Chapter 8 ITS ENEMIES AND FOOD

No bird on earth can boast of more or a greater variety of enemies than the wild turkey. The chief of them all is the genus Homo, with his sundry and sure methods of destruction. After man comes a host of wild beasts and birds, including the lynx, coyote, wolf, fox, mink, coon, skunk, opossum, rat, both golden and white-headed eagles, goshawk, Cooper's and other hawks, horned owl, crow, etc., all of whom prey more or less upon the poor birds from the egg to maturity. There is never a moment in the poor turkey's life that eternal vigilance is not the price of its existence.

Still, many pass the gauntlet and live to a great age, the limit of which no man has discovered. I have been a lifelong hunter of all sorts of game indigenous to the Southern States, and I have never seen or heard of a wild turkey dying a natural death, nor have I heard of any disease or epidemic among them; and were it not for the eternal war upon this fast-diminishing species, especially by man, they would be as plentiful now as fifty years ago.

The first in the list of natural enemies of the turkey, if we admit the testimony and belief of nearly every turkey hunter, is the common lynx or wildcat, often known as bobcat. Many hunters believe that of all the enemies of the wild turkey the wildcat is the chief. In all my experience I have never seen a turkey attacked by a cat, nor have I ever seen the skeleton of a turkey which had been killed and eaten by cats. I have never seen a cat crouching and creeping up on a turkey, nor have I had one of them come to me while calling, and I have had more than fifty years' experience in turkey hunting in all the Gulf States where the cat is common. Numerous persons of undoubted veracity, however, have assured me that they have seen cats creep up near them while calling turkeys, and in some instances the evidence seems conclusive that the cat had no other business than to steal up and pounce upon the turkey. Like any other carnivorous beast, the lynx may partake of turkey as an occasional repast, if they are thrown in his way, but this is an exception and not the rule.

My brother, who is a well-known turkey hunter in Mississippi, has furnished me with the following incident: As he sat on the bank of a small lagoon, in the early morning, with his back against a log that lay across the lagoon, calling a gobbler which was slow to come, he heard the soft tread of something on the log very near his head, on the side next to the lagoon. Turning slowly, he saw a large cat within three feet of him, apparently having crossed the water in an attempt to spring upon the supposed turkey that had been yelping on that side. When my brother faced the cat, it beat a rapid retreat, and my brother, springing to his feet, waited until the cat left the log, thus turning its side toward him, when he fired, killing it on the spot. There is little doubt but that in another minute the cat would have jumped on my brother's head. Another time he was sitting calling a gobbler, when suddenly he heard a growling and purring noise in the cane near him. Presently there appeared three large cats, but they seemed to be playing or having a love feast, as they walked about, sprang upon each other, squalled, scratched, springing up the trees, then down again, until he broke up the fun by a couple of shots that laid out a brace of them. Another time he was calling a gobbler which was gobbling vehemently, when suddenly there was a great commotion among the turkeys, clucking and flying up in trees. A cat then appeared out of the cane and was shot.

Now, does this prove, in either of the last two cases, that the cats were trying to catch the turkeys? By no means. For, had the cats been trying to get a turkey, they would not have shown themselves. I believe the cats were simply lounging about in quest of rabbits or squirrels, and happened to pass near the birds, which became frightened at the appearance of so uncanny a visitor. In the last incident, had the cat been attempting to seize or pounce upon the turkeys, they would not have gobbled again, but would have left the place in a hurry. Another reason why I claim that wildcats do not habitually feed on turkeys is, that one may find a given number of turkeys in a piece of woodland, and never miss one from the flock, unless trapped or killed by a gun-that is, after they are grown.

I will cite another incident connected with the habits of the lynx or wildcat that came under my observation while in quest of wild turkeys in the State of Alabama, in company with my friend John K. Renaud, of New Orleans, an enthusiastic and inveterate sportsman. We were in the Tombigbee Swamp, and one morning, while sitting together in a fallen treetop, calling turkeys, our backs against a log, I felt something soft against my hip. As it felt a little warmer than the earth should feel, I pulled away the leaves with my hands, and there lay an immense cane rabbit dead. Upon pulling it out, I found its head was eaten off close to the shoulders, with no other part touched. This was the work of a lynx. Two days after, we were sitting by another log, not over a hundred yards from the first spot, and for the same purpose. I found there a similar object, a large rabbit freshly killed and half eaten, the head and forepart of the body gone. That was the work of a cat. There were plenty of turkeys frequenting that ridge every day, but never one of them was taken by a lynx, as I knew positively just how many gobblers and hens there were in that piece of woods.

I do not think wildcats ever eat the eggs of the turkey when they come across a nest of them; they may catch the sitting birds, but all other animals named in the foregoing list eagerly eat the eggs, if they are lucky enough to find the nests; this is also true of the crow, who, on locating a nest, will watch until the mother leaves it in search of food, when it will quickly destroy as many eggs as possible. All the animals and birds named will catch the young turkeys, and the larger birds and animals will kill grown turkeys when they can catch them.

