CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM §.H.Burnhan CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ION 24 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924074779319 AARON HALL (1828-1892)—‘‘The Lion Hunter of the Juniata.” Slayer of 50 Pennsylvania Panthers Between 1845 and 1869. (FRONTISPIECE) Extinct Pennsylvania Animals PART I. The Panther and the Wolf By HENRY W. SHOEMAKER (Author of ‘‘A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt,’’ Etc.) FULLY ILLUSTRATED NS NZNZ The Altoona Tribune Publishing Co. ALTOONA, PENNA. 1917 COPYRIGHTED ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Pennsylvania Lion or (REVISED EDITION) e “Une panthere ou un lion, me disait Je, serait loge u souhart la dedans!”’ — Bombonnel Panther HON. COLEMAN K. SOBER, For 21 Years a Member of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. World Renowned Shot—Intimate Friend of Aaron Hall, Pages BiRehace> ond ie) wh bie oe wire oer mes b- 7 ELIStOLYy- Hie cudvencataiandauenenees 9-18 Deseniphon- .ice4sansightadedagenied 14-18 LAD NUS) 4.454) arse hae dl oil dob kak ates 19-23 Bathy Prevalence. 0.4 aainbes etna 24-28 The Great Slaughter................. 29-82 The Biggest Panther ................ 33-39 Diminishing Numbers ............ 0 = 10-43 bhe Last: Phase iccieaseas yeache 44-48 Re-Introduction: Sporting Possibilities 49-52 Stiperstitions, wid kaawadeeloucae 53-57 “Tentative List of Panthers Killed in Pennsylvania Since 1860.......... 58-59 Ode to a Stuffed Panther............ 60-61 I. PREFACE. HE object of this pamphlet is to produce a narra- i tive blending the history and romance of the once plentiful Lion of Pennsylvania. While ’ pages have been written in natural histories describing this animal’s unpleasant characteristics, not a word has been said in its favor. It has never even had an apol- ogetic. In reality the Pennsylvania Lion needs no defenders, as those who understand him realize the nobility of his nature. From reading John W. God- man’s “American Natural History,’ published in 1828, one would imagine that the Pennsylvania Lion, or, as it is most commonly called, the panther, was a most terrible beast. Among other things he says: “In the daytime the cougar is seldom seen, but its peculiar cry frequently thrills the experienced traveler with horror, while camping in the forest for the night.” Even Mary Jemison, “The White Woman of the Gen- essee,” speaks of “the terrifying shrieks of the fero- cious panther,” as she heard it in her childhood days on Marsh Creek, Franklin County. In reality the pan- ther was an inoffensive creature, desiring only to be let alone, yet brave when attacked by dogs, and re- spectful of man. A single hunter in St. Lawrence County, New York, met five panthers together, of which, with his dog and gun, he killed three at the time and the next day the other two. The first settlers finding it in the woods set out to kill it as they did 5 6 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. with every other living thing from the paroquet to the heath-cock, from the northern hare to the pine marten, from the passenger pigeon to the wild turkey, without trying to study it, or give it a chance. Fconomically the panther was of great value for the hide, meat, and oil, an las the finest game animal which Pennsylvania produced. .\s former Governor Glynn, of New York, said fn a message to the Legislature, “Game should he couserved to furnish a cheap food supply.” In the fol- lowing pages will be found the bull of the information whieh the writer has been able to collect on the sub- jeetéof the panther in Pennsylvania. It has been pre- pared trom the point of view of the old hunters, whom the writer has interviewed. \While there are some statements which are liable to be declared scientifically incorrect, they are printed for what they are worth, as the authorities were as reliable as unscientific ob- servers can be. ‘The writer has consulted practically every book which contains a mention of the panther in the Keystone State, and also many wther works on the cougar of the United States and Central and South America. He docs not seek to “split hairs’ and make the (ennsylvania Lion a separate varicty, greater or grander than its relatives in other parts. he state- uicnt 15 herein made that Pennsylvania panthers were the largest known in the East, and this the writer be- heves to be correct. The romantic part of the panther’s sojourn among us has been dilated upon whenever possible. This animal, above all others, added most to the '-gendary lore of the State. But the chief cffort CLEMENT F. HERLACHER, With a Panther Cub Taken in Treaster Valley, M‘fflin County, in 1893, THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 7 of these pages will be to disprove many of the stories derogatory to the animal, to give a hearing to its side of the case and a wider knowledge of its beauty and usefulness. This is done in case a time should come when “red-blooded” sportsmen will decide to reintro- duce the panther as our leading game animal. Then there would be at least one published work which would show the misjudged “cougar” in a favorable light. Though perhaps lacking in scientific exactness, these pages would contain a brief for its existence. Southern panthers may still visit the wilder localities of Pennsylvania, and a wider knowledge of the animal might help prevent a general onslaught against these wanderers. In this connection it might be well to state that the wandering panthers are smaller than those which held their fixed abode in a single valley. In Algeria, where wandering leopards or “panthers” are found, they are called Berrani, whereas those which remain in one locality are called Dolly. The Berrani, (the Hunting Leopard) strangely enough, is smaller than the Dolly. Natural history has many parallels, coincidences and mysteries. All of them teach us the wonders of existence and should make us deal gently with every form of God’s lesser creatures. We have no right to say which ani- mals shall be destroyed and which spared. Just as we look with scorn on the wasteful methods of the old- time lumbermen of Pennsylvania, we will before long cherish the same opinion of the men who wantonly destroyed the wild life of the Commonwealth, II. HISTORY. the Indians themselves. The Erie tribe who were blotted out by the Iroquois in 1656 were called the Yenresh, or “the long tailed,” which was Gallicised into “Eri,” hence Erie, “the place of the panther.” The French called the Erie, “Nation du Chat,” or Cat Nation, which was simply a translation of Yenresh, the name of the panther. Nation du Chat means “Panther Nation,” which is the real name of the Erie. From the earliest times the Pennsylvania lion has been unjustly feared. The first Swedish settlers on the Delaware hunted it unmercifully. They could not but believe that an animal which howled so hideously at night must be a destroyer of human life. When William Penn first landed at Philadelphia the range of the panther still extended to the outskirts of the city of Brotherly Love. In a letter to his friends in Eng- land, written during his first visit to his province, he said: “Of living creatures, fish, fowl, and the beasts of the wood, here are divers sorts, some for food and profit, and some for profit only; for food as well as profit, the elk, as big as a small ox; deer, bigger than ours, beaver, raccoon, rabbits, squirrels, and some eat young bear and commend it. The creatures for profit only, by skin or fur, and which are natural to these parts, are the wild cat, panther, otter, wolf, fisher, i lige history of the panther seems to be as old as 9 10 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. minx, muskrat, ete.” This shows that the s: gacious Quaker was awake to the commercial possibilities of the panther and other animals. On a number of occa- sions he expresses himself in favor of the protection of fur-bearing animals, except when their coats were in prime condition. Certain of the Mingo Indians hated the panther, classing it with the wolf and wild cat, as one of the few animals which were at perpetual war with their God of the chase, Kanistagia. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the pantaer was driven back as far as the western limits of the’ present Chester County. By 1750 it was rarely found, cast of the Blue Mountains. Here it made its stand f ‘more than three-quarters of a century. By 1840 was driven further West, its limits being approniniately a line drawn across the State in a Northeasterl* direc- tion, beginning at the Eastern border of Fulto+ Coun- ty, through Perry County, thence along the North Branch to \Wilkes-Barre, and from thence arr~ ~~ Honesdale. By 1870 the range was closed iv 1S following counties: Clearfield, Centre, Miffli = Clin- ton, Potter, Lycoming and Susquehanna. [jy 1880 Clearheld, Centre and Mifflin contained the ohly na- tive panthers, though wanderers from \West Virginia continued traveling through some of the Western and Northern counties. In 1895 the range was lingited to two valleys only, viz: Havice and Treaster, in Mifflin County, when the last native race of panthers disap- peared. Dr. J.T. Rothrock, former Forestry Commis- sioner of Pennsylvania, heard the weird ery in Treas- GEORGE G. HASTINGS, Who Kilied Two Panthers in Centre County in 1871. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 11 ter Valley, in 1893. Of all the animals of Pennsylva- nia the panther is by far the most picturesque, and has been treated in the most fantastic manner by early writers. In an old history of the Lenni-Lenape, pub- lished nearly a century ago, a writer states: “There are many animals which the Indians in Pennsylvania were accustomed to hunt, some on account of their value, and others because of the mischief they did. Among these the panther is a terrible animal. Its cry resembles that of a child, but this is interrupted by a peculiar bleating like that of a goat, which be- trays it. It gnarls over its prey like a cat. It pos- sesses astonishing strength and swiftness in leaping and seizing hogs, deer and. other animals. When pursued, even with a small dog, it leaps into a tree, from which it darts upon its enemy. If the first shot misses, the hunter is in imminent danger. They do not, in common, attack men, but if hunters or travelers approach a covert, in which the panther has its young, their situation is perilous. Whoever flies from it is lost. It is, therefore, necessary for those threatened with an attack to withdraw gently, walking backward, and keeping their eyes fixed on the animal, and even if they miss an aim in shooting at it, to look at it stead- fastly.” It was these early inaccurate accounts which caused the public clamor against the Pennsylvania lion, resulting in the enactment of bounty laws and speedy extermination. In 1850, John Hamilton, a surveyor, encountered a female panther and two cubs crossing the Coudersport pike, going in the direction of Little | He tw THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. Chatham Run. Though within twenty feet of the huge female, the animal made no effort to molest the gentleman. So much for the great danger of approach- ing where “a panther has its young!’ Dr. Caspar Wistar, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, originally owned the land on which the towns of Loganton and Carroll, in Clinton County, now stand. As there were no railroads’ in those days, Dr. Wistar, when on his periodical visits to Sugar Valley, drove in his own conveyance, accompanied by Hercules, his faithful colored servant. Just previous to one of his visits, Henry Barner, a pioneer, whose “old homestead,” near the mouth of Carroll Gap, is still standing, killed a panther in his front yard. He shot the monster, it is said, as it was about to spring at him. It was found to measure more than eleven feet from tip to tip. Upon reaching the neighborhood Dr. Wistar soon learned that an unusually large panther had been killed by Mr. Barner, and immediately pro- ceeded to the home of the settler to ascertain the particulars of the capture.. As he approached the dwelling he saw lying in the yard the grinning head of the panther in an advanced stage of decomposition, but, being prompted by a desire to further his scientific researches, he desired to procure it for dissection, re- gardless of its condition. Accordingly he ordered his servant to place the head in his carriage that he might take it to Philadelphia. This the Negro did, but for years afterward he would laugh about “dat limburger smell under de seat.” This Negro’s son became so im- THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 13 pressed by the wonders of the forest life that he took employment as body-servant to Ario Pardee, the mil- lionaire lumberman, and under the name of ‘Black Sam,’ was well known in the old-time lumber and hunting country in Central Pennsylvania. III. DESCRIPTION. FTER interviewing many old-time panther hunt- A ers and persons who saw the Pennsylvania lion alive or recently killed, among them Jacob Quiggle (1821-1911), John H. Chatham, George G. Hastings, Seth Iredell Nelson (1809-1905), Clement F. Herlacher and others, the writer has evolved the following description of the Lion of Pennsylvania: Body, long, slim, head large (averaging eight inches in mature specimens, wide in proportion to length) ; legs strong, short; forelegs like the African lion, stouter than hind legs; tail, long and tufted at end; color greyish about the eyes; hairs within the ears grey, slightly tinged with yellow; exterior of ears blackish ; those portions of the lips which support the whiskers, black; the remaining portion of the lip pale chocolate; throat, grey; beneath the neck pale yellow. General color, reddish in Potter County, shading from a dull gray to a slate further South in the State. The hide of a West Virginia pantheress killed on the Greenbriar River, Pocohontas County, in 1901, three- quarters grown, owned by Hon. C. K. Sober, of Lewis- burg, has long white hair on chest and belly, a fluffy, dark brown tail, culminating in a large tuft of black hair, like the tip of the tail of an African lion. It measured seven feet three inches from tip to tip. Georges Buffon, whose French work on Natural His- 14 JESSE LOGAN (1809-1916) A Pennsylvania Indian Who Killed a Panther in 1860, » THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 15 tory is an authority, in speaking of the Cougar de Pennsylvanic, says: “It is low on its legs, has a longer tail than the Western puma; it is described as five feet six inches in length, tail two feet six inches; height before, one foot nine inches; behind, one foot ten inches.” Dr. C. Hart Merriam says that the head of the Adirondack panther was proportionately small. The head of the Pennsylvania panther, according to the concensus of opinion, was large and round. George G. Hastings says that the panthers he killed had heads “like bulldogs.” Of the three mounted specimens now in existence, all of which are fortunately mounted with the skulls, the heads are large. The size of the head and jaws of the specimen in the Museum at State College, which is magnificently mounted, is the most noticeable feature of the manikin. The hair of the female panther was somewhat longer than the males. Many naturalists claim that the tails of the female cougars are shorter than the males. Pennsylvania panther hunters aver that the tails of the females were as long as the males, although very few females were captured. The Pennsylvania lion was known by a great variety of names. William Penn called it the panther—why, cannot be imagined; it is colored very differently from the panthere of Northern Africa, which he probably had in mind. The backwoodsmen called it the painter; there is a Painter Run in Tioga County, a Painterville in Westmoreland County, and painter hollows and painter rocks innumerable all over the State. Semi-humorous persons alluded to it as the 16 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. Pennsylvania lion, but this in turn has become its most dignified cognomen. It is interesting to note that Peter Pentz, the famous Indian fighter, killed a maned male panther near McElhattan Run, Clinton County, in 1798. The Indians told the Dutch settlers on Man- hattan Island that the hides of panthers they brought there to sell were from females, that the males had manes and were difficult to capture. Perhaps the earliest form of the panther possessed maned males. They may be a modification of the prehistoric lions which Prof. Leidy called felis atrox, and which ranged parts of the continent. The Indians may have repeated an old tradition, and not something made out of the whole cloth. Panthers lived in shallow caves along the steep slopes of the rockier of the Pennsylva- nia mountains. Peter Pentz, it is said, crawled into a deep cavern to kill the maned panther and its mate. George Shover blocked up a panther in a cave on Little Miller Run, Lycoming