Chapter 9 HABITS OF ASSOCIATION AND ROOSTING

After obtaining a supply of food, the wild turkeys become moody and careless, lounging about the sunny slopes if the weather be cool, or if it be hot, seeking the shade of the hummock or thicket, preening their feathers or wallowing in the dust. They thus pass the middle hours of the day in social harmony and restful abandon. About three or four o'clock in the afternoon the line of march is resumed in the direction of the roosting place, and they gather their evening meal as they journey along.

They are excellent timekeepers, usually winding up the day at one of their favourite roosts; but in case this calculation is faulty and sundown overtakes them a mile or so from the desired spot, they will start on a run in single file, the old hens leading, and keep going rapidly until their destination is reached. They will then stop suddenly in a close group, peer about, uttering low purring sounds, while having a breathing spell from the long run. Having regained their composure, the old hens will sound several clucks in rapid succession, terminating in a guttural cackle, when the whole of the flock will take wing. With a wild roar, up they go in different directions, alighting in the largest trees with seldom more than two or three turkeys in a single tree. If they are not satisfied with their first selection of a roosting place, they will fly from tree to tree until a satisfactory place is found; then they settle down quietly for the night.

Wild turkeys have a preference for roosting over water, and they will often go a long way in order to secure such a roost. The backwater from the overflowing streams, when it spreads out widely through the standing timber of the river bottoms, affords them great comfort; also the cypress ponds to be found in our Southern river districts. They evidently fancy that there is greater safety in such places.

The turkey is happy when it can traverse the ridges, glades, and flats in a day's ramble from one watercourse to another, having a roosting place at one ridge one night and the next night at another. This sort of arrangement suits them admirably, as they dislike to roost in the same trees two or more consecutive nights. I have known them to make such regular changes as to roost in three or four different places in a week, bringing up at the same place not exceeding once or twice a week, and that on or about certain days. These are facts peculiar to the wild turkey, especially if localities are favorably arranged. But often they will roost very many nights near the same place. If the range is unlimited, however, they will seldom roost oftener than twice a week at a given spot. There are exceptions though, for I have known positively of old gobblers who took up their abode at a certain spot and roosted, if not in the same tree, in the same clump of trees, night after night and year after year with the persistent regularity of the peacock, which will roost on the same limb of a tree for ten or twenty years if undisturbed. When an old gobbler does take to this hermitlike custom, he is the most difficult bird to bag in the world. His life seems immune from attacks of any nature, and he seems to know the tactics of every hunter in the vicinity of his range. He keeps aloof from any old logs or stumps where an enemy may lurk, and never gobbles until daylight, so that he can take in every inch of his surroundings. I have killed from four to six old gobblers, in a given range, while trying to bag a certain stubborn old chap whose vigilance and good luck have saved him from bullets for years; but through patience and dogged persistence in the hunter he succumbed at last. Although some hold out longer in their reserved and retired course, I can truthfully say that I have yet to encounter one that can not be brought to the gun by fair and square calling. Many experienced and worthy hunters will criticise this assertion, and are honest in their convictions that I am in error; but I will take the dissenter to the haunts of the most astute old gobbler he may select, and call the turkey right up to the muzzle of his gun, or near enough to see the glint of his eye.

A flock may be met one morning on the skirts of the backwater from an overflow river bottom, probably a flock of hens and gobblers together. There would be a great commotion among them and a general mixing up, yelping, and gobbling. On visiting this place the next morning one would not be seen or heard. Crossing to another lake or backwater, one might find the whole flock, or possibly the gobblers, with not a hen around. If in the gobbling season, and the males are gobbling, in less than half an hour the hens would be among them, but if not in the gobbling season the former may not meet the latter again for a month, as in the spring the sexes have no more attraction for each other than were they birds of entirely different groups. Except in the spring you may flush and scatter a flock of hens and gobblers, and after a reasonable wait begin to call with the notes of the hen. Not a gobbler will answer or notice you at all, but the hens will reply by yelping, squealing, and clucking. The gobblers meantime are as stolid as an Indian and as silent as a dead stump. Wait until the hens have gone, then begin the lingo of the gobbler and you find another result.

An ideal turkey country. They will go a long way to roost in trees growing in water

Usually there are plenty of wild turkeys in the Southern river bottoms, in fall and winter, and there they remain until driven to the uplands by overflows, where they must subsist on pine mast, or remain in the trees over the water, and live on the young buds and tender leaves. I have repeatedly noticed this in the Tombigbee swamps in the State of Alabama. Those that do not go to the hills and pine forests will hug the margin of the overflow until the waters subside, when they will immediately return to their former haunts, however wet and muddy. When incubating time comes they seek the higher, dryer, and more open places, grassy and brush-covered abandoned plantations, there to carry out the duties of reproduction.