Snakes give the turkey very little trouble. I do not believe any snake we have can swallow a turkey egg, except possibly the largest of the colubers (chicken snakes). I have never met one that was guilty of it, although I have seen them swallow the eggs of the tame turkey.

Mr. John Hamilton, who has had great experience as a turkey hunter, tells me of seeing horned owls catch turkeys in the Brazos Bottoms in Texas, a number of times, as follows:

On going into the woods before daylight, and, taking a stand near some known turkey roost, to be ready to call them on their leaving the roost, he has, a number of times, been led directly to the tree in which the turkeys were roosting by a horned owl who was after a turkey for breakfast. By walking quietly under the tree, and getting the birds outlined against the sky, he could see what was going on. Turkeys prefer to roost on limbs parallel to the ground, and the owl, selecting a hen perched on a suitable limb, would alight on the same limb between her and the trunk of the tree, moving sedately along the limb toward the victim, and when very near her would voice a low "who, who." The turkey, not liking the nearness of such a neighbor, who spoke in such sepulchral tones, would reply, "Quit, quit," and move farther out on the limb. After a few moments the owl would again sidle up to the hen, repeating his first question, "Who, who." "Quit, quit," would answer Miss Turkey, moving a little farther out on the limb. This would be kept up until the end of the limb was reached and the turkey would be obliged to fly, and then the owl would catch her. From personal observation I know horned owls always push chickens from the roosts and catch them while on the wing.

A great destroyer of the turkey is rain and long wet spells, just after they are hatched in the months of May and June. I have always noticed that, if these months were reasonably dry, there would be plenty of turkeys and quail the following fall. After all, the weather controls the crops of turkeys more than all else.

The local range of the wild turkey varies in proportion as the food supply is generous or scanty. If food is plentiful, the turkey remains near where hatched, and does not make extensive rambles, its daily journeys being limited to a mile or so, and often to not a fourth of that distance. I can not agree with writers who claim that wild turkeys are constantly on the move, travelling the country over with no intention of ever stopping. Of course, when the food supply is limited and scant, as during the seasons of dearth of mast, the turkeys are necessarily compelled to wander farther in order to secure sufficient food; but they will always return to their native haunts when their appetites are appeased.

The chief of all his enemies is the "Genus homo"

In the early morning, all things being favorable, their first move after leaving the roost is in search of food, which search they undertake with characteristic vigor and energy, scratching and turning over the dry leaves and decaying vegetation. Two kinds of food are thus gained: various seed or mast, fallen from the trees and bushes, and all manner of insects, of both of which they are very fond, and which constitute a large part of their food supply. There is no bird of the gallinaceous order that requires and destroys more insects than wild turkeys. They will scratch with great earnestness over a given space, then, all at once, start off, moving rapidly, sometimes raising their broad wings and flapping them against their sides, as if to stretch, while others leap and skip and waltz about. Then they will go in one direction for some distance. Suddenly, one finds a morsel of some kind to eat, and begins to scratch among the leaves, the whole flock doing likewise, and they will keep this up until a large space, perhaps half an acre of land, is so gone over. What induces them to scratch up one place so thoroughly and leave others untouched would seem a mystery to the inexperienced; but close observation will show that such scratching indicates the presence of some kind of food under the leaves. It may be the nuts of the beech, oak, chestnut, chinquapin, black or sweet gum tree, pecan nut, grape, or muscadine seed. If one will observe the scratchings, it will be seen that they occur under one or another of such trees or vines. Thus they travel on, stopping to scratch at intervals until their crops are filled.

Under certain conditions, wild turkeys are compelled to seek numerous sources to obtain a supply of food, as when there is a failure of the mast crop, which affords the principal supply of their food, or when there is an overflow of the great swamps or river bottoms, which turkeys so often inhabit. When such overflows occur, the turkeys are either forced to take up their abode in the trees, or to leave their feeding ground and retreat to the high lands that are not overflowed. In the latter case there is little trouble in procuring food by scratching in the dry leaves or gleaning in the grain fields. But turkeys are hard to drive from their haunts, even by high waters, and more often than not they will stubbornly remain in the immediate locality of their favorite swamps and river bottoms by taking to the trees until the waters have subsided; they will persistently remain in the trees even for two or three months, with the water five to twenty-five feet in depth beneath them. At such times they subsist upon the green buds of the trees upon which they perch, and the few grapes and berry seeds that may remain attached to the vines which they can reach from the limbs. It is truly remarkable how long these birds can subsist and keep in fair flesh under such conditions. There is a critical time during these overflows, when turkeys are hard pressed in that they may obtain sufficient food to sustain life; this is when the rivers overflow in December, January, or February, before the buds have appeared or have become large enough to be of any value as food. Under these conditions they must fly from tree to tree until they reach dry ground, or starve to death.

