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Show AN ARIZONA TURKEY HUNT. Just Berore Thankgivlns All the Settlers Set-tlers Unite in the Similiter. There are some parts of Arizona that are full of men who will live for three hundred and sixty-four days in the year on bacon and beans and never utter a complaint. ISut on the other day it is different. If the bill of fare is not changed on Thanksgiving day, there is trouble in camp, grumbling and profanity, profan-ity, and a tendency to talk bluely about the home in "the states," says the San Francisco Examiner. Away down in the southeastern section sec-tion of the territory there is a creek called Rio Prieto, and nicknamed the '"Turkey river." It i": the only place within about two hundred miles where wild turkeys abound, but then there are enough of them in the narrow valley to stock a state with this greatest of fowls, wild or tame. Just before Thanksgiving, prospectors, miners and ranchers come into the canyon from as much as one hundred miles awav to dioot turkeys for dinner on the great day. For a day or so the slaughter is tremendous, but the birds do not seem to be thinned out much by it, for they are almost unmolested during the rest of the year. The place is so far from anywhere, so difficult of access, that no j bocky will brave the hardship of mill's of desert hills and rocky clilfs except under the great inducement of Thanksgiving. Thanks-giving. Some of the hunters come so far that they have to make '"jerky" of the turkey meat in order to get i. home. A fellow wants turkey pretty hard when he will travel one hundred miles for it and then take it in the shape of salted and sun-dried strips and shreds, and usually fried in a gravy of bacon grease and flour. A Thanksgiving hunt in the valley of the little river is worth a trip, if anjT-thing anjT-thing in that line can compensate for a twenty or fifty-mile trip over bare rocks with the thermometer at one hundred hun-dred and teu degree.'. There are no end of turkoys in the valley. As you walk up the creel: great flocks of them, both the big black fellows and the smaller bronze turkeys, swarm up the banks into the brush like quail. One of them will carry away as much lead as a deer, and there are all sorts of stories about turkeys getting away with one wing and one leg broken. The artist at the business shoots off the turkey's head. A man who would use a shotgun under the circumstances would ""ground-sluice" quail, if he would not fish for trout with giant powder. Half a dozen birds make a tremendous tremen-dous bag, about as much as a pack mule can carry out of the valley, for the3' grow to a marvelous size. Old-timers Old-timers say that gobblers weighing thirty pounds hav3 been taken out of the Prieto canyon. |