and is practised by those who kill turkeys for the market, and frequently by those who want to slaughter these birds solely for count. No creature, however prolific, can stand such treatment long. The quail, though shot in great numbers by both sportsmen and market hunters, and annually destroyed legitimately by the thousands, stands it better than the wild turkey, although the latter produces and raises almost as many young at a time as the quail.

There are two reasons for this: one is, the quail are not baited and shot on the ground; the other reason is that every bobwhite in the spring can, and does, use his call, thus bringing to him a mate; but the turkey, if he dares to gobble, no matter if he is the only turkey within a radius of forty miles, has every one who hears him and can procure a gun, after him, and they pursue him relentlessly until he is killed. Among the turkeys the hens raised are greatly in excess of the gobblers. This fact seems to have been provided for by nature in making the male turkey polygamous; but as the male turkey is, during the spring, a very noisy bird, continually gobbling and strutting to attract his harem, and as he is much larger and more conspicuous than the hens, it is only natural that he is in more danger of being killed. Suppose the proportion of gobblers in the beginning of the spring is three to fifteen hens, in a certain stretch of woods. As soon as the mating season begins, these gobblers will make their whereabouts known by their noise; result—the gunners are after them at once, and the chances are ten to one they will all be killed. The hens will then have no mate and no young will be produced; whereas, if but one gobbler were left, each of our supposed fifteen hens would raise an average of ten young each, and we would also have 150 new turkeys in the fall to yield sport and food. It has always been my practice to leave at least one old gobbler in each locality to assist the hens in reproduction. If every hunter would do this the problem of maintaining the turkey supply would be greatly solved.

The greatest of all causes for the decrease of wild turkeys lies in the killing of all the old gobblers in the spring. Some say the yearling gobblers will answer every purpose. I say they will not; they answer no purpose except to grow and make gobblers for the next year. The hens are all right—you need have no anxiety about them; they can take care of themselves; provided you leave them a male bird that gobbles, they will do the rest. Any suitable community can have all the wild turkeys it wants if it will obtain a few specimens and turn them into a small woodland about the beginning of spring, spreading grain of some sort for them daily. The turkeys will stay where the food is abundant and where there is a little brush in which to retire and rest.

Some hunters, or rather some writers, claim that the only time the wild turkey should be hunted is in the autumn and winter, and not in the spring. I have a different idea altogether, and claim that the turkey should not be hunted before November, if then, December being better. By the first of November the young gobbler weighs from seven to nine pounds, the hens from four to seven pounds; in December and January the former weighs twelve pounds and the latter nine pounds. There you are. But suppose you did not hunt in the spring at all. How many old, long-bearded gobblers (the joy and delight above every sort of game on earth to the turkey hunter) would you bag in a year, or a lifetime? Possibly in ten years you would get one, unless by the merest accident, as they are rarely, if ever, found in company with the hens or young gobblers, but go in small bands by themselves, and from their exclusive and retiring nature it is a rare occasion when one is killed except in the gobbling season.

Take away the delight of the gobbling season from the turkey hunter, and the quest of the wild turkey would lose its fascination. In so expressing myself, I do not advise that the gobblers be persecuted and worried all through the gobbling season, from March to June, but believe they could be hunted for a limited time, namely, until the hens begin to lay and the gobblers to lose their fat—say until the first of April. Every old turkey hunter knows where to stop, and does it without limitation of law. Old gobblers are in their best condition until about the first of April, then they begin to lose flesh very rapidly. At this time hunting them should be abandoned altogether.

In my hunting trips after this bird I have covered most of the southern states, and have been interested to note that all the Indians I have met called the turkey "Furkee" or "Firkee"; the tribes I have hunted with include the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and the Cherokees, who live east of the Mississippi River, and the Alabams, Conchattas, and Zunis of the west. Whether their name for the bird is a corruption of our turkey, or whether our word is a corruption of their "Furkee," I am not prepared to state. It may be that we get our name direct from the aboriginal Indians. All of the Indian tribes I have hunted with have legends concerning the turkey, and to certain of the Aztec tribes it was an object of worship. An old Zuni chief once told me a curious legend of his people concerning this bird, very similar to the story of the flood. It runs:

Ages ago, before man came to live on the earth, all birds, beasts, and fishes lived in harmony as one family, speaking the same language, and subsisting on sweet herbs and grass that grew in abundance all over the earth. Suddenly one day the sun ceased to shine, the sky became covered with heavy clouds, and rain began to fall. For a long time this continued, and neither the sun, moon, nor stars were seen. After a while the water got so deep that the birds, animals, and fishes had either to swim or fly in the air, as there was no land to stand on. Those that could not swim or fly were carried around on the backs of those that could, and this kept up until almost every living thing was almost starved. Then all the creatures held a meeting, and one from each kind was selected to go to heaven and ask the Great Spirit to send back the sun, moon, and stars and stop the rain. These journeyed a long way and at last found a great ladder running into the sky; they climbed up this ladder and found at the top a trapdoor leading into heaven, and on passing through the door, which was open, they saw the dwelling-place of man, and before the door were a boy and girl playing, and their playthings were the sun, moon, and stars belonging to the earth. As soon as the earth creatures saw the sun, moon, and stars, they rushed for them and, gathering them into a basket, took the children of man and hurried back to earth through the trapdoor. In their hurry to get away from the man whom they saw running after them, the trapdoor was slammed on the tail of the bear, cutting it off. The blood spattered over the lynx and trout, and since that time the bear has had no tail, and the lynx and trout are spotted. The buffalo fell down and hurt his back and has had a hump on it ever since. The sun, moon, and stars having been put back in their places, the rain stopped at once and the waters quickly dried up. On the first appearance of land, the turkey, who had been flying around all the time, lit, although warned not to do so by the other creatures. It at once began to sink in the mud, and its tail stuck to the mud so tight that it could hardly fly up, and when it did get away the end of its tail was covered with mud and is stained mud color to this day. The earth now having become dry and the children of man now lords of the earth, each