Although I have never known of a gobbler being thus starved to death, I have seen them so emaciated they could hardly stand. One incident of this sort I will relate: I found four very large old gobblers in an overflowed swamp on the Tombigbee River in Alabama, and as it was in February, it was too early in the year for herbage to begin the spring growth. The river had overflowed the bottoms suddenly, and it was a long way to dry land, perhaps three miles, so the turkeys could get little or nothing to sustain life. I shot one of these gobblers, not thinking of their probable condition, and found I had bagged a skeleton.

If the bottoms are not over three miles wide, turkeys will usually, on approach of rising water, start for the dry ridges farther back from the river, and there remain until the waters steal upon them, when they will fly into the trees. Sometimes a ridge is an island at sundown when they go to roost, but is covered during the night, and when the morning comes there is no dry land in sight for the poor birds to alight upon. This is bewildering to them and presents a new state of affairs. If there be an old mother hen in the flock, she will at once take in the situation, and by certain significant clucks and a peculiar cackle, which is a part of their elaborate language, she will take wing and fly two or three hundred yards in the direction of dry land, alighting in the trees, when, after a rest, with another cluck or two, the party will continue in the same direction. This is kept up until the dry land is reached, when, with wild acclaim and a general cackle of exultation, they all alight on the ground and proceed at once, at a fearful rate, to scratch up the leaves in search of food.

The hunter, aware of these habits after the swamps begin to overflow, will lose no opportunity for an early visit to the hummock at the margin of the backwaters. The turkeys do not remain near the edge of the overflow for any length of time, but very soon extend their range farther into the high forests and fields. They seem to know instinctively that it is unsafe to linger near the edge of the water.

In case the overflow occurs in March or April, when the trees are full of fresh buds and blossoms, the turkeys have an easy time, living in the treetops, fluttering from branch to branch, gathering the tender buds and young leaves of such trees as the ash, hackberry, pin oak, and the yellow bloom of the birch, all of which are favorite foods, while of the beech and some other trees it is the fringe-like bloom they eat. They will remain in the trees out of sight of land for months if they have plenty of buds and young leaves to eat, and keep in fair flesh; but the flesh is not so palatable as when feeding on mast or grain.

I once knew a flock of fifteen turkeys to remain in trees above an overflow for two months. I could see them daily from my cabin on the bank of a lake in Alabama, and could sit at my table and watch them fluttering as they fed on the hackberry buds. They were in sight of a dry, piney wood, and a flight of three hundred yards across a lake would have taken them to the dry land, but not once did they seem inclined to go to it. They remained in the trees until the water went down, and the next I saw of them was in an open plantation, with the lake on one side and the river on the other. The water had barely left the surface in places, and it was muddy and sloppy. They never once went to dry land, but returned to their swamp haunts as the water abated.

On one occasion, as I was going down the river in my skiff, I saw and passed a great number of wild turkeys, one hundred or more, in small flocks in the timber near and along the river banks. The adjoining swamps were overflowed, with no land above the water. Most of these turkeys were sitting in cottonwood trees immediately on the river banks or a little way out in the timber, eating the buds. Many of them were in the trees that hung over the river, and, although most of the trees were leafless, thus exposing the turkeys to view, they remained there quite unconcerned while steamboats passed right by them. As I had three turkeys already in my boat, I felt no desire to molest them as I drifted by and under them. I passed right under some fine gobblers on their perches, not over thirty feet up, and they only looked curiously down at me; they seemed to be busily engaged in feeding, and sailed from tree to tree, keeping up a great stir and racket. It is a beautiful sight to watch a flock of wild turkeys budding, especially on beech buds. The branches of the beech trees are long and so limber that the birds with all their efforts can barely hold on to the tiny twigs while they gather their food; hence they are kept in a constant wobble and flutter, bobbing up and down with their wings spread out to sustain an equilibrium, and their broad tails waving and tossing, bringing them into all manner of attitudes, thus enabling the hunter to see and hear them a quarter of a mile through the timber. Some get upon very small limbs, then stretch out their long necks and pick the buds; others will spread out both wings for support and lie prone on a bunch of twigs while they feed. There is little or no trouble for the hunter to approach a flock so engaged and pick off his choice. They are so bent on eating that they take no note of what is going on around them; even if over dry land they will often remain in the trees half a day eating buds, if other food is scarce, and when tired or satiated they will sit calmly on some large limb and go to sleep or preen their feathers. This is one of the best opportunities afforded the crafty hunter with his good rifle to steal up behind a tree and deliberately drop one, as at this time the leaves are too small to afford much cover, and the turkeys are exposed to open view, giving the prettiest shots imaginable for the rifle. While this is one of the most successful and easiest ways of securing turkeys, there are few hunters who know enough about it to take advantage of it. Persons will often pass under trees in a turkey locality, when suddenly one or more turkeys will fly out. The hunter looks up, but sees only the turkeys on the wing, and cannot understand why they were in the trees at that time of day, as he has not flushed any. He wonders how they came to be there and does not know they were up there budding, having probably been there all the morning.

The budding season lasts but a short time, if the birds are not forced to it by an overflow. On dry land it lasts a month or six weeks, for by that time the buds have matured into full-grown leaves, and are too old and tough for the birds to eat.