The Upland Game Hunter's Bible [antikvár]

Chapter 1WILD TURKEYTwo of us had a band of turkeys fairly well located in South Carolina. Sign was everywhere. From the appearance of the tossed and scattered leaves where they had been feeding, the big birds had been using this immediate vicinity for some time. The more we saw, the more certain we were that one of us would soon get a shot.We hunted them for several days, taking stands in the early morning where we sat for a couple of hours waiting and hoping; then we would go quail shooting the remainder of the day. One morning we ran across sign so fresh that the turkeys were obviously just ahead of us. More than that, they had fed into a branch which was thick, but small and narrow. No turkey hunters ever had it better. We had them cornered, which is something that rarely happens to these wise birds.I won the toss and made a wide circle to take a stand in the clear at the far end of the branch. My partner returned to the car and came back with his setter. Together they would go in their end of the cover, flush the turkeys and send them sailing out over me. I had waited years for this moment.All was quiet for some time, but I knew things would happen any moment. We had both done considerable turkey hunting and couldn't have mistaken the sign. Just as I began to doubt myself, the morning silence was shattered by the roar of wings as six or eight turkeys took to the air in a body, just as a covey of quail bursts from the broom sedge. What a sound! The pulse of a thousand generations of hunters pounded through my veins. But not a bird showed, and the sound of their wings faded in the distance.My companion and his excited dog soon appeared."What happened?" I asked."He pointed them!" he exclaimed. "He pointed them!""Then what happened?""When I walked in on them, they jumped about twenty yards ahead of me and came right back over my head, all eight of them. Great day," he went on, "I've never seen such a sight.""Why didn't you shoot?""My gun jammed, that's why.""You didn't shoot the first time," I said. "How could it jam?""The trigger wouldn't pull." '"Did you have the safety off?""Of course I had the safety offand that gobbler! He was the biggest thing I ever saw.""Did the trigger ever stick before?" I plagued him."No," he laughed. "Let's go find us some quail."As we both knew, this was a simple case of lock-finger. That's what turkeys can do to a fellow.WILD TUBKEY