The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting

Several illustration captions mention illustration sizes. Since illustrations had to be resized for electronic publication, those size references are no longer valid.

The grandest bird of the American continent

THE WILD TURKEY AND ITS HUNTING

EDWARD A. McILHENNY

Illustrated from Photographs

GARDEN CITYNEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1914

Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by
The Outdoor World Publishing Company

Copyright, 1914, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

CONTENTS

		PAGE
	Introduction	ix
CHAPTER
I.	My Early Training with the Turkeys	3
II.	Range, Variation, and Name	12
III.	The Turkey Prehistoric	26
IV.	The Turkey Historic	39
V.	Breast Sponge—Shrewdness	104
VI.	Social Relations—Nesting—The Young Birds	111
VII.	Association of Sexes	119
VIII.	Its Enemies and Food	134
IX.	Habits of Association and Roosting	152
X.	Guns I Have Used on Turkeys	163
XI.	Learning Turkey Language—Why Does the Gobbler Gobble	170
XII.	On Callers and Calling	181
XIII.	Calling Up the Lovelorn Gobbler	198
XIV.	The Indifferent Young Gobbler	213
XV.	Hunting Turkey with a Dog	218
XVI.	The Secret of Cooking the Turkey	233
XVII.	Camera Hunting for Turkeys	238

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The grandest bird of the American continent.	Frontispiece
	FACING PAGE
Plate I. Figs. 1 to 5. Types: M. antiqua; M. celer. Marsh	30
Plate II. Figs. 6 to 10. Views of the skulls of wild turkeys	45
Plate III. Fig. 11. Left lateral view of the skull of an old male wild turkey	60
Plate IV. Figs. 12 to 16. Views of the cranium and skull of the turkey	75
Plate V. Figs. 17 to 19. Views of the skull of wild turkeys, and skeleton of the left foot of a wild turkey	80
Plate VI. Figs. 20 to 23. Eggs of wild turkey	90
Plate VII. Fig. 24. Nest of a wild turkey in situ	102
Note the full chest of the gobbler on the left. This is the breast sponge	106
Nest located in thick brush on top of a ridge in Louisiana	112
Hen, wild turkey, and three young	116
The beginning of the strut	124
The chief of all his enemies is the "genus homo"	142
An ideal turkey country. They will go a long way to roost in trees growing in water	156
A hermit. It would take an expert turkey hunter to circumvent this bird	160
Big woods in Louisiana where the old gobblers roam at will. A delightful place in which to camp	174
Jordan's Turkey Call (cut in text)	183
I soon saw the old gobbler stealing slowly through the brush	190
"Cluck," "put," "put," there stands a gobbler, within twenty paces to the left	202
Suddenly there was a "Gil-obble-obble-obble," so near it made me jump	206
The soft, gentle quaver of the hen has no effect on the ear of the young gobbler	216

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