designed to give the game a half¬ 
chance. Of course my opinion is not law and 
if some reader experiences’ no violent disturb¬ 
ance in his idea tank when pursuing the butch¬ 
ery methods well and good. I simply started out 
to describe what I call the most sportsmanlike 
method of hunting turkey. 
This method I learned in the South. I be¬ 
lieve it originated there. At any rate I am 
confident its use by the present generation be¬ 
gan there. Biologists tells us the wild turkey 
inhabited our entire country at one time. If 
so, it was exterminated in many sections years 
ago- Now it is becoming once more an inhabi¬ 
tant of certain of these formerly barren places, 
through importations and plantings of brood 
stock. And these brood birds, such is the state 
of conditions now, almost always have come 
from the South. 
It is natural that the methods by which the 
birds are hunted should have followed the birds 
from their Southern home. John Smith, says, 
a widely traveled sportsman of the vicinity into 
which the turk had been newly imported, had 
once hunted on turkeys in the South. He re¬ 
membered how. Behold! when turkeys are again 