County, in 1865, built a fire and suffocated the beast. There have been a few Pennsylvanians who called the Pennsylvania lion the cougar, and a still smaller number who alluded to it as the puma. There has been a wide range to the scientific nomenclature. S. N. Rhoads, the Phila- delphia naturalist, who knows more about the panther than any other man in the State, gives preference to felis couguar. his is undoubtedly superior to felis concolor, which conveys very little. Others have re- ferred to it as the American Lion, Brown Tiger and Catamount. The last title refers more properly to the THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 17 Canada Lynx, or big grey wild cat. The Pennsylvania Germans used to call the panther the Bender. Philip Tome, in his “Thirty Years a Hunter,” tells of Rice Hamlin killing a panther on the Tiadaghton weighing 200 pounds. About 175 pounds was a good average weight for a mature Pennsylvania Lion. Tome, who also was probably the greatest of all Pennsylvania hunters of big game, has recorded many of his hunt- ing adventures in a book entitled “Thirty Years a Hunter.” He was a sportsman as well as hunter, never killing recklessly. Though he makes no re- capitulation of panthers which fell to his unerring bullets, his descendants estimate that he killed at least 500 of these noble animals. One of his grandsons, George L. Tome, a noted hunter, resides at Corydon, in Warren County. Old Mifflin County hunters described a panther killed by John Reager and William Dellett near Milroy in 1869 as being so large that when the carcass was thrown across the shoulders of a horse the head dragged on one side and the tail on the other. According to the Pennsyl- vania hunters the specimens of felis couguar now seen in Zoological gardens have faded coats, or else the western individuals are plainer colored. It is said that the winter sunlight shining on the many tinted coats of the Pennsylvania lion was a sight beautiful to behold. Even in death the hides retain the rich fulvous, fawn, orange and lemon tints for forty years or more. George G. Hastings vividly describes a magnificent male panther which sunned’ itself and \ 18 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. rolled in the snow on the breast of a splash dam on Big Run, Centre County, in February, 1872, when he was alone and unarmed at a nearby camp. The great feline seemed to be aware of the Nimrod’s wipre- paredness, lmgering about the premises for upwards of an hour. A Florida panther killed near Miami in the winter of 1914, measures, length of head and body 56 inches, length of tail 28 inches. The hide was sent to the writer by the naturalist Rhoads. It rep- resents the extreme peninsular dark phase, being a rich chocolate brown in color. ‘The head is small, as is the head of the West Virginia panther, previously alluded to; the coat of the West Virginia specimen is a paler brown, lacking much of the richness of the Florida hide. A dark dorsal line from shoulders to tip of tail is very noticeable on the Florida specimen, but like the West Virginia hide it has the tuft at end of tail. A mounted Florida panther in the Museum of Natural History, New York City, is a sooty, or slate grey in color, very different from the hide procured by Mr. Rhoads. ‘uoI] B1UBA|ASUUdd au} JO S}IGeH 94} UO AzJ4oYuRNY PUe vajzUNH AZUNOD UOWUNID W ‘zest Uog ‘NYVWYVH TSNNVWWSA IV. HABITS. T is unfortunate that when the Pennsylvania lion I was prevalent no local naturalists made an at- tempt to study the habits of the noble animal. Mr. S. N. Rhoads, in his ‘Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey,” gives us the most complete account, but it was written vears after the animal’s disappearance and mostly from hearsay evidence. In the first place, the panther of Pennsylvania was not “unnecessarily cruel.” It fed mostly on decrepit and wounded deer and elk, sickly game birds and rabbits, also on mice, rats, bugs, worms and berries. It was also a scavenger, eating animals which had died after receiving wounds from hunters, and those which had succumbed from natural causes. Ina forest it was a decidedly benefi- cial element. It never killed more than it could eat under any circumstances. There is no authentic case of the Pennsylvania lion having attacked human beings even when wounded. There is a story prevalent in Lycoming County of a doctor having been eaten by a panther about 1840; later researches prove that he was lost in the snow and died of exposure. Wolves, pan- thers and hawks picked his carcass, not knowing enough to respect a human corpse, but that was the very worst. D. S. Maynard, in his “Historical View of Clinton County,” published in 1874, tells of an occa- sion when the workmen on the State Road between Renovo and Germania found the bones of a man ‘who 19 20 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. no doubt had been killed and eaten py a panther.” Probably the man died from exposure, and his carcass was chewed up by the lion. The same author men- tions an instance near Young Woman’s Town, now North Bend, where a panther killed and devoured an ox, and another instance where a panther killed a fox, which, jackal fashion, had been following it to obtain a share of the “swag.” Another case, on Pine Creek, on the Clinton County shore, is that of a child going after the cows, which had to pass under an overhanging timber of an abandoned dam, on which a panther was crouched, and the brute springing on the child devoured it. This was supposed to have happened about 1820, but no names are obtainable. The child was probably lost in the woods or kidnaped by the Indians who camped at the mouth of the creek When wounded, panthers courageously attacked the dogs, but refused to molest hunters. When about to be knifed or shot, these animals are known to have looked the hunters in the eyes and shed real tears. It is recorded that panthers made interesting and affec- tionate pets. An admirer in Philadelphia sent a young Pennsylvania lion to Edmund Kean, a celebrated Eng- lish actor. It followed him about the streets of Lon- don, attracting more attention than Alderman Parkin’s team of quaggas. D’Azara’s tame panther is recorded as being gentle, but very sluggish. Agnes Sorel, the celebrated Parisian actress, was presented with a lively young panther by a South American admirer, A short time ago the lady presented the animal to the Jardin THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 21 des Plantes, where it can be seen and admired by mul- titudes. Several “pilots” on the West Branch of thie Susquehanna kept panther cubs on their rafts, which were as playful as kittens. In Pennsylvania the rut- ting season usually occurred in December, and accord- ing to the old hunters, the period of gestation lasted three lunar months. Jack Long, the famous hunter in discussing the subject with Dr. W. J., McKnight, author of “Pioneer Outline History of Northwestern Pennsylvania,” said that panthers brought forth their young in September. Audubon says gestation took 9% days, and Dr. Conklin, former director of Central Park Zoological Garden, New York City, claims 91 days as the period. Three to six pups was the number of young produced by Pennsylvania panthers. Jesse Logan, Indian panther hunter, says that panther cubs were delicate, and many died while teething, Au- dubon says there have been instances of five at a birth, in speaking of the species in general. Samuel Askey, the great Centre county panther slayer, ob- tained four pups in a nest on more than one occasion. In 1871 Calvin Wagner, of Bannerville, Snyder county, when crossing the Seven Mountains near Zerby, found a pantheress stretched out across the path, playing with six healthy looking pups. He was unarmed, and as the panthers made no move to vacate, he took a detour to pass them. Hurrying down the mountain he obtained a rifle from a settler near Penn’s Creek, and returned to the spot, but the animals were nowhere to be seen. On the return, he encountered a 22 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. herd of about thirty deer, another unusual occurrence for that time. The young panthers usually followed the mother until almost full grown. They hunted with her, but when two or three years old left to seek mates. Panthers did not have young every year, but only brought forth a fresh litter when abandoned by their almost mature offspring. In “Fur News Maga- zine’ a writer from Perry County describes a battle to the death between male panthers which was witnessed one night by a belated traveler crossing the “Seven Brothers,” as the Seven Mountains, the Tussey, Path Valley, Thick Head, Sand, Bald, Shade and Stone ranges, are often called. The traveler watched the com- bat from behind a big rock, seeing the two fierce brutes tear each other to pieces. ‘he males and females, except mother and young, kept separate except during the mating season. The panther is a silent animal except at this season, and when its young is taken. Its love song was majestic, but its cry of maternal anguish one of the most doleful to be conjured by the imagination. W. H. Schwartz, the brilliant editor of the Altoona Tribune, recently wrote: “.Anent the cry of the panther. This writer had many conversations with a gentleman who was born in 1768 and who was one of the pioneers in this vicinity. Many times did he make our young blood run cold by the tales of the panther and its habit of crying through the night like an abandoned child. More than that, the writer, some sixty-two years ago, heard a plaintive cry one night as he spent the night with his grandmother, near THOMAS GALLAUHER SIMCOX (1840-1914) Relator of Many Indian Legends Concerning the Panthers of the Black Forest, in Clinton and Potter Counties, THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 23 Canoe Creek, and was assured by her that it was a panther. The cry was repeated several times.” Panthers were fond of standing erect when sharpen- ing their claws against the rough bark of the tupelo trees. Franklin Shreckengast relates how two hunters on Baker’s Run, in Centre county, in an early day carved away a section of bark from one of these trees and cut on the smooth surface “Dec. 4, 1858, Jake Hall, Abe Glelson, kilt 4 deers heer.” The tupelo in question was a favorite nail sharpening resort of the panthers which trailed the aged or wounded deer in that section and shortly afterwards with their heavy claws the huge brutes completely effaced the boastful record of the enterprising Nimrods. ‘That the panther would resent meddling is attested to by George Huff, born in 1835, of White Deer, Union County, who tells how a man named Jacob Lushbaugh, a hunter in the White Deer Mountains, in trying to rescue a favorite dog from the grip of a panther had one of his hands badly lacerated by the monster's fangs. %5 i See cae Sf V. EARLY PREVALENCE. IONS in British East Africa were never more lf prevalent than was the panther in Pennsylvania a century or more ago. The woods fairly teemed with them. Yet they made no inroads on the myriads of elk, deer, hares, heath-cocks, wild turkeys, grouse, quails, wild pigeons, rabbits and hares which shared the forest covers with them. The first settlers destroyed all game mercilessly and when it grew scarce blamed its disappearance on the panthers, lynxes, wildcats, wolves and foxes. A warfare was waged against the miscalled predatory beasts; they were exterminated, but game became scarcer than ever. It is now only that people are beginning to wake up to the fact that the panthers were the victims of a cowardly plot to avert the white hunters’ culpa- bility. 3S. N. Rhoads states that in Luzerne county bounties amouning to $1,822 were paid on the scalps of panthers between 1808 and 1820. More than fifty of these superb animals were killed in one year. J. J. Audubon relates that “Among the mountains of the headwaters of the Juniata river, as we were informed, the cougar is so abundant that one man has killed for some years from two to five, and one very hard winter seven.” This was written about 1850, Samuel Askey, of Snow Shoe, Centre county, killed sixty-four panthers between the years of 1820 and 1815. These 24 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 25 were taken in a limited district, and all of this great hunter's neighbors were engaged slaying panthers at the same time. During these twenty-five years it is estimated that six hundred panthers were killed in Centre county. Eleven full grown panthers were killed on Medix Run, which flows through Clearfield and Elk counties, during the winter of 1853. At no time, however, was the range of the Pennsylvania lion evenly distributed. While it was teeming in Centre, Clearfield and counties further South, it was a rare visitor in Potter, Mchean and Warren counties. C. W. Dickinson, the great hunter of the Black Forest, says: ‘Panthers were never as prevalent at the head- waters of the Alleghany as on the Susquehanna, the Clarion, or the Juniata. I don’t believe that more than ten or twelve were captured in what is now Mce- Kean county since the first white man settled there. I believe that panthers, like wild cats, were afraid of the yrey timber wolves which abounded there. Yet the panther was almost as plentiful in Tioga, Bradford and Susquehanna counties as it was in Centre or Mifflin. Hundreds were slain in Susquehanna county and Blackman's history of that county abounds with instances of its appearance among the early settlers. Tt was killed by the hundreds in Wyoming and coun- ties directly South. It bred in the inaccessible swamps in Susquehanna county and among the rocky fast- nesses at the headwaters of the Lehigh river. It was never plentiful in Clinton county, but was found in great numbers in Lycoming and Sullivan. The lim- 26 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. ited range and the limited amount of wild territory in Pennsylvania set an early doom on the native lions. Gradually civilization closed in, and the number of hunters increased yearly. Panther hides were as pre- valent on the walls of old-time farm buildings as woodchuck skins are today. Almost every backwoods kitchen had a panther coverlet on the lounge by the stove. Panther tracks could be seen crossing and re- crossing all the fields, yet children on their way to school were never molested. In an early day in Centre county hunters who had killed fifty panthers were of no rare occurrence. mong the Jefferson county hunters who killed fifty panthers may be mentioned “Dill” Long, “The King Hunter,’ who died in May, 1880, in his ninety-first year. Young bloods dared not pay court to a girl unless they could boast of having killed a panther or two. Even preachers and missionaries joined in the chase and some of them held high scores in the awful game of slaughter. Panthers insisted in returning to spots where they had reared their voung the season before. ‘he hunters were soon aware of the panther “ledges” or clefts’ and robbed them annually. They lay in wait for the old animals, kill- ing them without quarter. A dog which would not trail a panther was held to be of small value. Tame panthers were used to attract their wild relatives out of the forests. Joseph McConnel, a pioneer in Northern Juniata county, killed eleven panthers in seven years in this way. He is said to have covered one entire side of his barn with panther JAMES DAVID (1805-1892) Clinton County’s Famous Panther Hunter. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 27 hides. He thought so little of them that they rotted where they hung and were blown apart by heavy gales. German buyers secured many panther skins, as there was a steady demand in the “old coun- try” for these hides, like there always has been for walnut. Schroeder & Co., of Lock Haven, sent their last consignment to Germany in 1893. William Perry killed a mature male panther on Yost Run, Centre county, in 1875, which was seen in the trap by S. A. Wadsworth and J. A. Roan, residents of Clinton coun- ty, now living. Roan says that the animal’s head was covered with old scars, showing where it had been in sanguinary battles with rivals in the past. James Wyle Aliller, veteran hunter of Clinton county, but formerly of Cameron county, killed many deer in the old days the flanks of which had been scarred by panthers in their ineffectual efforts to bring them down. On one occasion Miller saw the tracks of nine panthers on a “crossing” on Up Jerry Run, in Cam- eron county. In Miller’s boyhood days, he was born in 1838, the greatest panther hunters in the Sinnema- honing Valley were Joe Berfield, John Jordan, Arch Logue and Henry Mason, who resided a short dis- tance up the East Fork. According to Jonas J. Barnet, born in 1838, of Weikert, Union County, panthers were so prevalent on Penn’s Creek in the first decade of the Nineteenth Century that his uncle, Jacob Weikert, was unable to keep pigs for a period of seven years. Mary Hironimus, of Weikert, was followed four miles by a panther ; the experience 28 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. made her an invalid for nearly a year, as the huge cat treated her as a “Tabby” would a mouse, letting her walk along the path a few feet ahead of him, stop- ping when she stopped and running when she ran. Mrs. Mary De Long, of Stover’s, in Brush Valley, Centre county, in walking along a forest path saw a panther crouched above her on the limb of a large white oak, but the animal suffered her to pass beneath. On another occasion at night, when going for help when her mother was ill, she met a panther by the path. By holding the lantern between herself and the monster she was allowed to go her way, the panther keeping abreast of her just far enough in the shadows to avoid the light, until she reached the neighbor's cabin. ‘The fear of panthers was so firmly implanted in her that her descendants to this day always instinctively look up in the forks of large trees when passing through a forest. Panthers often leaped on roofs of shanties at night, frightening the female occupants considerably. John $. Hoar tells of an instance of this kind in Treaster Valley (Mifflin County) about 1896, and another similar occurrence is recorded in Miss Blackman’s “History of Susque- hanna County.” VI. THE GREAT SLAUGHTER. NIMAL drives, similar to those once held in South Africa, were as plentiful in Central and Southern Pennsylvania as in the “Northern tier.” As they occurred in the remote backwoods dis- tricts where no written history was kept, accounts of them have well-nigh lapsed into oblivion. One of the greatest drives ever known took place about 1760, in the vicinity of Pomfret Castle, a fort for defense against the Indians, which had been constructed in 1756. “Black Jack” Schwartz was the leader of this drive, which resulted in the death of more than forty panthers. Schwartz, or as he is often called, “The Wild Hunter of the Juniata,” must not be confounded with Captain Jack Armstrong, a trader, who was mur- dered by Indians in Jack’s Narrows in 1714. History has confused the two men, but as the wild hunter offered his command of sharpshooters to Gen. Brad- dock in 1755 there can be no doubt that they were dif- ferent persons. Panthers and wolves had _ been troubling the more timid of the settlers, and a grand drive towards the centre of a circle thirty miles in diameter was planned. A plot of ground was cleared into which the animals were driven. In the outer edge of the circle fires were started, guns fired, bells rung, all manner of noises made. The hunters, men and boys, to the number of two hundred, gradually closed 29 30 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. in on the centre. When they reached the point where the killing was to be made, they found it crowded with yelping, growling, bellowing animals. Then the slaughter began, not ending until the last animal had been slain. A group of Buffaloes broke through the euards at an early stage of the killing, and it is esti- mated that several hundred animals escaped in this way. ‘The recapitulation is as follows, the count hav- ing been made by Black Jack himself at the close of the carnage: Forty-one panthers, 109 wolves, 112 foxes, 11! mountain cats, 17 black bears, 1 white bear, 2 elk, 198 deer, 111 buffaloes, 3 fishers, 1 otter, 12 gluttons, 3 beavers and upwards of 500 smaller ani- mals. ‘lhe percentage of panthers to the entire num- ber killed is an interesting commentary on the early prevalence of these animals. ‘Che choicest hides were taken, together with buffalo tongues, and then the heap of carcasses “‘as tall as the tallest trees,” was heaped with rich pine and fired. ‘his created such a stench that the settlers were compelled to vacate their cabins in the vicinity of the fort, three miles away. ‘here is a small mound, which on being dug into is filled with bones, that marks the spot of the slaughter, near the head waters of (West) Mahan- tango Creck. Black Jack’s unpopularity with the In- dians was added to when they learned of this animal drive. ‘lhe red men, who only killed such animals as they actually needed for furs and food, and were real conservationists, resented such a wholesale butchery. The story goes that the wild hunter was ambushed JOHN VANATTA PHILLIPS, Who, on Chatham’s Run, Clinton County, Hit a Panther With His Silk Hat and Scared the Brute Away. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 31 by Indians while on a hunting trip and killed. Animal drives did not cease with Black Jack’s death, but in some localities they were held annually, until game became practically exterminated. They were held in Northern Pennsylvania, which was settled at a much later date, until about 1830. After the great slaughter of Pomfret Castle, many backwoodsmen appeared in full suits of panther skin. For several years they were known as the “Panther Boys,” and in their old days they delighted to recount the “big hunt” to their de- scendants. Among those said to have taken part in it were Jack Schwartz, Michael Dougherty, Felix Dele- hanty, Terence McGuire, Patt. Mitcheltree, brother of Hugh Mitcheltree, who was carried off by six Indians in 1756; Abraham Hart, Michael Flinn and Isaac Delaplain. The panther uniforms were abandoned be- cause they became favorite targets for skulking In- dians. The savages, infuriated by the arrogance of the white newcomers, spared persons falling into their power occasionally, but gave no quarter to a “Panther Boy.” ‘The great slaughter of animals kept alive ill feeling between the two races in the region of the Firestone Mountains, and probably a dozen settlers lost their lives because of it. However, they went on with their animal drives, as the hardy settlers loved to do what the Indians hated. Of all the hunters con- tributing to the final extermination of the Pennsylva- nia lion, Aaron Hall, who died at his palatial mansion back of Unionville, Centre county, in 1892, stands well up on the list. Between the years 1845 and 1869 THI PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. tS he killed fifty panthers, principally in Centre and Clearfield counties. As he began his career as a hunter on Hell’s and ‘Tipton runs, tributaries of the Juniata, he was often called the “Lion Hunter of the Juniata.” On one occasion when visited by tlon, C. IK. Sober, of Lewisburg, former State Game Com- missioner, he had the hides of cleven panthers hang- ing up at his camp on Rock Run, In 1819 the last animal drive or “Ring Tlunt”? was hela by the Pioncers at Beech Creek, Clinton county. Several panthers, it is said, escaped through the human barrier. — VII. THE BIGGEST PANTHER. nigh impossible to gain a correct idea of the general size of Pennsylvania panthers. As far as it is known there are three mounted panthers in existence, one at State College, one at Albright Col- lege and'a third at McElhattan. In addition to these the writer possesses four hides of panthers, two killed by Aaron Hall, two by George G. Hastings. The first named mounted specimen, a male, killed by Samuel E. Brush in Susquehanna county in 1856, measures Y feet 9 inches; the second, also a male, killed by Lewis Dorman in Centre county in 1868, is 8 feet; the third, a female, killed by Thomas Anson in Berks county in 1874, is 6 feet 6 inches from tip to tip. This would give a fair average of the sizes. One of the largest Pennsylvania panthers on record taken in recent years was killed in Clinton county, on Young Woman’s Creek, by Sam Snyder, on January 5, 1857. It measured a few hours after it was shot, nine feet two inches. This giant animal had been heard run- ning the deer along the ridges near the creek for sev- eral weeks, and several parties had been organized to capture it. It remained for Sam Snyder, a lad of twenty years, with his pack of six trained fices, to run it down. One bright morning he tracked it to a point where it was forced to take refuge on an overhanging Wo practically no written records it is well 33 34 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. branch of a mammoth white oak. He fired at it, the bullet passing through its left shoulder. The wound served to infuriate the monster, and it leaped from the tree, landing in the centre of the snarling, snapping pack of dogs. Backing up against the butt of a fallen hemlock, with its right paw, which was not disabled, it killed five of the fices before the hunter sent a bullet into its brain. The fice which escaped was a tiny ter- rier, which was alert enough to keep out of reach of the brute’s paw. The huge carcass was transported in an ox-cart to Young Woman's Town, now North Bend, where after it hung for a day in front of a tav- ern, it was skinned and the hide sold to Matthew Hanna, Jr., a hotel keeper of Young Woman's Town. The carcass was cut up into roasts and steaks, and the entire settlement feasted on it for several days. One dark night, ten years later, Jacob K. Huff, better known as “Faraway Moses,’ was followed down Young Woman’s Creek by a panther. The brute kept along the side of the ridge, howling every few min- utes, until it neared the settlement. Evidently the panther had young, and feared that the traveler might molest them. James E. DeKay, in his Natural His- tory of New York State, described a panther killed by Joe Wood at Fourth Lake of Fulton Chain, in Herkimer county, New York, which measured eleven feet three inches. The stuffed hide was exhibited for many years at the Utica Museum. ‘The contents of this Museum were removed, it is stated, to Jackson- ville, Florida, about 1870. “Adirondack” Murray, JOHN Q. DYCE (1830-1904) Who Trailed the Last Panthers in McElhattan Gap, Clinton County. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 35 writing about 1869, says that the panther of the “North Woods” often measured twelve feet from tip to tip. Simon Pfouts, of Leidy township, Clinton county, caught a record panther in a trap near the mouth of Leaver Dam run which measured eleven feet six inches from tip to tip. ‘This is mentioned in Maynard's “Historical View of Clinton County.” Dr. Merriam believes eight feet to be a good average size. ‘This would indicate a close similarity in dimensions between the panthers of the .\dirondacks, Pennsylva- nia and the West. Colonel Roosevelt killed six cougars in Colorado in 1901 which averaged a trifle over eight feet apiece. If anything the Pennsylvania panthers, like the Pennsylvania trees, were larger on the average than those of the Adirondacks. It was the ideal location for them to thrive, for as Prof. J. A. Allen said: “The maximum physical development of the individual is attained where the conditions of en- vironment are most favorable to the life of the spe- cies.” The panthers which George G. Hastings, of Buffalo Run, Centre county, killed on December 30 and 31, 1871, measured nine feet and eight feet nine inches, respectively. ‘The larger was the female, and Mr. Hastings believed it was the mother of the smaller one. George Shover killed a giant male panther on Little Miller Run, Lycoming county, in January, 1865, which measured eleven feet from tip to tip. For some reason male panthers were much more numerous in Pennsylvania than female. The opposite was the case in the Adirondacks, according to Dr. Merriam. Of 36 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. all the instances of panthers noted by the writer of this article, not more than six at most, were females. The information concerning Sam Snyder’s record panther was given to the writer by John G. Davis, of McElhattan, who moved to Young Woman’s Town with his parents in April of the year in which the beast was killed. He was sixteen years old at the time and remembers the details of the occurrence viv- idly. Michael Pluff, who died at Hyner, Clinton coun- ty, in January, 1914, aged 74 years, also recalled the circumstance. It is recorded at length in Maynard’s History of the County. Hon. J. W. Crawford, of North Bend, Pa., published an interesting account of this panther in the ‘““Renovo' Record” of February 20, 1914. He says that Snyder went to the front in 1861 and was killed at Fort Sumter. The story is weil known in Clinton and adjoining counties and several persons, including Judge Crawford, who saw the panther when it was brought to Young Woman’s Town, are still “in the land of the living.” The world of sport hails Sam Snyder as a mighty Nimrod! Simon Pfouts, the great hunter, was the first white man to settle on Kettle Creek, Clinton county. At the foot of Spicewood Island he found, on one occasion, three young panthers lying in their nest of leaves un- derneath the shelter of an old root. He quickly gath- ered them up in his arms and started home. When he had arrived within one-fourth of a mile of his resi- dence the sound of panther yells fell upon his ears. Then commenced a race for life, and Pfouts fully de- THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 37 veloped the strength of his muscles. Nearer and nearer were the screams of the huge monster. Pfouts gained the race by a few feet, and rushing into the house he dropped the young panthers and seizing his rifle shot the panther, which fell dead near his door. On another occasion, in company with Paul Shade, pushing a canoe up the river laden with provisions, when within a mile or two of his home, at a point where the channel of the stream is narrow, suddenly an enormous panther leaped from his concealed posi- tion among the rocks at the form of Pfouts, and alighted in the water close to the stern of the canoe, the rapid current carrying it some distance down stream before it reached shore. One day, while out hunting with his well-trained dogs, he killed four panthers, and the following day he killed another. Meshach Browning, in his entertaining work entitled “Forty- four Years a Hunter” (first published in Philadelphia in 1865), thus describes the killing of a record panther in the Maryland Mountains, near the Pennsylvania line: “Not long after we had settled in our new home, there fell a light snow, when I took my rifle, and, call- ing a dog which I had brought with me from Wheel- ing, which was of the stock of old Mr. Caldwell’s hunting dogs, I went into the woods after deer. I had not traveled far before I found the tracks of four deer, which had run off; for they had got wind of me, and dashed into a great thicket to hide themselves. I took the trail, and into the thicket I went, where I 38 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. soon saw the deer running in different directions. I got between them, in hopes that I should see them trying to come together again. I kept my stand per- haps five or six minutes, when I saw something slip- ping through the bushes, which I took to be one of the deer; but I soon found that it was coming toward me. I kept a close look out for it; and directly, within ten steps of me, up rose the head and shoulders of the largest panther that I ever saw, either before or since. He kept behind a large log that was near me, and looked over. But though I had never seen a wild one before, I knew the gentleman, and was rather afraid of him. I aimed my rifle at him as well as I could, he looking me full in the face; and when I fired he made a tremendous spring from me, and ran off through the brush and briars, with the dog after him. “As soon as I recovered a little from my fright I loaded again, and started after them. I followed them as fast as I could, and soon found them at the foot of a large and very high rock; the panther, in his hurry, having sprung down the cleft of-+rock fifteen or twenty feet; but the dog, being afraid to venture so great a leap, ran around, and the two had met in a thick laurel swamp, where they were fighting the best way they could, each trying to get the advantage of the other. I stood on the top of the rock over them, and fired at the base of the panther’s ear, when down he went; and I ran round the rock, with my toma- hawk in hand, believing him to be dead. But when I got near him, T found he was up and fighting again, DANIEL KARSTETTER AND WIFE. Pennsylvania Sportsmen Have Heard of This Mighty Panther Slayer of the Seven Mountains. All THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 39 and consequently I had to hurry back for my gun, load it again, creep slyly up, take aim at his ear, as before, and give him another shot, which laid him dead on the ground. My first shot had broken his shoulder; the second pierced his ear, passing down- ward through his tongue; the last entered one ear, and came out at the other, scattering his brains all around. He measured eleven feet three inches from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail. ‘This was the largest panther I ever killed, and I suppose I have killed at least fifty in my time. “IT took from this fellow sixteen and a half pounds of rendered tallow. It is something softer than mut- ton tallow, but by mixing it with one-fourth of its weight of beeswax, it makes good candles. I