After the season of incubation is at an end the gobblers cease, almost entirely, associating with the hens, collecting, as the summer advances, in bands of from two to a dozen. Thus they remain all through the summer, autumn and winter, acting the r?le of old bachelors or widowers, and never separating unless disturbed by an enemy. The females care for and rear the young broods, returning to the swamps or hummocks in the fall, where their favorite food has matured and shed.

One of the last seasons I spent in the vicinity of the Tombigbee country in Alabama there were no grapes or muscadines in the bottoms, but a good pin oak crop of acorns, such as the turkeys like. In the higher woods there was a heavy black gum and berry crop, and there the turkeys were, while in the oak bottoms there was scarcely a flock.

During the summer months, old gobblers, like old bucks, having banded together, become very friendly and attached to each other, feeding in perfect harmony. They stroll together wherever their inclinations may lead them, and are then very shy and retiring. One seldom sees them in the summer, but when they do it is generally in an open prairie or old field, eating blackberries, wallowing in an old ash hole, or chasing grasshoppers. These old bachelors do not get fat until fall, although they have an ample supply of food. They are lean and ugly and forlorn looking until after the molting season is over, in August and September, and their new bronze suits are donned; they then begin to fatten, and by December are in excellent condition of flesh and feathers, continuing to improve until the gobbling season returns next spring. These confirmed old bachelors will not associate with the other turkeys, but the old hens that have had their nests broken up and have reared no broods will associate all winter with the young broods and their mothers. I have often observed that these old patriarchs, as a rule, never associate with any other age or sex of turkeys. In summer you will often see an old gobbler or two with a flock of hens early in the morning; but see the same flock three hours later and he is not with them. In the early morning hours of spring, while there is a general gobbling and strutting parade, all ages and sexes mingle in the exuberance of the season and hour; but when this outburst of frolic and revelry is over, the different bands return to the sterner business of the day, that of searching for food. The old gobblers remain gobbling, strutting, gyrating round, picking at and teasing each other, or strumming now and then with the tip of wings, until a riot is precipitated and a fight ensues, in which two become engaged, while the more peaceful or timid quickly leave the vicinity. The gladiators then begin a tug of war, and after a few blows and jams with wings and spurs, one seizes another by the loose skin of the head, which is very limp, affording an excellent hold; then No. 2 gets his opponent by the nape of the neck, and they pull, push, and shove, standing on tiptoes, prancing and hauling away, each endeavoring to stretch his neck as high as possible, as if determined to pull the other's head off, while both necks are twisted around each other, their wattles aglow with the red sign of anger, while their hazel eyes sparkle with wrath. They writhe, twist, and haul away, until perhaps a quarter of an acre of earth is trampled, and keep it up until the foolish combat ends from sheer exhaustion, when one of them runs away. The victor, if not too much used up, having recovered breath and strength, will set up a gobbling and strutting that will cause the leaves of the trees to tremble. He thus proclaims his victory and assumes the r?le of monarch of all he surveys.

A hermit. It would take an expert turkey hunter to circumvent this bird

By these fights one gobbler establishes his claim as lord of a certain range, which no other gobbler will dispute during the rest of the season.

Sometimes, though rarely, I have known an old monarch to take a companion gobbler into the very bosom of his harem, however strange this may appear. I have known of half a dozen instances of this nature where two old gobblers have formed an inseparable alliance and remained together staunch friends for years. Hens are seldom seen in their company and they are extremely difficult to call. I hunted one such brace three years, killing many other gobblers in the long effort to bag these two; never did I call them within gunshot, until one day by some accident they got separated, when it was no trouble to call and kill one of them; the other is, for all I know, alive now.

Such fights as I have described break up the social ring of old bachelors, and until the love season is over each male takes up a range to himself, calling to his side as many of the females within hearing of his voice as will come to him. Several gobblers can be heard in the morning gobbling within a radius of a few hundred yards, but each keeps to himself, and by frequent and persistent gobbling and strutting secures the society of such hens as may favor him with their presence.

After the disbanding of the old gobblers is the best time in the whole season to bring them to call, as they will come to almost any call, yelp, or cluck; except the mogul himself. His bigotry and vanity render him most indifferent to the seductive coquetry of the females, much less to human imitators. Being assured of, and satisfied with, a well-filled harem, he gives little care to the discordant piping of the hunter, or even the gentle quaver of a hen.

In this latitude-from 30 degrees to 33 degrees north-the gobbling season begins about the first week of March, ending the last of May, embracing about three months, though the time depends much on the thermal conditions of the spring. If the weather be dry and pleasant the season will not last as long as if wet and chilly.