The Wild Turkey and Its Hunting

by Edward Avery McIlhenny; Charles L. Jordan

"It must be already apparent that I, at least, have no doubt that our common domestic turkey is a direct descendant of the wild turkey of our forests, and that therefore there is no specific difference between them. If such marked changes in the wild turkey occur by only ten years of domestication, all directly tending to the form, habits, and colorings of the domestic turkey,—in all things which distinguish the domestic from the wild turkey,—what might we not expect from fifty or a hundred years of domestication? I know that the best ornithological authority at the present time declares them to be of a different species, but I submit that this is a question which should be reconsidered in the light of indisputable facts which were not admitted or established at the time such decision was made.

"There has always been diffused among the domestic turkeys of the frontiers more or less of the blood of the wild turkey of the neighboring forests, and as the wild turkey has been driven back by the settlement of the country, the domestic turkey has gradually lost the markings which told of the presence of the wild; though judicious breeding has preserved and rendered more or less constant some of this evidence in what is called the domestic bronze turkey, as the red leg and the tawny shade dashed upon the white terminals of the tail feathers and the tail-coverts, the better should the stock be considered, because it is the more like its wild ancestor.

"That the domestic turkey in its neighborhood may be descended from or largely interbred with the wild turkey of New Mexico, which in its wild state more resembles the common domestic turkey than our wild turkey does, may unquestionably be true, and it may be also that the wild turkey there has a large infusion of the tame blood, for it is known that not only our domestic turkey, but even our barnyard fowls, relapse to the wild state in a single generation when they are reared in the woods and entirely away from the influence of man, gradually assuming uniform and constant colorings. But I will not discuss the question whether the Mexican wild turkey is of a different species from ours or merely a variety of the same species, only with differences in color which have arisen from accidental causes, and certainly I will not question that the Mexican turkey is the parent of many domestic turkeys, but I cannot resist the conclusion that our wild turkey is the progenitor of our domestic turkey."

We have now come to where we can study the eggs of these birds, and in the same article I have just quoted so extensively from, Judge Caton says on page 324 of it, "The eggs of the wild turkey vary much in coloring and somewhat in form, but in general are so like those of the tame turkey that no one can select one from the other. The ground color is white, over which are scattered reddish-brown specks. These differ in shades of color, but much more in numbers. I have seen some on which scarcely any specks could be detected, while others were profusely covered with specks, all laid by the same hen in the same nest. The turkey eggs are more pointed than those of the goose or the barnyard fowl, and are much smaller in proportion to the size of the bird."

This, in the main, is a fair description of the eggs of Meleagris, while at the same time it may be said that the ground color is not always "white," nor the markings exactly what might be denominated "specks."

Turkey eggs of all kinds, laid by hens of the wild as well as by those of the domesticated birds, have been described and figured in a great many popular and technically scientific books and other works, in this country as well as abroad. A large part of this literature I have examined, but I soon became convinced of the fact that no general description would begin to stand for the different kinds of eggs that turkeys lay. They not only differ in size, form, and markings, but in ground colors, numbers to the clutch, and some other particulars. Then it is true that no wild turkey hen, of any of the known subspecies or species of this country, has ever laid an egg but what some hen of the domestic breeds somewhere has not laid one practically exactly like it in all particulars. In other words, the eggs of our various breeds of tame turkeys are like the eggs of the several forms of the wild bird, that is, the subspecies known to science in the United States avifauna. Therefore I have not thought it necessary to present here any descriptions of the eggs of the tame turkeys or reproductions of photographs of the same.

Among the most beautiful of the wild turkey eggs published are those which appear in Major Bendire's work. They were drawn and painted by Mr. John L. Ridgway of the United States Geological Survey.[41] These very eggs I have not only examined, studied and compared, but, thanks to Dr. Richmond of the Division of Birds of the Museum, and to Mr. J. H. Riley, his assistant, I had such specimens as I needed loaned me from the general collection of the Museum, in that I might photograph them for use in the present connection. Dr. Richmond did me a special kindness in selecting for my study the four eggs here reproduced from my photograph of them in Plate VI. These are all of M. g. silvestris.

Of these, figures 20 and 21 are from the same clutch, and doubtless laid by the same bird. (Nos. 30014, 30014.) They were collected by J. H. Riley at Falls Church, Va. Figure 20 is an egg measuring 66 mm. x 45 mm., the color being a pale buffy-brown, finely and nearly evenly speckled all over with umber-brown, with very minute specks to dots measuring a millimetre in diameter. The finest speckling, with no larger spots, is at the greater end (butt) for a third of the egg.