continued hunting the balance of the season, with little success —not killing any bears, although there were great numbers of them in the woods. However, I knew but little of the art of hunting.” A panther killed by John Treaster in the Seven Mountains in 1875 measured, body and head 8 feet, tail 3 feet, total eleven feet, almost the record. Dr. Schoepf describes a shrunken hide of a South Carolina panther as “over five foot from the muzzle to beginning of tail, the tail itself somewhat more than three feet long; the back and sides and head fallow, nearly fawn colored, flanks and belly whitish grey; the end of tail verged some- what on black, but the rest of the tail was of the color of the body.” VII. DIMINISHING NUMBERS. ITH the hand of all raised against them, it is W\ small wonder that by 1860 the panther had become a rarity in the Pennsylvania wilds. Three or four were the most killed in any one year from that date on, until the final extermination. After 1860, they bred in but two localities in the Common- wealth—in the Divide Region of Clearfield County, in Mifflin County. In Clearfield County they had the widest range, and increased most satisfactorily. ‘There was an almost impenetrable evergreen forest at the head of AMfedix Run, which did not first feel the woodman’s axe until 1904, and which was a panther’s paradise. A few panthers bred there until about 1892. The cries of panthers and the howling of wolves could be heard there for a few years after that. Sam Odin, of Clifford, Susquehanna County, killed the last pan- ther in the northern section in February, 1874. It is described as having ben a superb male, red colored and weighing 153 pounds. Its measurements are not given. A female which was with it escaped, and is probably the same one which was killed by Thomas Anson, a coal-burner on the slope of the Pinnacle, in Northern Berks County, in August of that year, according to O. D. Shock, now of the Public Service Commission at Harrisburg. “Forest and Stream” (Vol. III, Page 67) gives the weight of this animal as 146 pounds, 40 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 41 length 6 feet 514 inches. Measured in the study of the writer of this article, where it now reposes, it is exactly six feet six inches! The old hunters were not all “gross exaggerators,’ as some would have us think. The story of the killing of this panther is of more than passing interest. The coal-burners lived in a shack on the east face of the Pinnacle, which is the highest point in Berks County. Nearby is the cele- brated “Amphitheatre,” where the Blue Mountains appear to form a horseshoe about the village of Eck- ville and its surrounding fields. Travelers have com- pared it to the “Cirque de Gavarnie” in the Pyrenees. On several nights the coal-burners heard the animal prowling about their premises, much to the terror of their dogs. They supposed it to be a wild cat, as these animals were very plentiful in the neighborhood. One evening Jacob Pfleger, one of the burners, went to a farmhouse to get a pan of butter. It was dusk when he started for the shack, but he was able to observe that he was being followed by a huge cat-like animal. He kept his nerve, and was gratified to find that the monster ceased following him when it reached a large spring. There it began lapping up the water like a cat. He was unarmed, but at the shanty he found one of his companions, Thomas Anson, who owned a rifle. Anson is said to have killed a panther in Wayne Coun- ty—the last known in that section—in 1867. The two men returned to the spring, finding the panther not far distant. Anson put several bullets into the brute’s body, ending its life. To this day the spring has been 42 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. ’ known as “The Panther Spring.” It is a fine pool of water, and is along the mountain road between Wind- sor Furnace and Eckville. A sketch was made of the spring by Artist C. H. Shearer in August, 1912. How this panther wandered into Berks County, where none of its kind had been seen in forty years, can only be ex- plained by the fact that the creature was working its way westward in search of a mate. Faires Boyer, a noted hunter, residing at Centreville, Snyder County, killed a panther on Jack’s Mountain in November, 1873. It had been probably driven eastward by dogs. Clement F. Herlacher killed two panthers on Mos- quito Creek, in Clearfield County, in February, 1880. For many nights they had been annoying the horses at a big camp, the frightened animals prancing and foaming while the panthers prowled outside. Leonard Johnson, of McElhattan, Clinton County, remembers this incident very well. The panthers in ‘Treaster Valley did little damage, and were in a sense protected by the old settlers, who resented “outsiders” hunting or cruising about the valley. Even Dr. Rothrock was warned to be “careful” in passing through the valley alone. Clem Herlacher followed these panthers by their regular “crossing” from Sugar Valley, Clinton County, and discovered their “ledge,” in the early summer of 1892. He abstracted four pups, which were about three or four months old. Returning the following vear, he found two pups in the same nest, which he also carried away. Many of the old hunters believed that in some mysterious way the Pennsylva- JESSE HUGHES, Hero of a Spirited Encounter With a Panther in Antes Gap, Lycoming County. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 43 nia lion, like the wolf, was an integral part of the orig- inal forest. When the old forests were cut, the pan- thers and wolves of the Keystone State diminished, until the destruction of practically all of the ‘‘first growth” timber, they vanished altogether. This may also account for the passing of panthers and wolves trom the Adirondack Mountains in New York, which occurred so completely after the lumbermen’s devas- tation. i ae, d ANG ww eG VN Q / vara > RA i oe NaS on aN ay IX. THE LAST PHASE. ND now the noble lion of Pennsylvania is re- A duced to a mere foot-print, a voice, a memory of other days. He is spoken of by persons who have heard rather than seen him. William J. Emert, of Youngdale, Clinton County, whose fish basket was rifled by a wandering panther at his*bark camp near Dagusgahonda, Elk County, in 1889, remembers the animal’s cries distinctly, and can give an exhibition of unique mimicry. The writer, having heard the cries of the panther in a wild state and in capitivity, can vouch for it that the genial Bill actually heard the real thing. Potter County newspapers in 1911 reported that the cries of a panther were heard in the vicinity of Sweden Hill, near Coudersport, in the autumn of that year. The same fall a panther was heard near Bare Meadows, Centre County, some nights roaring from the very summit of Bald Top. When calling for their mates they invariably climbed to the highest peaks. This panther was tracked during a light snow fall clear to Stone Valley. Some say that it was killed there. Franklin Shreckengast, of Tylersville, Clinton County, on commenting on the volume of the panther’s cry, said: “If a panther roared on the other side of the Nittany Mountain, all Sugar Valley would be aroused tonight.’ Shreckengast, who is now in his 78th year, hunted panthers with the Askey boys near 44 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 45 Snow Shee, Centre County, during the Civil War. James Lebo. of Lucullus, Lycoming County. tracked two panthers across his fields in February, 1909, They Were traveling in a northeasterly direction. During the summer of that year panther cries were heard at different points aleng the Coudersport pike. which runs past the Lebo home. Across the road from this gentleman's residence is the swale where the mangled body of little Edna Crvder was found in 1896. Pan- ther tracks were observed on the Pike by Dr. Rothrock 11.1913; in Detwiler Hollow, in the Seven Mountains. in the same vear, by several hunters. In November. 1912, three rabbit hunters scared up a panther which was sleeping under the prostrate top of a pine tree. in Detwiler. In November, 1915, several farmers heard panther cries. an one reliable person saw a panther in his barnyard in Logan Valley, near Altoona. Johns- town papers reported a panther as doing much dam- age to deer and other game on Laurel Ridge, in Som- erset County, in the same month. There is probably a panther path leading mto Pennsylvania from the Marvland and West Virginia Mountains. This is proved by the killing of a panther in November, 1913, several miles north of Washingten. D.C. This wan- derer evidently heard or scented the mountain lions at Rocky Creek Park Zoo, lost his bearings, became over- confident and paid the death penalty. The path must lead up the Laurel Ridge to Blue Knob. where it di- verges, one line heading north through Centre County to Potter County, the other northeast along the Bald 46 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. Eagle Mountain to the Tussey Mountains, thence into the Seven Mountains country. Hon. C. K. Sober says that he feels confident that panthers still come into Pennsylvania by these paths. Panthers had a regular crossing from Nittany Valley to the Summit country at Hoppleton, Clinton County; thence across Sugar Valley, and from there south to Treaster Valley, Mif- flin County, where they. bred. Emmanuel Harman, as a boy, encountered panthers on this crossing, while A. D. Karstetter, Postmaster at Loganton, can recall panthers crossing Sugar Valley within the past thirty years. The panther which Wilson Rishel heard on the Sugar Valley Mountain, south of ‘Tylersville, Clinton County, in 1870, was heard the day previously at Lamar, and the day before that in the east end of Nittany Valley, according-to Dr. Jonathan Moyer. Emmanuel Harman heard the same panther the week before in Gottshall Hollow. David Mark, born in 1855, says that panthers were always a rare animal in Sugar Valley, only passing through there at intervals by their regular paths. ‘The Seven Mountains was the last stand of the native panthers in Pennsylvania. Clement F Terlacher camped in Treaster Valley in the summers of 1892 and 1893, as has been stated pre- viously, having heard rumors that the pair of pan- thers which he tracked to the valley were breeding there. As the result he captured four cubs in 1892 and two the following year, but the old ones escaped. He says the old panthers “took on” terribly over the loss of their young. It was probably these unhappy DR. JONATHAN MOYER, Clinton County Physician and a Noted Authority on the Habits of the Pennsylvania Lion. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 47 creatures which Dr. J. T. Rothrock, of West Chester, heard during his visit to this valley in 1893. His description of the panther’s cry, which we give in chap- ter XI, is to natural history what Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech is to oratory; it surely is the pearl without price. Although the good doctor is now in his 78th year, his mastery of diction is unimpaired. One can feel the clear, cold night, with the effulgent moon above all, and see the ragged outline of ithe Seven Mountains silhouetted against the cloudless heavens; one can feel the oppressive stillness uninterrupted by the stirring of a single twig until the panther’s song begins. .A\nd that song, that terrible song, so filled with anguish, a banshee-like song, lamenting the passing of the wilderness, of the brute’s supremacy, the loss of cover, of young, of hope, of life itself threatened. It was both a requiem and a swan-song! Several per- sons claim to have seen panthers in their old haunts on Rock Run, Centre County, during the past five years. A seven foot panther was reported killed dur- ing “deer season,” 1915, near Paddy Mountain, Union County, but the report was later denied. Many per- sons claim to have heard and seen a panther on the Coudersport Pike, near Haneyville, Clinton County, in 1913, 1914 and 1915. Residents of Treaster Valley report having seen panther tracks near the Panther Rocks, in that valley, in 1913 and 1914. Andy Wilson, guide and former game warden, now of Clinton Coun- ty, saw a panther which approached his camp fire in the Seven Mountains in 1885. Hon. Frank B. Black, 48 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. former State Commissioner of Agriculture, and now State Highway Commissioner, was followed by a panther in Somerset County about the same year. In about 1880, Hon. MI. B. Rich, present member of the Pennsylvania Legislature from Clinton County, was followed by a panther on Little Pine Creek, Lycoming County, for a distance of seven miles. H. Hollister, in his “History of the Lackawanna Valley,” tells of being followed eight miles by a panther in 1837, in Wayne County. Hollister was in a buggy at the time, but the “Big Cat" could lope as fast as the horse could gallop. C. E. “Doc” Smith, a veteran Clinton County sportsman and naturalist, saw panther tracks as big as a human hand on Fish Dam Run, in the late seventies, when on a hunting trip with Enoch Hastings. Davie Shaffer, who worked in a lumber camp at the “Switches,” in Clinton County, near the panther’s crossing, heard a panther prowling around the shack one winter night in 1880. Being alone, he built a big fire in front of the cabin, sitting by it until daylight. Charles H. Dyce, a successful lumber jobber, saw a panther on the old Clay Pike which severely frightened his horse Dewey, while returning to his home at Ebensburg from his camp at Belsano, Cambria couniy, on the evening of February 14, 1903. Early in 1914 the carcass of an aged deer was found in the Seven Mountains near Woodward that showed signs of hav- ing been killed and partly eaten by a panther. X. RE-INTRODUCTION: SPORTING POSSIBILITIES. S man becomes more educated, he will shrink A more and more each year from taking the lives of tender, shrinking creatures like squirrels, rabbits and quails. Many will hesitate from destroy- ing gentle-eyed deer or the majestic elk. He will de- mand a quarry worthy of his status as a man, worthy of his high-powered rifle. His mind will turn to larger and more savage beasts, such as the red and black bear and the panther. He will ask the re-introduction of panthers and the adequate protection of bears. The bear has its drawbacks on account of its hibernating habits, its general lack of fighting qualities. He will select the panther as his ideal of the big game animal. The forest areas of Pennsylvania could be stocked with these beasts and a five-year closed season put on them to allow them to multiply. During this time these subtle brutes would be well able to care for themselves. They would feed on old and decrepid deer and elk, sickly fawns, diseased hares and turkeys and in the summer months on myriads of bugs, grubs, ants and worms, and on roots and berries. Once the closed season expired, sport royal would begin. There could be an extra license charged for panther hunting, as the territory and number of beasts being limited, it would not be wise to have the forests overcrowded with hunt- 49 50 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. ers. Dr. C. llart Merriam, in his intensely interesting account of the animals of the Adirondack region, de- seribes panther hunting as it was in the North \Woods thirty years ago. He says: ‘The hunter commonly follows the panther for many days, and sometimes for weeks, before overtaking him, and could never get him were it not for the fact that he remains near the spot where he kills a deer till it is eaten. When the hunter has followed a panther for days, and has, perhaps, nearly come up with him, a heavy snowstorm often sets in and obliterates all signs of the track. lle is then obliged to make wide detours to ascertain in which direction the animal has gone. On these long and tire- some snowshoe tramps he is, of course, obliged to sleep, without shelter, wherever night overtakes him. The heavy walking makes it impossible for him to carry many days’ rations, and when his provision gives out he must strike for some camp or settlement for a new supply. ‘Chis, of course, consumes valuable time and enables the panther to get still further away. When the beast is finally killed the event is celebrated by a feast, for panther meat is not only paltable, but is really fine eating.” What grand, exhilarating, cnnob- ling sport it must have been! As practiced in the Adirondacks, so it was carried on in Pennsylvania in the old days. It is related that Lewis Dorman, a Cen- tre county hunter, followed a panther for nearly two months before he brought it to bay. Dorman, who was a mighty hunter, died on November 28, 1905, and is buried in St. Paul’s Churchyard, near Woodward, in GEORGE SMITH (1827-19C1) A Successful Elk County Panther and Wolf Hunter. