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.
[Illustration: 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 rôle 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 rôle of monarch of all he
surveys.
[Illustration: 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.