I made my way through the prickly ash brush,
sometimes getting my clothes torn and my hands and face scratched, when
going into the dark woods in the early morning. I went for the nearest
turkey that I heard, often wading through the water knee deep, the woods
being nearly always wet in the spring.
If the turkey did not happen to be too far off and I got near it, before
it was light, and got my eye on it, before it saw me and flew away, I
would crawl up, and get behind some tree that came in range between me
and it so that it could not see me. I had lo be careful not to step on a
stick, as the breaking of a stick or any noise that I was liable to make
would scare the turkey away. If I had the good luck to get up to that
tree without his discovering me, I would sit or stand by it and look with
one eye at the old turkey as he gobbled, strutted, spread his wings then
drew them on the limb where he stood and turned himself around to listen
and see if there was anything new for him to gobble at. If he heard the
distant woodpecker, pounding away with his beak, on the old hollow top,
he would stretch up his neck and gobble again as cheerfully as before.
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