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1 n June, 1863, George BrufTcy and his partner, a Mr. Hurd, were following the trail along the South Platte in northeastern Colorado/on their way to the gold-rich young boom town of Denver. Not far from their destination, they witnessed a peculiar sight that impressed them as much as any bufTaloes, antelopes, or Indians they had so far encountered. This was a man driving ;t flock of five hundred turkeys.
Upon inquiring, Bruffey discovered that the drover had bought the birds in Iowa and Missouri; from there to Denver he had undertaken an epic trail drive of well over six hundred miles with some of the most temperamental birds of this hemisphere. The outfit consisted of the owner, a wagon loaded with shelled ‘corn and drawn by six horses and mules, the t, rkeys, and two boy drovers • ,'ho had walked all the way. When the wind was behind them, the turkey man said, they could make twenty-five miles a day. When it was against them, they had their troubles. Mostly the birds lived off the country, devouring hordes of grasshoppers. Where feed was scarce, shelled corn was thrown to them from the wagon. They fatt< ied as they went.
Denver was a hungry town then. Horace Greeley, visiting it in 1859, reported that everybody ale pork, hot bread, beans, and coffee three times a day, day after day, except when an ox well-toughened by a fifty-day trip across the plains was butchered. A thousand
By NEIL M. CLARK
drumsticks on the hoof could look mighty appetizing. Bruffey saw the turkey man again after he had sold his birds and learned he had "done well” on the deal.
It is almost forgotten now that, before truck transportation and refrigerated boxcars, turkeys never would have reached city tables for Thanksgiving and Christmas if they hadn’t walked. When leaves put 011 amnion tints, drovers herded turkeys by the thousands to markets or railheads that were sometimes hundreds of miles away. The birds crossed mountains, rivers, plains, even deserts. A breeding herd is said to have walked from New Mexico to California, taking a year to do it. Cattle drives have been chronicled endlessly; hardly anyone remembers how far turkeys walked in order to be ealen. Here and there an old-timer du-dpes up mem-
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ories, and by pieting together scattered accounts, it is possible to monstruct those pint:. er:pie and sometimes fantastic odysseys.
At least one famous caltle forlune
■	,as riarkd with the pro> eeds of turkey-trailing. Henry C. Honker's Sierra Bonita ranch in the San Simon Valley of Arizona was, in its day, a desert oasis of baronial splendor. Famous people visited it to ride, breathe the tem'c .-.jr. r.ncl share for a while the < a11 ■ l :i;:i 1:wav of life. Hooker fould tell them plenty about stampedes of cattle, but his first stampede, it sr'.med, was of turkeys.
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a hardware business in Hangtown, California, the sudden-death town that later became Placerville. Fire destroyed his store. Hooker rescued a thousand dollars in cash and nothing else. At that time the Comstock Lode was booming. Carson City, Nevada’s infant capital across the High Sierras, was bursting its seams; like many boom towns, it imported food, and people "ate poor."
Farmers around Hangtown raised turkeys. Looking for a way to up his stake, Hooker thought roast turkey would taste good in Nevada. He began assembling a flock, meaning to walk it over the mountains. Despite dire warnings, Hooker bought all the turkeys he could pay for and set out with a couple of dogs, a helper, and the birds.
Things v nt well at first. The feathered hikers behaved themselves up to the :,now ’’ne and beyond. But one day, after Hooker's Hock had passed the summit, it leached a precipitous slope arid Hopped. As the turkeys milled at the edge, the dogs nagged at them to go. Suddenly (hey did by air. Within minutes the last I.’id had v..r.:sbed, leaving their owner mrc he wo”ld never see them again. Hooker later said their departure gave him "the most indescribable feeling" of his adventurous career. Forlornly he mads his
■	.ay down. Suddenly lie heard a gobble. Then am : her. Soon he had rounded up almost every bird: the turkeys sc-tmed anxious to continue the guided lour. Tn Carron City eager buyers t-napp* <’• 1.’. «a
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