[CHAPTER XVII]
CAMERA HUNTING FOR TURKEYS
During the past ten years, while the season was open on wild turkeys, I have made a rule to leave the gun at home and hunt the turkey with the "camera" instead.
On countless occasions I have sat on the bank of a beautiful creek in Alabama watching and waiting for these noble birds to appear and pose. Time and patience, that's what it takes; likewise to know the ways of the bird.
On one occasion I had found their great tracks on the sandbank, and, noting it as a favorite crossing, made an impromptu blind to mask the camera lest the birds get the least glimpse of it or myself. It took me over two months to get an opportunity for the picture which I secured at last one afternoon as the sun was getting low. I had been calling at intervals, and just when least expected, there they were, moving slowly but watchfully toward the creek and across the scope of the lens. My finger was quick to reach the button as they stepped to the sandy bank, and turned to note that no enemy lurked behind. The click of the shutter startled them but little, and they walked quietly away. I knew I had a good negative, as the late afternoon sun shone brightly on their gorgeous plumage, and they were barely fifteen feet from where I sat.
Not one man in a million has ever had the opportunity of viewing one of these birds in life in the woods at ten to fifteen feet—nor ever will, and to these I hope the photographs will be a pleasure; for to see a ten-year-old gobbler so near, when he is not frightened—and you without gun or other means to injure him—so you may enjoy the most majestic bird the eye of man ever rested on, is not only a feast for the eye, but a pleasant memory that will be with you forever.
In November, 1899, in Alabama, I began to hunt with the camera, and for six months—with the exception of one day only, on which a terrific storm raged—not a day passed that I was not after turkey pictures, sometimes not seeing one in two or three weeks, then again encountering twenty-five to forty in one day. I spoiled several hundred plates in this time, snapping at every chance that occurred. There is no possibility of a time exposure on such sensitive birds, and one twenty-fifth of a second is scarcely quick enough. Often the click of the shutter, so like the snap of a gun when missing fire, sent them whirling into the air or scattered them, pellmell, afoot. I have stalked and crawled to their scratching places and sat concealed with camera masked on an old log or in a hollow stump, till sundown; all day, and the next and the next.
I have made three or four exposures in a day, gone home, developed the negatives, and found nothing on them but shadows—taken in shade; but at other times there was the just reward when all the plates came out with every image "perfect." Then, again, it would rain almost daily for a month or two. Still I went, camera slung over my shoulder, covered with a rubber sheet, hoping for sunshine.