The beginning of the strut. These gobblers are strutting before the camera hidden by brush in an endeavor to attract the hen turkey whose love call the camera man is imitating with his "caller."
I will say in this connection that turkeys may so act in rare instances, if the stream be exceptionally wide, thus delaying their progress for an hour; for turkeys do not like to fly under any conditions, nor will they use their wings save when necessary. But I have never seen a river that they could not easily cross, starting at the water's edge, rising as they fly, and alighting in the tops of the trees on the opposite bank. Mr. J. K. Renaud, of New Orleans, and I, while paddling a skiff up a small lake in Alabama, once counted a flock of sixteen turkeys flying across the lake some distance ahead of us. We noticed that they just barely skimmed over the water and rose to the top of a higher ridge on the opposite side, where they alighted, and not even one touched the water. This lake was probably three hundred yards wide.
Audubon says: "Even the females and young assume something of the pompous demeanor, spreading their tails and running around each other, purring loudly, and making extravagant leaps. I have seen this running round, purring, dancing, and 'ring-around a rosy' in the spring, but not to any extent at any other time."
As many of my readers have never had the opportunity or pleasure of reading the beautiful and expressive lines of Audubon on the wild turkey, I will be pardoned if I introduce some extracts from this great author. He says: "As early as the middle of February they [the turkeys] begin to experience the impulse of propagation. The females separate and fly from the males. The latter strenuously pursue and begin to gobble, or utter the notes of exultation. The sexes roost apart, but at no great distance from each other. When a female utters a call-note, all the gobblers within hearing return the sound, rolling note after note with as much rapidity as if they intended to emit the last and first together, not with the spread tails as when fluttering round the hens on the ground, or practising on the branches of trees on which they have roosted for the night, but much in the manner of the domestic turkey when an unusual noise elicits its singular hubbub."
By this he means, when the wild gobbler on the roost hears the call of the hen, he gobbles, and dances on the limb without strutting, the same as the tame gobbler will gobble when hearing a shrill whistle or other sudden acute sound, without evincing any amorous feelings; but it is not always so. I have often seen the wild gobbler strut on his roost, and I have shot them in such an act when in full round strut.
Audubon also says: "If the call of the hen is from the ground, all the males immediately fly toward the spot, and the moment they reach it, whether the hen be in sight or not, spread out and erect their tails, draw the head back on the shoulders, depress the wings with a quivering motion, and strut pompously about, emitting at the same time successions of puffs from their lungs, stopping now and then to listen and look, but whether they spy females or not, continue to puff and strut, moving with as much celerity as their ideas of ceremony seem to admit."
Now, here are some of the greatest errors of the great naturalist in all his turkey lore, or else the wild turkey gobbler has materially changed his ways. The gobblers do not immediately fly to the call of the hen, and no turkey hunter of experience will admit this.