UPLAND BIRDS
The Turkey
The tracks of this, the largest of game birds, differ in nowise from those of the domestic kind. In the woods—in wild turkey country—they usually indicate their presence by scratching up the ground cover in search of food, just as domestic fowls do under similar circumstances, and by their droppings. The latter are the more important as a means of identification.
Wild turkeys, when habitually or temporarily frequenting a given locality, have their favorite trees upon which they roost, and under these trees the droppings will be very plentiful. Some hunters wait at such roosting places during the evening or morning and get their game; sometimes the bird may have treed five hundred yards or more away, but the expert, who is not given to guesswork, makes it his purpose to ascertain all the turkey trees in a district, notes the easiest way to approach them, and then, during the early evening hours he will, from a convenient point, mark down the birds which he hears treeing. Then during the hour before daybreak he will go noiselessly as near as possible to a roosting tree which he knows harbors one or more turkeys, and after it is light enough to shoot he will experience little trouble in stalking as close as is necessary to get his bird.
The Sage Grouse
The track of the sage hen is about the size of that of a small domestic chicken, but the toes at their base are somewhat broader, giving the entire track a different aspect.
In the spring and autumn months the birds frequent sagebrush flats and hillsides, and during the early autumn they seek the vicinity of water, and there, if it were not that their toes are rather short in comparison with their broadness, the tracks might be mistaken for those of the pheasant in any place where that game bird has been introduced.
TURKEY. (LARGE DRAWING TWO-THIRDS NATURAL SIZE)