208 
FOREST AND S T R E A M 
April, 1918 
A TURKEY STALK AMONG THE HAMMOCKS 
THE LITTLE PALM AND CYPRESS COVERED ISLANDS THAT DOT THE FLORIDA 
SWAMPS ARE FAVORITE USING-GROUNDS FOR THE KING OF GAME BIRDS 
By THOMAS TRAVIS 
W E were to start early in the morn¬ 
ing for a little place out in the 
midst of an everglade country, after 
turkeys, and the camp fires were glowing 
among the palms as we went to bed with 
the weird song of the black “box chop¬ 
pers” in our ears. Everything was ready, 
guide arranged, wagon and duffle packed. 
So we slept till dawn rose across the 
orange flowers and fronded palms. Then 
off across the prairie to the swamp cross¬ 
ing at Indian Mound. 
I wish I could make you see that cross¬ 
ing. Photos were hard to get, for the 
swamp was so thick that only a time ex¬ 
posure would show. And how is one to 
picture the horse up to his neck in the 
coffee-colored water, with the baggage 
hoisted on boards laid across the high sides 
of the wagon, with the dogs swimming 
valiantly and trying to climb in over the 
tail of the cart, and with us standing ready 
to fend off alligators who love a nice juicy 
dog for breakfast? 
A mile of such swimming and wading 
brought us through, into a wild country of 
palmettos waist high, past old orange 
groves long deserted save by flocks of wild 
pigeon, themselves a fine game bird and a 
dainty morsel for the midday camp. Here 
we met Donnegan’s pig herder, a splendid 
type of prairie rider, with his six gun, his 
rangy bay horse, his high saddle and las- 
soo, riding range where the wild cattle 
and hogs ran, and where every day brought 
its quota of thrills in the shape of lassooing 
or shooting wild hogs. And believe me, the 
man who alone can rope and create a real 
sure-enough razor back hog of the Florida 
prairie is some ranger. 
Here we jumped from the wagon, and 
hunted along the trail, keeping general pace 
with the wagon, picking up a quail here 
and a snipe there, till about noon, when we 
struck our camping place at the edge of the 
great swamp. 
That “camp” was a mere shed roof, a 
roof supported on four posts, stuck up 
in the prairie at the edge of the pine fringe. 
And when we had it ship shape, we cooked 
dinner over a low fire of pine cones, quail 
and snipe broiled Indian fashion on a green 
stick. Then eagerly we got on the hunt— 
and here just a word about equipment— 
in the first place stones in this part of 
Florida are practically non-existant. A 
small boy took me a quarter of a mile just 
to show me a piece of red-brown sand¬ 
stone as big as a silk hat. That means 
you do not need heavy shoes. A light, oiled 
moccasin is therefore ideal. Also another 
thing, wear a light wool sock if you can, 
even though it is hot. Your greatert dan¬ 
ger is footsoreness. Cut your toe nails 
square, wash your feet, and above all care¬ 
fully dry them between the toes and change 
your socks every day—and you will find 
can go twelve hours on a stretch with the 
heavy load of gun and shells and two gal¬ 
lon waterbottle and game, and come in 
fresh. Neglect any one of these because 
HIS article is the second in a 
series of Florida camping stories 
which Mr. Travis has written for 
Forest and Stream, the first of which 
appeared in the February issue. Al¬ 
though the stories deal with related 
subjects, each is complete in itself. 
The third camping story will appear 
in an early issue .— [Editors.] 
you feel it is fussy, and you will find your¬ 
self with some unpleasant ideas percolat¬ 
ing. Also, in camp, when you put slippers 
on or take a tub of water splashed on you, 
watch your feet, for the innocent sand is 
apt to be sown thick with “sand spurs,” 
admirably named, a small businesslike 
husky, chestnutty burr affair that is really 
a “peach.” And for swamp work, go pre¬ 
pared to wade all day up to the crotch in 
swamp. I wore hip boots that day; Cum¬ 
mings wore hunting shoes and snake-proof 
leggings; the guide wore just shoes. 
Soon we were threading our way 
among the low palms and cypress on the 
edge of a swamp that stretched twenty 
miles to the low horizon. 
