Do wild turkeys come through your yard? Now you can have one in your house! John James Audobon (French; 1785 -- 1851) was born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his French mistress. He was raised in Nantes France by his grandmother, subsequently sailing to America in 1803 (18 years of age), allegedly to avoid military service with Napoleon's armies. Audobon became the dominant wildlife artist of the nineteenth century, in the young new democracy of the United States. His seminal work Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, is still the standard against which subsequent naturalist artists are measured.This print, Wild Turkey, male, Plate 1, reads engraved by W. H. Lizars, Edin(burgh), one of the European printers who published his prints, beginning @1825. The vintage of this particular print is unknown, but the plates used were these early ones.