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 51 John Penn's Valley. Henry Dorman, of Weikert, Union County, had occasion to carry a strip of bacon to a lumber camp on Cherry Run. It was at dusk, and a panther scenting the bacon, followed him the entire distanee, occasionally howling mournfully. Packs of. panther dogs would soon spring up in the mountainous settlements, and the breeding of these animals would give an impetus to the canine industry in these regions. Small bull dogs are said to be hest for this purpose. though many prefer the ordinary whiffet or “fice.” Aaron Hall, the “Lion Hunter of the Juniata,” slayer of filty panthers in Pennsylvania between 1845 and INGO, bred a race of panther dogs. They were part bull dog, part bloodhound, part Newfoundland, and part mastiff. They were so large that C. K. Sober, of Lewisburg, former State Game Com- mussioner, when on a visit to Hall at his hunt- ing cabin on Rock Run, Centre County, was able to ride on the back of one of them. ‘They were trained to hunt in pairs, and when the quarry was overtaken, to seize it by the ears on either side, holding the monster until the hunter appeared. With Hall's death, in 1892, this interesting breed of dog was al- lowed to become extinct. Old hunters declare there is nothing in the eating line that can equal a (panther roast. It is said to taste like pork, only far more luscious in flavor. The meat is white like chicken, but of more substance. The hams are said to be superior to those of the hog. The panther hides are valuable as rugs, bed-covers and lap robes. The Seneca Indians made bu THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. the skin into pouches, in which they stored their “great medicine.” The claws were used as amulets to signify the Indians’ victory over the forces of evil, panthers being supposed to have kinship to the Machtando or Evil One. Panther oil was an efficacious remedy for gall-stones and rheumatism. Hundreds of hunters— among them Colonel Roosevelt—have been attracted to Routt County, Colorado, by the panther hunting, where these animals are trailed with dogs. Robert J. Collier, a New York society man, headed a party of wealthy hunters into this region in November, 1913, to hunt “Mountain Lions.” Colonel C. J. Jones has provided similar sport for distinguished visitors at his ranch in Arizona, the pastime there being to rope the “var- mints.” l’ennsylvania can have all this and more, if she will but sct about to re-establish the superb sport. In British East Africa, according to .\. Barton Hep- burn, of New York City, lions have been placed on the protected list, the limit being four lions per hunter a season. Why cannot Pennsylvania follow this ex- cellent example and protect the Pennsylvania lion? It is said that an old hunter named Noah Hallman, who spent his last days near the Blue Mountain Amphi- theatre in Northern Derks county, possessed several trained panthers which he used to entice their wild brethren out of the hiding places at the head waters of the Lehigh River. Then the old Nimrod, who was evidently an early prototype of Colonel Jones, would lassoo the panthers and drag them back to his camp in triumph. XI. SUPERSTITIONS. HERE has been a marked tendency with the T latest generation of naturalists to belittle the entire race of felis couguar. Dr. Merriam, great man that he is, commenced it, and Colonel Roosevelt, by his article in “Scribner’s Magazine” in 1901, fired the final gun. W. H. Hudson is the only naturalist who has spoken well of the species. It is the “stvle” to call the panther a coward, like has been done with the African lion. Why? Because he will not attack men. The African lion is said to charge when wounded, but the panther takes his medicine and dies like a gentleman. Dr. Merriam was the first to give popularity to the statement that there is no such thing as a panther cry, that it is all indigestion, imagination, superstitition on the part of the hunters, though in a letter to the author, dated March 24, 1914, this famous naturalist states that he referred solely to the panther of the Adirondacks. It may be pos- sible that the Adirondack panther was a silent animal, but his relative in Pennsylvania was just the contrary. If, after the testimony of fifty hunters and old-timers whom the writer of this article has questioned on the subject are doubted, the following letter from Dr. J. T. Rothrock, founder of the Forestry Commission of Pennsylvania, and a scientist of world-wide repu- tation, should set the matter at rest for all time: 03 54 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. “West Cuestrer, Pa., JAN. 5, 1914. Drar Mr. SIOEMAKER: I have your very kind letter of January 2d. That panther crv—I have often asked myself how I could describe it and failed to satisfy the inquiry, though I think I have at this very minute a somewhat clear remembrance of it. It would not be an adequate reply if I said it sounded like the wail of a child seek- ing something, a cry, distinct, half inquiry and half in temper. ‘There was something human in it, though unmistakably wild, clear and piercing. And yet I do not know how to make a more satisfactory reply, ex- cept to say that the cry seemed to be in all its tones about a minute long. I heard it one evening in Treas- ter Valley repeated so often that I could recognize it as coming from an animal moving along the rocky slope of the mountain where no child could have been at that hour, and was told by those residents in the region, ‘Oh, it’s the painter's cry” It did not seem to be unusual to them. ‘That was about twenty years ago. Cordially yours, (Signed) J. T. Roritrock.” Joseph H. Taylor, an able western writer on sport- ing topics, accurately describes the panther’s cry which he heard during a flood at Lake Mandan, North Dakota, in March, 1880. E. H. DICKINSON (1810-1885) A Pioneer Panther and Wolf Hunter of McKean County. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 55 C. W Dickinson says: “A great many writers claim that a panther does not scream or make any noise. They might as well try to make me believe that a pack of wolves could not howl or bark, growl or whine.” Dickinson heard the panther cry at the head of the Driftwood branch of the Sinnemahoning when camping with his father, E. H. Dickinson, in the summer of 1872. He says it was “a loud, shrill, scream.” He saw the last panther tracks on the Drift- wood branch in January of the same year, while on a hunting trip with his father. But there are real super- stitions of the painter—as most of the early settlers called it. It was said to have a very definite spirit, which came back and haunted familiar scenes after it had met with an unnatural death. A hunter in Cen- treville, Snyder county, in 1864, killed a large male panther, stuffed it and mounted it on the ridge-pole of his wood-house. One night the mate came after it, and springing on the roof, pushed the effigy into the yard. She carried it back to Jack’s Mountain, where many persons averred it came to life again. In the White Mountains, not far from Troxelville, Snyder county, a panther was killed and its hide put into an attic to cure. Strange noises were heard, and the skin mounted on a carpenter’s trestle was met with in the woods at night. A witch doctor hit the horrid manikin with a silver bullet, after which it gave no further trouble. Among the superstitious the Dorman panther was said to leave its case in the Natural His- tory Museum on the top floor of the old Academy 56 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. building at New Berlin on All Souls’ Night and scam- per about the big room after mice. It is now out of ghostly surroundings in the handsome new museum at Albright College, Myerstown, Lebanon County, having been taken there about 1905. Seneca Indians believed that the spirits of tyrants and unfaithful queens passed into panthers. ‘They were hunted speci- fically for this and other before-mentioned reasons, having as little peace in animal form as in their human incarnations. Early German pionegrs said that the panther’s hide glowed like “fox-fire at night and green lights burned from the eyes.” It was held to be good luck to be followed by a panther. It meant that outside forces were seeking the evil in the person followed, that it would soon be drawn away. Prof. E. Emmons, of Williams College, says in his Report on the Quadrupeds of Massachusetts: ‘The panther will not venture to attack man, yet it will fol- low his tracks a great distance; if it is near evening it frequently utters a scream which can be heard for miles.” Some of the first Scotch-Irish frontiersmen regarded the panther’s wailing as foretelling a death in the family. It was the “token” or “Banshee” of these sturdy souls. Samuel Stradley, a well-known hunter residing on the Tiadaghton or Pine Creek, in Lycoming County, while watching for deer at a cross- ing in 1870, fell asleep in the forest. When he awoke he found himself covered with leaves. Crawling out he sat perfectly still until he was rewarded by seeing a huge panther come up, which he shot. It had evi- THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. a7 dently thought him dead, and buried him in leaves to be eaten on some future occasion. Michael Fetzer, born 1834, an old hunter residing near Yarnell, Cen- tre County, recounts that when he was a boy a panther once came to the kitchen window of the Reese home- stead and looked in at the family assembled around the supper table. He was soon chased away by the dogs and disappeared in the forest at the foot of In- dian Grave Hill. Franklin Shreckengast describes panthers concealed in the forest grinding their teeth and snarling while Tom Askey and he cleaned a deer at a big spring near Snow Shoe. He said that it was a disconcerting sound, to say the least. This oc- cured during the Civil War early one evening. ‘The last panther in the Snow Shoe region of Centre coun- tv—the great abode of these beasts in early days—was killed on Rock Run in 1886, by Charles Stewart, of Kylertown, Clearfield county, who collected a bounty on its scalp at Bellefonte. XII. TENTATIVE LIST OF PANTHERS KILLED IN PENNSYLVANIA SINCE 1860. County. Date. | Hunter, | | Northumberland. | Ded phcis OR PND coctanyneonn 1860 John D. DeShay. xClinton........... as Tavis teh acaba 1860|Philip Shreckengast. Somerset ccs cmc s | jake sah where atevebshere.y 1860 ClintOnnsii se canca's Cub wsezors 1860 Northumberland...) ...,........... 1861 Bia dho nesta deus, | mec xennanracconieens 1860!Post Wilcox. AGENCIES osamscasanell gesidayg se eeverny 1861 Tom Askey. WaFREIs 2 caanicags | aston tenis 1860 Jesse Logan. Snyder........... March, 1864|Jake Sampsel. Snyder ccc ae sarc | ees ee eraaseas 18be aires Boyer. SNYCE Pie esate siete. | india es vtelare re 1862 Faires Boyer. Warren.......... December, 1863 Sylvester Cc. Williams. GHNEON g.si55 0 ecvases _ December, 1863 John English. Clinton.cc. ss eeecs December, 1863 John English. Eel Kistekecn asrsyatetay sfpstayahal | heen -qanciiors “sitin aageras 1863 George Smith. A WAYNE: cess yscam | sree oreaiwn ce 1867 Thomas Anson. Centre............ December 24, 1868) Lewis Dorman. Getresid sc ccssieveseartita,| samen eek nace 1875) Will:am Perry. SYA Or Gs sandanieaaye:| a nalsormc wenaicehe a 1869 Dan Treaster. Mifflits cacao 2 ences February 27, 1872 John Swartzell. Lycoming........ January, 1865 George Shover. Clear Tiel disca.cc0i cel) Maas sree ve 1870/Seth Iredell Nelson. CLC ARTICLE A ising a reties deus] a djaaupyrmnignenane ssp 1871/Seth Iredell Nelson. Clear tildeces cst) ks eoxs erenow sae 1872/Seth Iredell Nelson. WET EPSON wcisccssed- sei | a pieubedad Sosseretoece oi 1872, Andy Jackson Long. Clear tiel dissec ccanci saa eas aw Reeoan 1873 Seth Iredell Nelson. Biattizgnigcicigese padin [Meaney iia diene ae 1873|Solomon Boos. Center cers eereey, December 30, 1871)/George G. Hastings. Centre..........., December 31, 1871)George G. Hastings. Snyder........... November 21, 1878\Faires Boyer. BORK Stina ciate acon grens August 4, 1874, Thomas Anson, x McKean.......... January 1, 1860) J. Eastman. x Susquehanna..... December 15, 1874;Sam Odin. XCAMBMantass cca wee eres ceed oe 1875) Jacob Kauffman. Susquehanna..... |) .....c cece ee eee 1867;Sam Odin. = “BILL”? LONG, Born in Berks County, 1790, Died in Clearfield County, 1880, “The King Hunter’ of the Pennsylvania Big Game Fields. THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 59 County. Date. | Hunter. I KM SUNWIVAEN s sere feasee vincesliecialaiovoc eve ‘ineeais 1873'Ben Landis. Lycoming........ | .... eee e eee 1870|S. S. Stradley. Clearfield ss sioses) asic weWaee tans 1880)/Clement F. Herlacher. Clearfield.........) .......- eae 1880/Clement F. Herlacher. IM TRPUTN ahs eo eevee el Souexis pectispese. a Baud 1875|John Treaster. Lewis Orr. John Reager and William Dellett. Mifflin. ........... January 1, 1882|John Swartzell. Centre..........-6 000, seceeeeees 1860/Aaron Hall. 1861/Aaron Hall. 1862/Aaron Hall. 1863/Aaron Hall. 1864)Aaron Hall. 1865/Aaron Hall. 1866/Aaron Hall. 1868)Aaron Hall. 1869]/Aaron Hall. 1885|John Lucas. 1886|Charles Stewart. Clearfield......... Fv Gaiuart one seeeeese 1888/Seth Iredell Nelson, Clearfield......... ) untae reece ... 1888/Seth Iredell Nelson. Clearfield. ise sems pease scorers weee. 1891/Seth Iredell Nelson. Clearfield......... Tree eaeneae gee 1891/Seth Iredell Nelson. GCONWe nse cceuree sl hisparaiuaas abestseyer ons + 1893)James Moore. Mifflin. ........... (4 Cubs)..... 1892)Clement F. Herlacher. Mifflin. ........... (2 Cubs)... .«, 1893|Clement F. Herlacher. x Clearfield. . ccccess | says cacwves caw + 1904 Clearfield......... | aeastentanereireicen asta 1905 ® CINtOMNs «acces ce cc leebruary, 1905 x Huntingdon...... aii 1911/James Wilson and Joseph Emig. xX Mifflin.........005 (1 cub, Oct, 1916/J. L. Goss. SC MFR sess ssi e < oc December 6, 1916|Jacob Auman. TO Gal schsie. a Sacyere Wid Revere athens, oe kieis a auciautgle aly aida setae SRE SS 88 a—Name of hunter unconfirmed. x—Unconfirmed. *—Doubtful newspaper report. Note—Cameron, Clarion, Potter, Tioga, etc., probable pan- ther counties, not heard from. XI. ODE TO A STUFFED PANTHER. (‘These lines were written upon seeing the effigy of the Dorman panther in the Natural History Museum of Albright College, Myerstown, Lebanon County, on November 6, 1912.) At twilight when the shadows flit, Within the ancient museum I sit, Gazing through the dust-encrusted glass. (While hosts of savage memories pass) At your effigy, ludicrously stuffed. The fulvous color faded, the paws all puffed, And bullet-holes in jowl and side Tell where your life blocd ebbed like some red tide; A streak of light—the last of day— Gleams through a window on your muzzle gray, And lights your glassy eyes with garnet fire. You aimost stir those orbs in fretful ire Which gape into the sunset’s dying flame Towards the wild mountains whence you came; Revives old images which dormant lie— Outside the wind ig raising to a sigh Like oft you voiced in the primeval wood. In your life’s pilgrimage, I’d trace it if I could In white pine forests, tops trembling in the breeze Like restless sable-colored seas, Beneath, in rhododendron thickets high, You crouched until your prey came by. Grouse, or sickly fawn, or, even fisher-fox You rent, and then slunk back into the rocks, And on cold wintry nights, lit by the cloud-swept moon Your wailing to the music of the spheres atune, 60 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 61 Rose to a roar which echoed over all, Beside which wolves’ lamenting to a treble fall; And through the snows your mate so slim draws nigh Noiselessly, with strange love-light in her eye You lick her coat, and stroke her with your tail, Whispering a love-song weirdsome as the gale, You leave her with a last long fond caress Adown the glen you go in stealthiness, A loud report! another! how you leap; With a resounding thud into the snow you fall asleep. Your blood-stained hide the hunter bears away, The virile emblem of an ampler day. The golden eagle picks your carcass dry, Wild morning glories trellice on your ribs awry. Your meaning is a deep one—while your kind live men shall rule. There will be les's of weakling, runt or fool, No enervation will our rugged courage sap. We will not dawdle on plump luxury’s lap, But as your race declines, so dwindles man. The painted cheek replaces coat of tan, And marble halls, and beds of cloth of gold Succeed the log-cabins of the days of old; When the last panther falls then woe betide, Nature’s retributive cataclysm is at our side, Our boasted civilization then will be no more, Fresh forms must come from out the Celestial Store. LEWIS DORMAN, The Famous Panther Slayer of Shreiner Mountain, Centre County. ——— Wolf Days In Pennsylvania (REVISED EDITION) Ow allez-vous, lowves et loureteaux ? Nous allons dans ces plaines et dans ces vallons. Quy allez-vous faire? Nous allons chercher les brebis egarees pour leur sucer le sany et manger leur chair. Je vous defends, au nom du grand Dien vivant, de faire plus de mal a ces betes egarees que la sainte Vierge ne’en a fait a son enfant. Saint Brive aveugle les loups; saint Jehan leur casse les dents et saint Georges leur serre la gueule. —Ardennes Tradition. INDEX Chapter Pages To) Preface giciencd) aude Senta al ata leees 5- 8 Il. The Last Wolf—Who Gets the Credit 9- 18 WT SRE GASt* PAC. chao as 2 tee oe tae 19- 22 IV. Three Kinds of Wolves............. 