The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-06

| CyS lHeu nave lnGlr llcneSI 1eaSL IHey
 can swallow the smaller oceans whole
 and the glzzard, or some other part of the stomach cracks the nut. After a
 feast of oceans, followed by a dessert of the litle frost grape which grows in
 profusion in the forests of the states
 mentioned and becomes sweet and pal
 atable to beast, bird and man after the
 first frost, the great gobblers majesu-
 cally and with some labor fly up into
 the branches of a big tree, where, sev-
 enty or eighty feet from the ground,
 they can peacefully sleep without fear of their great enemy, man.
 Turkeys are gregalious, They like to
 live feed, roant, and roGst together, but
 in every section where these birds are
 at all numerous there are two or three
 bands of what the hunters of these re-
 glons call 'old bachelor gobblers" They
 seem to be the reVeted grave and mo-
 ble seigneurs of their kind who hav-
 ing discharged the functional duties in
 the propagation of their kind in their
 earlier youth, have discarded domestic
 duties and determined to go it alone That they are of mature years is proved by the well-developed spurs, and that NIlSy Have Htiu b NdSl diIlOuIll Ol GADG- rience will be readily sworn to by gun nels who have often failed to capture them
 The late Hiram Pytchlynn, for years head chief of the Choctaw nation, d
 university man. an excellent physician, a crack shot, a skllful fisherman trav- eled and accomplished, and one of the
 foremost and most observant hunter
 naturalists of his time, although an h.
 about the wild turkey, which he said 1 he had often seen. If a gobbler is bad l ly injured, or so hurt that it cannot
 take care of itself, the hens of it's en- l tourage will in turn watch over it an
 procure food for it, and find a suitable
 shelter where there wounded lord and
 master may safely take refuge until his
 wounds are healed.
 This exhibits the turkey i'll a new and
 most interesting light. It has long been known that birds and wild fowl that remained paired permanently will fight most fiercely for their mates upon oc- casions. One of the most skilfully con ducted personal combats I ever wit messed was years ago in North Dakota | between the mate of a wounded trump eter swan (Cygnus buccinator) and young and hungry coyote or prairie
 wolfe that coveted the wounded bird The injured swan had been hit some
 where by one or more pellets of BIB shot, and fell slowly about sixty or eighty yards from lake that was full of small islands. After it's fall the great white bird seemed to recuperate and started slowly toward the water side wandering coyote dashed after it. Evidently it was the male bird that was hurt. Its mate promptly stepped in front of her spouse, and with bend | ed neck and lowered beak dealt the | intruder a blow across the nose that | must have made it's eyes water and | engaged the wolf vigorously. telling her l lord to push on toward water, where, | once a1oat, all the wolves in Dakota could not have caught him. The male | bird managed to reach the lake, and | when he was about ten feet from the | shore Madam Cygnus gave the enemy | an extra peck and a crack with her | wing, that sounded like blow from a club, and sailing grandly away, joined | her lord, who had reached small is- | land and was safe. But to resume.
 As I have said, the size of the wild l turkey varies as the conditions for it's | growth and livelihood may be favorable or unfavorable. It attains it's highest l development in size and physical con dition about the end of it's third year. I once grew a lot of wild turkeys from a clutch of eggs taken out of a nest l we found in the woods and canebrakes back Gf my main cornfield. I had them placed under a setting hen, and she matched them all, save one, which l found had not been fertilized. The young birds were confined in tract surrounded by a wire fence, inside of and be sheltered, until they were of sufficient size to fly possibly a hundred yards. The grasshoppers were particu- larly abundant that year and were eat ing up my carefully kept lawn. I had these fourteen turkeys driven upon it with lot of grown tame gobbers and hens, and the detachment cleared that lawn of hoppers as though fire had swept over it. Whenever these pests of the far south were at all troublesome all the planter had to do was to turn his flock of turkeys loose where they were, and the birds soon abated the nuisance.
 Now as to size Turkeys are like men; they are by no means of equal stature pr avoirdupois. The largest wild turk l ay I ever killed and weighed as a gob- 5ler that I should say had attained it's third year. A little over two hours af- ter it was kelled it was weighed on the scales of grocer in the country, who | was reputed was fairly honest; it tip ped the balance at tWenty-nine and Z hree-quarter pounds. A friend killed I gobler on the Clear Fork of the Bra ,os in Texas two years ago that before being dressed, thirty me and one-half pounds Captain g stanton A. Mason of the Fourth cav $ try, U s. A., shot the largest wild I turkey I know of having been killed lnd weighed It was shot in the Mon- solian foothills of Arizona in 1888 and weighed thirty-six and one-half pounds. | This is one of those enormous turkeys ire peculiar in Arizona Sonara, New I dexico, and a few are found in south g m Texas, near the border of old and a New Mexico. { The late General Ranald s. Mac