It requires a good gun, a good load and a good shot to bring down a full-grown, well-feathered turkey. Seldom they rise short of thirty yards distant; then, by the powerful motor assistance of the legs at the start, the next thirty yards are made with such velocity that by the time the gunner has “spoken his piece,” the bird is off so far that loose No. 5 shot and a fair charge of powder will not be effective unless by mere accident. This became manifest at the beginning of the Fifties. Having flushed a very large flock of turkeys near town by means of a little cocker, that made a terrible ado after them in the standing cornstalks, near the Scioto river--after hunting them unsuccessfully in the timber, a strip of prairie grass was entered, full of “nigger-heads,” extending parallel with the river for a full half-mile. The grass was tall, and the freezing weather had stiffened the ground and frozen over the pools, so it could be walked over with safety. As the grass was entered the little dog became invisible; but it was soon discovered where he was by the flight of a turkey out of range, and before the cocker could be brought under control he flushed several more. It was not long, however, before a good wing shot was obtained, and the writer started home with a load. This success and the close proximity to town induced a number of amateur gunners to try their luck, and they were directed to the locality; for it was certain, if the turkeys were concealed in the grass, they would remain there if undisturbed until their time for moving--the dusk of evening. From what was subsequently known, it would appear that the whole flock, consisting of forty or fifty birds, still frightened, had found their way back to this place of security and concealment, and, without the aid of dogs, were walked up and shot at by the party, but without capturing a single bird. The hunters returned with sorrow and disappointment. One of their number, a prominent lawyer and ex-member of Congress, came in with the loss of one eye and otherwise disfigured for life by the explosion of his gun. At the close of the War of the Rebellion a large amount of uncultivated, wild land, owned by non-residents, was sold in small farms to settlers; and a general disposition prevailed, from high prices of produce, to improve much of the better class of timber lands every-where, underbrushing for pasture, or deadening the large timber for corn, and this had some influence in decimating game. Still the game resorts, uninhabitable in this way, amounted to little compared with influence and facilities increased railroads gave the pot-hunter to go on with his work of extermination in those mammoth parks of forests in the eastern and southern borders of the state, where the deer, turkey, grouse, and wild-pigeon should have found protection and a home to the end of time.