23- 31 \. Description and Habits.......... wo. B2- 42 VI. Former Prevaience ................ 43- 53 VII. The Biggest Wolf............. sees Ste BY VU. A White Wolf in Sugar Valley...... 58- 60 IX. Cause of Extinction.......... 0 ..... 61- 65 X. Wolf Hunting in Pennsylvania....... 66- 86 XI. Possible Re-Introduction ........... 87- 95 NUIT. Superstitions: wok aieiaiwdna eae es 96-111 XIII. Bravest of the Brave............... 112-116 XIV Catching Wolves With Fish Hooks. ..117-126 NVA. eistontal Data cece oe hs cea bes 127-128 feeen, Bay) 51 Cod 1 om Py vivo | 1 wat Ss we ~ ais Panther Killed by Lewis Dorman on Shreiner Mountain, Christmas Eve, 1868. I. PREFACE. wolf can be written at all the animal must be described from an entirely different point of view, else it would be superfluous. Happily the author feels that there is a side, an important one, to the wolfish character, which has been overlooked or per- verted. It is a side decidedly favorable to the animal, to its inherent right to live, to be protected by man- kind. The wolf of Pennsylvania accomplished much more good than harm. At the time when the Indians ranged the Continent and Nature’s balance was per- ‘fect, the wolf played an important role. With the panther it preyed upon the weak and sickly wild ani- mals and birds, preventing the perpetuation of imper- fect types and the spread of pestilences. It kept up a high standard of excellence among the lesser creatures, was the great preserver of type and perfection. Wolves having no animals to prey on them killed the sick and weakly specimens of their own race, thereby keeping up the standard of strength and virility. Charles John Andersson, in his remarkable book, ‘The Lion and the Elephant,” in speaking of the lions of Central Africa said: “Destroy them and the hoofed animals would perish in masses of inanition.’”’ In ad- dition wolves devoured bugs, insects, grubs and worms of an injurious nature. When the white man ap- peared on the scene and began killing all living things chess a new book treating on the much-discussed 5 6 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. indiscriminately, the food supply of the wolves was affected. ‘The wolfish diet required meat, and this at times became unobtainable. Crazed with hunger the wolves attacked calves, pigs and sheep, which slow of motion and easily captured, occupied the same relative position to them as had the formerly abund- ant weak and imperfect deer, elk, rabbits and hares. Just as some otherwise harmless men commit murder when crazed by lack of food, the wolves played havoc in farm yards that otherwise they would have left un- molested. But most of the sheep killed by “wolves” were slain by half-wild, vicious dogs. There are fewer sheep in Pennsylvania today than when there were wolves. What is needed is an efficient dog law.” As the result, bounties were put on the wolves, they \vere hunted unmercifully. Now comes the hue and cry that “bears are killing sheep.” Again the dogs are the real and only culprits. Wolves were also useful forest scavengers, cleaning up the neighborhoods of camps and hunters’ shambles. E. H. Forbush, the famous State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, has said: “When I first found wolves feeding on berries I was surprised. It is probable that no land mammal is strictly carniverous.” No person stopped to reason if the wolf had a useful purpose in the world—man deliberately acted as if the Wise Maker had erred in creating such animals. All living things have a pur- pose; it would be a loss to the world if even the com- mon house flies were completely exterminated. It is an over-production of any one species of things that WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 7 carries the germ of trouble. Consequently the panther and the wolf were regulated in numbers; by the supply of aged and weakly elk and deer; the Indian, sworn foe of the panther, helped to keep the “Pennsylvania Lion” within bounds—but there was no warfare of extermination until the white man came. Most of the early hunters came of peasant stock, unused to carry- ing firearms in the old country, and with deeply rooted feelings against private parks which preserved game. Once loosed in a new continent, given arms and freedom, they set out to slaughter everything in sight. They wanted excuses for wholesale killing; the wolves’ alleged thefts of calves, pigs and sheep gave it to them. If they had killed less of the wolves’ food supply no farm stock would have been taken. When the last wolf was gone it was found that just as many sheep were killed, revealing the dogs as the real mis- creants. Wolves were blamed for “running” deer; the wolves are gone, but deer are being run to death daily by dogs in the Pennsylvania mountains. In Africa the same horrible story is being re-enacted. The zebras break down wire fences, they must go; the rhinosceroses frighten the oxen, they must go; the hippos are dangerous to navigation, they must go; the elephants trample the grain fields, they must go; the giraffes knock down the telegraph wires, they must go; the lions are bloodthirsty, they must go, and so on, every animal is marked for extermination by the rapacious settlers. And only too often the powers that be sitting in London, Paris or Berlin acquiesce s : WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. unwittingly to the slaughter and “abrogate the game law.” The early settlers of America were unhampered by game laws, their blood lust knew no bounds. The wolves were starved into criminal acts, and then pun- ished for them. Now after the wolves are gone a more discriminating generation looks over the scene dispas- sionately and notes that nothing has been gained by their extirpation. In Scotland when wolves and other. predatory creatures abounded no one ever héard of “erouse’ disease or “rabbit” disease; the ibex and chamois in Switzerland deteriorated after the wolves disappeared. ‘The ibex exists in Italy where there are wolves, and as long as there are wolves there will be ibexes. In Africa buffaloes and certain antelopes diminish as the lions are killed off. The rinderpest rages in regions where there are no longer any lions, leopards or cheetahs. In Pennsylvania the harm done by the destruction of wolves has been appaling. First of all the increase in insect pests. These were practi- cally unknown when panthers, wolves lynxes and foxes were prevalent. Secondly, the race of deer has de- teriorated., the larger variety Odocoileus Americanus Borealis Aliller is completely extinct. The race of deer is only kept up by frequent introduction of speci- mens from Western States where there are wolves. ‘The grouse are getting scarcer, despite “man-made” game laws: disease ravages them every few seasons. The big hares are nearly gone, rabbits not what they were, the quail are frail; sickly specimens breed now; formerly the “predatory creatures’ prevented that. GRAVE OF LEWIS DORMAN. St. Paul’s Churchyard, Near Woodward, Centre County. Il. THE LAST WOLF—WHO GETS THE CREDIT? ROM the mass of data and the number of claim- F ants it is indeed difficult to award the palm for the slayer of the last wolf in Pennsylvania. In the first place. in order to eliminate a few of the strivers for the coveted title, slayers of wolves which have wandered in from other states must be counted out. This will rule out the celebrated “Beaver Dam Wolf” which was killed in Portage Township, near the borders of Blair and Cambria Counties, by Jacob Royer and Samuel Long, farmers of Turkey Valley. in May, 1907. This animal, which weighed, according to a correspondent in the Altoona Tribune, nearly eighty-five pounds and measured almost six feet from tip to tip, was evidently a stray. Its carcass was pur- chased by Mr. W. E. C. Todd, Assistant Curator of Mammals of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg. This will also rule out a huge grey wolf killed by that vet- eran hunter, “Old John” Queer, in Somerset County, in 1897; four wolves, evidently escaped from some trav- eling circus, slain in Lackawanna County in 1596; a New York State wolf, also probably escaped from some zoo, killed by Daniel Rutan in Wayne County in 18st, and a wolf killed by Levi Kissinger in Tioga County in 1885. With these doubtful cases out of the way, the field is clear for an impartial judgment. Seth 9 10 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA Iredell Nelson killed two wolves in Clearfield County in February and March, 1892; they were native brown wolves and the last remnant of the big packs which for years infested the Divide Region. Mr. Nelson was in his 83rd year at that time, hence he can be called the oldest wolf slayer that Pennsylvania has produced. Capt. A. A. Clay, of Ridgway, Elk County, hunting crony of Col. Roosevelt and an all around sportsman, states that a native wolf was killed in Elk County in 1891. No name is given as to who killed this animal in Rhoads’ ‘Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jer- sey.” It is said that another wolf was killed by a deer hunter in Elk County in 1887. John Razey, a re- spected citizen of Sunderlinville, killed a wolf in Potter County in 1890, and received a bounty from the County Commissioners. On September 6th of the same year Fremont Gage, of Sweden Valley, killed another wolf in Potter County. The year 1886 was prolific in kills of native wolves. Dan Treaster, “the Daniel Boone of the Seven Mountains,” killed a mag- nificent black wolf in Treaster Valley, formerly Black Wolf Valley, Mifflin County, and George Sizer killed a grey wolf on Potato Creek, in McKean County. Dan Long killed the last wolf in the Blue Mountains in 1886 in Shubert’s Gap, as the bounty records of Berks County for that year will show. In 1888 Charles Ives and Theodore Pierce, two boys, killed a lame grey wolf on Kinzua Creek, McKean County. It had escaped from one of C. W. Dickinson’s traps a few seasons before. In 1885 Dan Treaster killed two WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 11 black wolves in Treaster Valley. In 1884 Emmanuel Dobson killed the last wolf in Forest County. In that year Seth Iredell Nelson killed five brown wolves in Clearfield County. Andy Long killed the last two wolves in Jefferson County in 1881. Jake Hamersley, of North Point, killéd the last wolf in Clinton County about 1877. In February, 1913, there was a “wolf scare” in Horse Valley, not far from Chambersburg, which resulted in the killing of two peculiar looking dogs, which had evidently adapted themselves to forest life and running deer. The hide of the male hangs in the study of the writer of this article. It is a pasty grey in color. The hide of the bitch, which is now in the possession of M. W. Straley, Chambers; burg, is said to be darker. A wolf was reported as seen at Mackeyville, Clinton County, in “deer season,” 1914. An escaped coyote killed by A. B. Winchester in Clinton County in December, 1915; another shot by Amos Saxton in the same county in November, 1916, gave rise to many sensational “wolf” stories which went the rounds of the newspapers. Judge Harvey W. Whitehead, of Williamsport, reported that two wolves or coyotes were tracked in his game preserve on Larry’s Creek, Lycoming County, in February, 1916. Game wardens reported to the redoubtable Hr. Kalbfus that “large grey foxes” or wolves were running deer on certain mountains in Centre County in the fall of 1915. A coyote was reported killed near Farrands- ville, Clinton County, in January, 1916. Centre County newspapers in April, 1916, told of a wolf which fright- 12 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. ened farmers and howled from the top of the moun- tain near Jacksonville Gap, in that county. Doubtless there are records of other wolves killed or seen in re- cent years, but up to the time of the preparation of this treatise they have not come to light. It is certain that wolves were killed in the Seven Mountains after 18x86, in the Clearfield region between 1884 and 1892, and in Potter County within a year or two of 1890. From the data available it would seem that Seth Ire- dell Nelson is the slayer of the last native wolves, in addition to being the oldest wolf killer. The Elk County wolf of 1891 is next in order, but the pity of it is that the hunter's name is unknown. It is hoped that the party in question will read this article and come forward. If the persons to whom the last bona- fide bounty were paid deserve the title, then John Razey and Fremont Gage, who killed the wolves in Potter County, are the heroes of the exploit, and fit to rank with MacQueen, of Pall-a-Chrocain, who killed the last wolf in Scotland, and Rory Carragh, who in the Tyrone mountains slew the last Irish wolf. The personalities of John Razey and Fremont Gage should be better known and should be given a chance to wear their laurels in that immortal coterie of Penn- sylvania wolf hunters which includes such names as Dan Treaster, Seth Iredell Nelson, Samuel Quinn, of Quinn's Run, who killed four wolves with a single bullet; C. \W Dickinson, who caught wolves with fish hooks ; Samuel Askey, LeRoy Lyman, Philip Shrecken- gast and David Zimmerman, who droves the wolves out SETH IREDELL NELSON (1809-1905) Who Killed a Wolf in Clearfield County When He Was in His 83d Year. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 13 of Eastern Sugar Valley. There is plenty of glory, and an admiring posterity; there can be no prouder title than slayer of the last native wolf in Pennsylvania. Let us hail the names of Nelson, Dickinson, Lyman, Shreckengast, Askey and the rest as heroes of the chase! Among famous Pennsylvania wolfers Bill Long, born near Reading, Berks County, in 1790, and died at Hickory Kingdom, Clearfield County, in May, 1880, is pre-eminent. During his career in the wilds of Clear- field and Jefferson Counties he killed two thousand wolves. In 1835 he had five wolf dens which he vis- ited annually for pups. From one den he abstracted pups five years in succession, as the mother wolves persisted in returning to the same localities. His son, Andy Jackson Long, born in 1829, and died in 1900, killed one hundred and fifty wolves, the last two in 1881. George Smith, a Jefferson County hunter, born in 1827, died in 1901, killed five hundred wolves in the Pennsylvania forests. Le Roy Lyman, born in 1821, gored to death by a bull in 1886, was famed as the greatest wolf hunter in Potter County. His son, Milo Lyman, states that his father killed three hundred wolves in Pennsylvania, mostly between the years 1852 and 1865. Samuel Askey in Centre County killed 98 wolves, Philip Shreckengast in Clinton County killed 93 wolves. Wolves in Elk County were prevalent as late as the seventies. P. C. Hockenbery, the well- known photographer of Warren, relates that his mother and self were followed by wolves on Mill i WOLM DAYH EN PIUNNEVIEVANIA, Creek an P3690 Me hast wolves ia Ph County, on whieh bounties, were paid, are recorded in De. Wood, Michaelis “Proneer Othe Phstary of Northwest er Perneylvanie’ ais Follows J. 2 Geen, New 4, PRUE, ones J. Pennett, Ji, Get ve, fara, ones AL | Kitnmer, Dec PS) Tad ones f. RL Cieen, Gu tober, P81, ones Jolin Myers, Dee, Th PRE ones Crorpe ornith, Aprib 8, EXT E, two; Claates A, Brown, Der, Ua TEN, ones OB Patel December, FAT) one anes Tevin coflected the bist wolk bounty au Warren Comnty i becg. fn PR6S several wolves were balled by the Maddy boys, Seneca Tnduae, ou the Comnplanites Recervation, i Warren County. Wolves were pleat Pilon Comphinter’s Reservation snd om kanzua Creek whites P6700 Tadivue balled the Tit wolves an Wau ren County in the Tate sisties, Dat there is no record ol then daiveng collected: any bornties on the seatpe. pin Jacobs, the old Seneca elk Temifer, wits couspretats annene fhe redimen who ditnated the fast wolves an Warren and Meloean Counties, According: Lo cote authentic this iaphity Niniod was halled by a tian neat Padford ay TRRO, althboupl fol Cl Prench, of Roulette, Potter County, decbures (hat die caw Ta on fhe Ceneca Reservation, alive ane well ta Gepfenibed, PBB OG Ch ai apparition wold not cunprine the Foci, who finty believed da posta, General Pehert t, Viele, Civil War hero aa proneer of Me Foewn Connty oil fields, purchased two female wolves Frome CNV Die hineon, of Plorwiely Chat eonmby, as os nae. fo tis ewtate on Piversede Duaive, blew York WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 15 City, in May, 1872. He commissioned the hunter to catch him a male wolf, but Mr. Dickinson was unable to locate one that season. Later in the year the Gen- eral wrote that he wanted no male wolf, as the two he had “played hob” about his premises, so much so that they had to be killed. Harrison