Chameleons skurried up the carved boles 
of palms and hid in the fronds. Once in 
a while we came across little lizards which 
any amateur would have called snakes, but 
which though they have no legs and run 
like a snake can be easily distinguished by 
their lizard head and round body. If you 
are an anatomist, you will find the rudi¬ 
mentary feet under the skin. As we sat 
down to rest on a hammock, we found 
several piles of snake eggs laid in a shal¬ 
low depression at the mouth of a snake 
hole. The swamp swarmed with reptile 
life of every description. 
We were loaded with buck shot, and 
keyed up by some tracks our guide found. 
So advancing in a line, the three of us 
crept silently along to a dense thicket of 
low palms whose fans swept the ground. 
Game was there, as the dogs plainly 
showed, and we drew near with guns at 
port, ready . . . when suddenly, with a 
clatter of hoofs and a squealing grunt, 
out got a big black boar. He was a beauty, 
and as he charged off through the thicket 
he looked so bear-like that two of us came 
within an ace of peppering him with buck 
shot. As it was, we stood steady, only 
laughing at the surprise of the dogs, who 
sat back suddenly on their tails as he 
rushed out and then grinned inanely at us 
with lolling tongues as they saw what he 
was. They seemed to appreciate the joke. 
Several times that was repeated—once 
with a pair of razor backs, of which more 
anon. All the time we were getting deeper 
into the swamp. Miles and miles it 
stretched around us, dotted with little 
islands of palm and cypress and live oak 
highlands. It was these we hunted out for 
turkey (and indeed we saw lots of tracks), 
the idea being to find a hammock, where 
the turkeys were “using,” as our guide ex¬ 
pressed it, meaning thereby a place where 
they were temporarily staying. 
We were walking thus, three abreast, 
when our guide called a sudden halt. He 
had seen turkeys. Carefully, oh very care¬ 
fully, we crept forward. One elusive glint 
of sunlight on ghostly bronze feathers and 
they had faded away. Se we followed on. 
wading through swamps knee deep, trail¬ 
ing them from hammock to hammock 
as they flitted away far ahead through the 
palms but never getting within gunshot. 
Had the)’' been out on the prairie we 
could have run them on horseback. For 
Donnegan the cow man hunted them that 
way. With his “cow dogs,” a cross be¬ 
tween a brindle bull and a pointer, with the 
pointer shape and markings showing under 
the brindle, he would flush a turkey, the 
dogs runings it like greyhounds after a 
rabbit. After the first long flush, with 
dogs and horses after it full tilt, the 
turkey seemed to be wing tired for it did 
not flush again, but was hunted down lit¬ 
erally on the run till at last, after several 
miles of fine horseback work, they shot it 
with a six gun. 
But here it was different. No horse 
and no dog could run them down in this 
tangle of swamp and palm and cypress. 
It was all a man could do to get through 
it himself. But we were nearing the 
turkeys. I located an old gobler by his 
“quit, ’ that is, I located him within a few 
hundred feet and was creeping up to find 
him, every nerve tense, when far off, about 
a hundred yards away, he got up out of 
the top of a big palm and flew with the 
grouse-like flight the old gobblers have 
right away into the thickest part of the 
main cypress woods where swamp and 
thicket made it almost impossible to fol¬ 
low and get a shot at them. 
Five minutes later, Cumming’s gun went 
pow,’ away off to the left and I stole off 
to see what he had for we had agreed 
not to shoot at anything but turkey. And 
so I fancied the old Veteran had one. 
Soon I came to him, standing there as 
in a dream, looking through a tangle of 
fans and vines. “Got him?” 
Slowly he shook his head. “No, but, my 
it was a hen! As pretty a picture as 
I ever saw. She was running ahead of 
me, just crossed a line of sunlight. If 
I d only known, I should have shot then. 
But I followed her line of run with my 
gun, waiting till she flashed out in a clear 
space again. But she was cunning, she 
saw me as soon as I saw her, and changed 
the direction of her run. She didn’t come 
out in the next patch of open. So I sent 
a shot at a guess.” 
Knowing his deadly aim, we went ahead 
to look for a dead turkey. But there was 
no sign. Only the neat, trim tracks in the 
soft sand and his guess was right. We 
saw where she had crossed the first patch, 
but not the second. There she changed, 
and simply faded into the dense thicket: 