Lyman, of Potter County, kept a live wolf nearly three years, but it killed so much poultry that he slaughtered it. J. W. Stark and LeRoy Lyman, of the same County, caught five wolves in 1867 which they kept for nearly three years, finally executing them for killing poultry and sheep. The Bradford Star-Record has this to say concern- ing the last wolf: “Charles Ives, of Lewis Run, an oil well pump- er, while making no such claim himself, is be- lieved to have been the last Pennsylvanian to have shot a native timber wolf in this state. “A few days ago the Star-Record made known the fact that so far as history records the last wolf of that kind was killed on Kinzua Creek by two Bradford boys in 1886, and we asked for infor- mation which would lead to the identity of the lads whose names were desired by Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker, a noted author of Pennsylvania mountain and forest tales and history. “\ number of people directed us to Mr. Ives as one of the two hunters who made the not- able record. “A Star-Record reporter called Mr. Ives by tele- phone last evening. He said that in 1888, two years after Colonel Shoemaker names, he and Theodore Pierce, of Lewis Run, started out in the fall deer hunting. ‘They passed over the hill to 16 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. Mt. Alton, and there they learned that a wolf had been seen on Marvin Run, a tributary to Kinzua Creek, so they started out after the wolf. This wolf had been seen by different people in the woods during the year previous. It was reported to be a big one, but no one who was armed had got near enough to it to take a shot at it. Ives, who was about 24 years old at the time, and Pierce, also a young man, made their way over to the section where the wolf had last been seen. ‘The big fellow appeared and before he could get away Ives got a shot at him and made short work of the animal’s existence. It was a female. “Nr. Ives says the pelt measured 7 feet 4 inches in length from tip to tip. “Tn 1880 Mr. Ives shot an animal at Lewis Run which he always considered a coyote, but which other hunters declared was a wolf. There was no question about the species of the animal killed on the Kinzua, however.” A pack of ‘wandering wolves, a dozen in number, came to the edge of the clearing at the back of the home of the great wolf hunter, Aaron Hall, near Unionville, Centre County, one winter night in 1880. They set up a terrific howling which the dogs could not silence. They came so close that their flaming eyes could be seen by Mr. Hall and his sons from where they stood on the back porch. After several shots were fired at them they disappeared in the direc- tion of the big Alleghany Mountain. A black wolf followed Andrew Hironimus out of Poe Valley one night in February, 1863. He could hear its tread in the frozen snow a few feet back of him but it made ~ ISSN < e . DICKINSON, the Greatest Living Pennsylvania Wolf Hunter. Ww. c Of McKean County, WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 17 no effort to molest him. That same winter Jonas J. Barnet, born in 1838, who resides at Weikert, Union County, often heard wolves tonguing deer at night in Poe Valley, where he was engaged in getting out logs. J. D. Eckel, surveyor of Green Township, Clinton County, relates how his father, the late J. L. Eckel, told him of finding a wolf’s track up the moun- tain side at McCall’s Dam. A little further on it was joined by a second wolf, which had come up from the valley, later on by a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, until a score of wolves had joined the lead- er on the mountain top, showing that the animals trav- eled with military precision, coming together after the night’s forays at previously arranged stations. J. F. Knepley, of Jersey Shore Junction, states that his father, Christian Knepley, the first mail carrier on the Pike between Jersey Shore and Coudersport, often re- lated how the wolves used to run ahead of his horse like hunting dogs. The wolves had a regular crossing in eastern Sugar Valley, their path being in the hollow between the Samuel Brown and John Womeldorf homesteads. Mrs. Sophia Schwenk, nee Brown, re- lates how as a school girl she was not allowed to go to school—she had to cross the wolf’s path to reach the school house—on days when these animals were per- forming their migrations. That was about 1860, when the region about the Brown homestead was a dense: forest of original white pines and hemlocks. W. H. Franck, of Eastville, grandson of Jacob Franck, the famous Sugar Valley wolf and bear hunter, re- 18 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. lates that up to 1860 the wolves had a crossing in the west end of the valley near Logan Mills. A third path was near Summer Creek, not far from the heart of the present town of Loganton; it was used by the wolves as late as 1857, in their journeys to and from the White Deer watershed. John Womeldorf relates that packs of wolves used to run along the summits of the mountains on the northerly side of Sugar Val- ley on winter evenings howling at the farmers en- gaged in their “night milking” in the barnyards ia the valley below. Many farmers favored firing the mountains to destroy their cover. SES NIRS = ee — aa “4 ws. : Yee 8 pe a eae) Baa Him FEF oe Se Ill. THE LAST PACK. S long ago as 1835 the packs of wolves in Central Pennsylvania showed signs of diminishing. In the spring of that year the bodies of twenty wolves were found in a gulley on Shade Mountain, not far from Swinefordstown, after the snow had melted. ‘The poor animals, weakened from lack of food, had huddled together for mutual protection, been engulfed in a snowbank and perished. Hunting parties, trap- pers and poisoners wiped out a dozen packs in the Juniata, Seven Mountains, Snow Shoe and Black For- est regions between 1835 and 1860. At the time of the first settlers packs of 500 were common; during the first half of the nineteenth century a pack contain- ing fifty was considered a rarity. After 1850, a pack of twenty was considered unusual. Dr. W. J. Mc- Knight, of Brookville, Jefferson County, says: “In the middle of the last century large packs of wolves roamed a greater part of the state.’ Edwin Grimes, of Roulette, Potter County, born in 1830, tells of packs of thirty and forty wolves surrounding his hunting camp near Buttsville, \IcKean County, in 1847, and subsequent years. ‘hey were so plentiful that Grimes never bothered to skin the wolves he shot. In the Divide Region of Clearfield County three packs, all of about twenty individuals, lingered on until after 1880. John Kearns, now .of Lock Haven, 19 20 ‘ WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. Clinton County, states that these wolves destroyed many deer “crusted” in the snow near Pen- field, about 1870. In the Seven Mountains only one pack survived—the celebrated Black Avengers, as they were called by some, or the Schwartzegeist by others. This pack always contained twenty black wolves and held its numbers until after 1880, It made its headquarters in Treaster Valley, Mifflin County, but ranged through the entire Seven Mountains coun- try. There is no record that they ever did any great amount of damage to live stock or game, although Dr. J.T. Rothrock says that they were one of the causes for the scarcity of deer in Treaster Valley. Very few of them were ever captured by hunters or trappers. Dan Treaster, of Treaster Valley, trapped a few each winter, but followed the old Indian policy of keeping the breeding stock alive. Forest fires and lumbering, as well as diminishment of food supply after the Seven Mountains became a noted hunters’ rendezvous caused their numbers to grow less. Clem Herlacher, who camped in Treaster Valley in 1892 and, 1893, savs that the pack numbered about a dozen during those years. In 1898 the beds of thirteen wolves were discovered by fishermen in Detwiler Hollow, in the Seven Aloun- tains, evidently this same pack of “black boys.’ In February, 1902, George Grenoble was followed by three black wolves in a wood between Millheim and -Aaronsburg, in Penn's Valley. Wolves singly and in pairs were tracked in the Seven Mountains during the winters of 1903, 1904 and 1905. P. EF. Conser, a MIill- DANIEL OTT (1820-1916) The Veteran Hunter of Snyder County, Who Killed the Last Wolves in the Susquehanna Valley. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 21 heim farmer, was working in one of his fields with his son Harry in March, 1908S, when they saw a black wolf trotting along in a southerly direction, evidently head- ed for the Seven Mountains. This gave rise to the story that the wolves were returning to the Seven Mountains. It is said that wolves howled in Treaster Valley and High Valley during the spring of 1908. It is claimed that wolf tracks were noticed in the Bare Meadows in the winter of 1909. But that is the last heard of the Black Avengers. A pack of Centre County grey wolves was reduced in numbers. by Samuel Askey, of Snow Shoe, who killed ninety-eight between 1820 and 1845. A pack of brown wolves hung on in the Buffalo Mountain Country, and ranged up to the White Deer Mountains until April, 1853. Fam- ished, they attacked some dogs belonging to a raft moored at the foot of Bald Eagle Mountain, near Muncy, but most of them were shot by raftsmen. That was the last heard of the pack, which was undoubtedly the last pack in that part of Pennsylvania. Charles and James Huff, of White Deer, Union County, chased grey wolves in the White Deer Mountains in 1875. The three packs of brown wolves in Clearfield County were harassed by trappers, most of them being killed by Seth Iredell Nelson and his associates. By 1890 they were reduced to three or four scattering individuals. There was a big pack of grey wolves in McKean County during the first half of the nineteenth century. At times it numbered a hundred animals, old and young. Settlements along the Alleghany divided it, 29 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. and part ranged into Potter County. The bulk of the McKean County aggregation were slain or scattered by C. W Dickinson, formerly of Norwich, but the remnant were killed after 1886 on Potato Creek and Kinzua Creek. The last of the Potter County band were killed by John Razey, of Sunderlinville, and Fre- mont Gage, of Sweden Hill, in 1890, who collected the bounty on their scalps. However, C. \W. Dickinson claims, with good reason, in Chapter VIII, that the Razey “wolf” was Col. Parker’s escaped coyote. ‘Ihe grey wolf which followed the last elk killed by Jim Jacobson, a half breed hunter, in Potter County, No- vember, 1875, was shot a few weeks later by Le Roy Lyman. ‘There was a pack of grey wolves in Blair and Cambria County, which ranged into other more south- erly counties. and another pack of grey wolves in Som- erset County, which inhabited Laurel Ridge. These packs were being constantly reinforced by starving animals from West Virginia, C. E. Connelly, the his- torian, states that he heard wolves howling in the for- est at night in West Virginia, between Buffalo Creek and the Gauley River, in September, 1902. The almost total destruction by hunters of deer, wild turkeys, ground-hogs and rabbits in the mountains of Southern Pennsylvania, caused the breaking up of these wolfish companies, perhaps forever. S$. N. Rhoads mentions a school master, “somewhere in the Seven Mountains,” being attacked by a pack of wolves about 1898. Lucky pedagogue to have had such an experience in this empty day! IV. THREE KINDS OF WOLVES. Yois certain that there were three kinds of wolves | m Vennsylvania, althongh they may have been color phases of one species, cats mlericains nudicus. Tlis night stand as a tact were it not that there was a difference in localities inhabited by the several varieties, While there may have been cases Where black welves whelped grey or brawn pups. and MVersely, vet The concensus of opinion of the old hunt- ers, and it ts on their observations trac tus beok is writtten, is that the welves of Pennsylvama bred re- Markebly tree ta color, The largest variety, the grey wolf was teaad in Nertiern and in Southern Penn- svlvamia. or, a be mere exact. In the counties ot the Nerthern and Southern der. The brawn wolf. small- est im sive. Was Ute variety thar termerly abounded tn tae Blro Mountains. in the West Branch Valley, clear to Clearfeld County. and in the Wester part et the State. The grey and brown varieties were less wary amd were more quicsiy exterminated than the third variety, whieh was unidway in sive between the twe, e black wolt, of ceufe unio Tie anti! steineels enough inhaticed the most dintited ground tor it was seldom seen outside the confines of tie Seven Vfoun- tains tn Centre and Aliiin’ Counties. And in’ the Sever Mountains the old hunters aver that there were NO WoVes OX ce vlack ones. The color of these black Wolves Was st t to variation, Somme were jetty black, ae 0 24 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. others a dusky black, or very dark brown, others jetty black or dusky black with somewhat lighter coloring on the under parts. Many of them had brown ears. ‘That the black wolf was a separate variety is upheld hy the fact that its general contour was different from the others. This will be seen exactly in Chapter IV, hy studying the descriptions and dimensions of the black wolves as differentiated from the other kinds. As far as intelligence went, the black wolf was far the superior of the others. It was susceptible of domestication, and would have made the ideal hunting dog of Pennsylvania. In the Jura Mountains, on the borders of France and Switzerland, two varieties of wolves were found occupying adjacent territory. ‘The grey wolf inhabited the great forests on the plains and the first plateau, while the black wolf was found in the high mountain regions embracing the second and third pleateaus. Dr. W. J. McKnight, in his “Pioneer Out- line history of Northwestern Pennsylvania,” states “the pioneer hunter would sometimes raise a wolf pup. This pup would be a dog in every sense of the word until about two years old, and then would be a wolf in all his acts.’ Audubon in his “Quadrupeds of North America” says: “Once when we were traveling on foot not far from the Southern boundary of Kentucky, we fell in with a black wolf, following a man with his rifle on his shoul- der. On speaking with him about this animal, he as- sured us that it was as tame and gentle as a dog, and that he had never met a dog that could trail a deer bet- LE ROY LYMAN (1821-1886) A Potter County Hunter of National Reputation Who Slew Several Hundred Wolves In Northern Pennsylvania. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 25 ter. \Ve were so much struck with this account and the noble appearance of the wolf, that we offered him one hundred dollars for it, but the owner said he would not part with it for any price.” What was the case in the West, was equally true in the Seven Mountains and in Clearfield and Jefferson Counties. One or two of the earliest hunters trained black wolves to act as hunting dogs and companions. These and wild black wolves bred with dogs owned by pioneers, producing a really worthy progeny. St. George Mivart has said “hybrids between the dog and the wolf have proved to be fertile, though for no long period.” The writer remembers that in his early boyhood about twenty years ago he saw several of these wolf-dogs, They were intelligent and kindly, and highly prized by their owners, farmers in some of the valleys adjacent to the Seven Mountains. The craze for handsome sheep dogs or collies which struck the valleys about this time resulted in ending the breeding of the wolfish dogs, which to those not in sympathy with them, were tech- nically mongrels, and they eventually disappeared. There are probably few of them now in existence. Their owners declared that they never showed the slightest tendency to revert to a wild state. In Sep- tember, 1898, the writer visited a farmer, who tilled some back lots at the foot of the mountains on the South side of Brush Valley not far from Minnick’s Gap. This old fellow, Abe Royer by name, kept some turkeys, half wild, which were the result of his tame turkey hens crossing with wild gobblers which lived 26 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. on the mountain back of his cabin. He had preserved several wild pigeons until 1895, to be used as “stool pigeons” in the event of the great flocks “returning.” He also kept several wolf-dogs. These animals had dun and grey coloring not unlike collies, but had the shorter hair and longer legs of wolves. There was no trace of black in their coloring, although their owner stated that their grand-sire had been a black wolf which coupled with a shepherd bitch some ten years before when he was lumbering for Ario Pardee in High Valley. He said that neither turkeys nor dogs had the least inclination to revert to the savage procliv- ities of their ancestors. If the grey wolves and the brown wolves had any of the admirable characteristics of their black relatives, the old hunters sayeth not. “Crafty and mean” is the general verdict expressed about the grey wolves, “nasty like little cur dogs,” is the general run of remarks relative to the brown wolves. Doubtless these uncomplimentary character- izations are unjust to the animals, but they were cer- tainly not up to the standard of the black wolves. If all are of one variety these attempts at specialization are hardly worth the time to read. At the same time it may show that color in animals has much to do with habitation, character and disposition. It may help to reveal the secret of why some men are blonde and others dark. Robert C. Quiggle, born August 22, 1830, died May 25, 1916, an intelligent gentleman who resided at Pine Station, Clinton County, told of his brother, \Wil- WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 27 liam Quiggle, who used to climb a certain big shellbark back of their home and bark like a wolf, drawing many brown wolves off the mountains close enough to be shot. When shown the author's tame coyotes at Mc- Elhattan Springs Mr. Quiggle exclaimed: “Why, those are the same animals that abounded on the Bald Eagle \ountain seventy years ago.’ Query, what was the most easterly limit of the coyote’s range? Could it possibly have been identical with the “small brown wolf” of the Susquehanna Valley, or the small brown wolf of the Carolinas? Jacob Quiggle (1821-1911) older brother of Robert C. Quiggle, often related to the author how his brother William called the wolves off the mountain and out of the forest to be shot. Once when Jacob Ouiggle was a tiny boy he told his father of the nice brown dog which followed his little sister and himself to school every day. ‘The elder Quiggle became sus- picious, and accompanying the children armed with a shot-gun, encountered a wolf on the path. Despite the children’s entreaties he shot the handsome animal. Colonel James \W. Quiggle was fond of relating how at nightfall, especially in cold weather, the wolves howled along the foot of the Bald Eagle Mountains at MeElhattan, in Clinton County. ‘The stress laid on the “barking” of these brawn wolves is another point in favor of the possibility of their being “prairie wolves” or coyotes. Daniel Ott, born May 27, 1820, pioneer hunter of Selin’s Grove, Snyder County, states that wolves were plentiful along the Susquehanna when he was a boy. ‘They sometimes barked from the top of the Blue Hill at the good people across the river 28 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. in Northumberland and Sunbury. When the canal was building in the early thirties they barked nightly from the summit of Mahanoy Mountain. Mr. Ott killed many wolves and saw numerous wolves taken by other hunters. “They were yellowish grey in color, lighter colored than the timber wolves of the west” was the way in which he described them. In the West, as a buffalo hunter in the seventies, Mr. Ott saw and killed timber wolves. This all adds color to the suppo- sition that perhaps the coyote had a narrow strip of range east of the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Juniata. When this subject was referred to S. N. Rhoads, of Philadelphia, the great authority on the mammals of Pennsylvania stated emphatically that it would be impossible to believe that the prairie wolf (canis latrans) ever had a permanent habitat in Penn- sylvania, or even in Ohio. In the old sporting parlance of Pennsylvania, the black wolf and the grey wolf “howled,” while the small brown wolf “barked.” Flunters ranked the brown wolf little above the colishay or grey fox as a game animal, whereas they fully respected the splendid qualities of its larger rela- tives canis lycaon and canis nubilus. At times the grey and black wolves imitated the hunting dogs and “bark- ed,” but their natural utterance was a truly melancholy howl, the very personification of loneliness and wild- ness, of night time and olden days. Audubon in his “Quadrupeds of North America’ describes vividly how a farmer near Vincennes, Indiana, whom he vis- ited, caught many black wolves in pitfalls. In the Seven Mountains, in Centre and Mifflin Counties, the old CHARLES IVES AND THEODORE PIERCE, Slayers of a Wolf on Kinzua Creek, McKean County, 1888. + nw WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 29 settlers used this nethod of trapping Pennsylvania black wolves. Laniel Karstetter, who was born near the Blue Rock, on the Karoondinha (John Penn’s Creek) in 1824, and died in Sugar Valley in 1907, maintained several of these pits near his hunting camp at Greenbriar Knob. A haunch of venison or a dead sheep was usually placed in the pits, which were eight feet deep, broadest at the bottom so as to render it impossible for the most active animals to escape from them. The mouth of each pit was covered with a re- volving platform of boughs and twigs, and attached to a cross piece of timber, which served as an axle. When the hungry animals scented the bait and sprang on the covering, it revolved, hurling the brutes, sometimes two or three at a time, into the pit below. Often Karstet- ter’s cabin was entirely “weather-boarded” with wolf hides obtained in this way. Susquehanna County, where “animal drives” were practiced to rid the section of wolves and other more or less troublesome animals, was also the scene of much “pitfall” hunting. An aged German hunter from the Schwarzwald in the Old Country, was a leader in this pastime. Josiah Lord, a Susquehanna County pioneer, in describing the antics of a pack of wolves who descended on a dead cow near his home, is quoted in Blackman’s History of that County as follows: “About two o’clock in the morn- ing we were waked up by a sudden yell of the wolves, and they yelled without intermission until day- light. As they continued howling, the fine yelp of the pups increased the roar which seemed to shake the earth like thunder.” Another Susquehanna County 3 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. wolfer has this to say concerning the howling of wolves: “Lo wish I could deseribe this howl, but the best comparison I can give would be to take a dozen railroad whilstles, braid them together, and then let one strand after another drop off, the last peal so frightfuly piercing as to go through your heart and soul; you would feel as though your hair stood straight on end if it was ever so long.” The Brown brothers, of Susquehanna County, caught many wolves in pit- falls. .\ Susquehanna County wolf hunter, contem- porary with the Brown bovs, is quoted in Blackman’s Ulistory as deseribing the wolves of that region as “coarse, grey-haired, ugly looking things.” Wolves were prevalent in Pike County as late as T8350. Joseph Brooks, a Yorkshireman who died in 1832, made a failure of his woolen-goods manufacturing near Ding- man’s Ferry because the wolves destroyed the sheep in large numbers, while the lambs succumbed trom eating too much sheep laurel or “Lamb-kill.” ‘The site of this untortunate venture is now called the “George W. Childs Park,” having been given to the Common- wealth of Pennsylvania by the widow of the famous editor and philanthropist. One of the most famous wolf hunters in Pennsylvania was “Wing” (Henry) Heizmann, “The Bear Trapper,” who died near Boy- ersville, now called Mazeppa, Union County, in 1895, Every fall this eccentric man, who was by profession a maker of wooden pumps, would place his trapping outht in his saddle-bags and go to the White Deer Alountains where he trapped until spring. He cap- tured many wolves, luring them out of the forests by WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 31 imitating their cries. Edwin Grimes killed wolves the same way in McKean County. For years Heizmann would regale the children at cabins where he stopped for the night by mimicing the howling of wolves, while seated about the inglenook. “Bill” Long, also called “The King Hunter,’ as a small boy surprised his father by “calling” wolves out of the forest to be shot. He learned the trick, he said, from friendly Indians, who frequented the elder Long's still-house. An- other great wolf hunter of the White Deer Moun- tains contemporary with “King” Heizmann = was Jekey Hoffman, of Hightown, now White Deer. His son-in-law, George Huff, born in 1835, states that the last wolf that he (Huff) saw in the White Deer Mountains was in 1853 in the “Dutch” End,” when he encountered a large grey wolf lying on a flat rock. He fired at the monster, missing, but the bullet imbedded itself to the hilt in the boulder. One of Jakey Hoffman’s wolf traps, made by his brother, John Hoffman, a blacksmith, of Loyaisock- ville, and dated 1826,” is now in the author’s collection. Some of the last wolves killed at the headwaters of White Deer Creek were found to have their stomachs filled with mud, showing that they were in a condi- tion verging on starvation. They were dying out, vic- tims of altcred conditions. Many wolves in this re- gion were poisoned by stuffing the hide of a lamb with lard, in which was hidden wr vomica. These wolves bit into the “tempting morsel” and soon succumbed, three being found near the Shrader Spring, in Hope Valley, one morning. V. DESCRIPTION AND HABITS. W. DICKINSON, of Smethport, McKean Coun- C. ty, the greatest living Pennsylvania wolf hunter, and a man of intelligence and education, makes the following comments anent our native wolves: “The peculiar traits of the wolf family are too numerous to state here in full, but will give some of the main points. The wolf is one of the most cunning and shrewd animals we know anything about. They are the most difficult animal to catch in a trap that we know anything about. If a wolf is caught in a trap by bait and should happen to make his escape, don’t try to catch that wolf with bait again, for life is too short to do it. The only way to catch that wolf is to set traps in a path where they travel occasionally. Don’t use any bait; if you do he will give that locality a wide berth. If a wolf gets caught in a trap and happens to twist his foot off, he must leave the pack or drove he belongs with. Whether they drive him away or whether he leaves them because he can't stand the long journeys they take is a question we can’t answer. We never saw an instance of a three- footed wolf traveling with other wolves; he always goes alone; keeps near the settlements. He may be in three or four counties in three or four days and never kills but one sheep at a time, and never goes 32 Wy Wy, - WY Y Vi JONAS J. BARNET (Born 1838), Who Heard the Wolves Howl in Poe Valley, Centre County, In 1863. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 33 back to that carcass for a second meal. The man that sets traps by these carcasses fools away his time. Their chief food consists of deer meat, muttton, wood- chucks, coons and rabbits, but they can be kept on any food that a dog will live on. They are quite bold in night time but unmerciful cowards in daylight, that is, as far as the human family are concerned, ‘They are not afraid of other wild animals. A lone wolf will kill any deer or drive away most any bear, and two wolves will put any bear to flight in a hurry. But they were awfully afraid of man in the day time, but in night time will come within ten or twelve rods of a small campfire and howl for an hour or more. We never knew of them to attack a man or to show any signs of fight, not even around their dens where they had their young. Their mating season is from the 5th to the 15th of February, and they have their pup- pies from the 10th to the 20th of April. The num- ber of whelps at a litter is from five to twelve. I have caught a she-wolf with eleven breasts being nursed. The size of the whelps, which are born blind, and almost black in color, is about the same as common pups would be from a dog that would weigh from sixty to eighty pounds. Mivart says: ‘The mam- mary glands are from six to ten in number, but the variation which is found in the Domestic Dog as re- gards this character may lead us to anticipate that it may not be a constant one in the wild species.’ The time of mating to the time of birth is nine weeks, the same as our common dog. When the young wolves 34 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. are two or three weeks old, the two old ones do their heavy killing of sheep. The male wolf stays with the female from mating time until the young are grown and hunts for food as faithfully as the mother wolf. When the young are about ten weeks old the old ones take them from the den and begin to teach them to travel. After they leave the den they are a band of wanderers. They do not return to the den again that year. ‘They are taught to wander and kill. By the time they are six months old they are great rangers and will travel as far in a night as the old ones care to go. During late September and October the wood- chucks are denned up for the winter, so the wolves will begin to slaughter sheep again, but at this season of the year the number of sheep killed is only about half Compared with May and June. Their sheep kill- ing is not confined to the two periods above men- tioned, for they are liable to make a raid on sheep at any time. During the lattter part of January the old wolves will take the young wolves to some locality from twenty to forty miles from the den. Here they will soon teach the young they have got to stay away from them. They must not follow after the old ones; if they do, they get roughly handled. As soon as the young are thoroughly convinced they have got to shift for themselves the old ones return to their den, and any wolf that dares to venture near that point has got to be able to whip that pair or he must hike for other quarters. A full grown Pennsylvania grey wolf is about as tall as a greyhound, and has a long nose, WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 35 quite slim; he has large tusks, a fine set of teeth, a mouth split well back; he has a treacherous rolling eye, very keen; he is heavily built through the butt of jaws; ears about four inches long, inclined to be thick and stand up on his head like a fox’s ears. He is quite deep through the chest and well cut up in the flanks. He is thin through the chest, body and hams. The shape of his body after being skinned is similar to the body of a fox, only very much larger. His hair or fur is long but not coarse. It gives him a shaggy ap- pearance. His tail is long and shaggy. A full grown wolf of thiS species will weigh from 60 to 80 pounds. There have been some larger ones caught in this sec- tion weighing as high as 90 pounds. I saw a western timber wolf in the Zoo at Buffalo, N. Y., in March, 1914, and it seemed to me slightly bigger than the grey wolf of Northern Pennsylvania. But it may have been better fed. Their main hold on a sheep or deer (except a buck deer with antlers) is the throat, which they will hang to, giving the animal a few violent shakes which will make their necks creak until the animal stops struggling, then he will let go. If he is a cripple he will proceed to take a meal, but if he belongs to a den where there are young whelps he will look for a chance to kill another sheep, and if he can't see any more to kill he will take a meal and hike and won't return to any of the dead sheep again or visit this sec- tion again that season, unless he can come in on the opposite side of that field; then it is fresh mutton for him. He will not visit any of the old carcasses. The 36 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. wolf is very strong, quick and active. If a lone wolf gets up to a buck deer with antlers the wolf will juke and dodge around the buck until he gets a snap or two at that buck’s gambrel joints. Ata single snap he will have one leg of that buck useless and a snap or two at the other gambrel joint, and that buck’s hind legs are useless. He will stand on his gambrels instead of his hind feet. Now he is an easy prey for that wolf. Just one throat hold and that buck is a dead deer. The only good trait of the wolf is, the old male will not leave the mother wolf to take care of her young; he is al- ways with her, death being the only thing to separate them. Still, many men think the wolf ought to have been protected by law. Not any of that for me, but I think that the bounty laws are superfluous and a waste of the State’s money.” The sheep-killing wolves which Mr. Dickinson describes doubtless would have been less destructive had not man decimated the deer and other of their natural sources of subsistence. These gray wolves were probably the type which Mr. S. N. Rhoads calls canis Mevicanus nubilis. In size they were the largest of the Pennsyl- vania wolves. In Willams’ Civil and Natural History of Vermont, published in 1797, the weight of a Vermont wolf is given as 92 pounds. A large speci- men of the European wolf mentioned in the same work is given as 69 pounds 8 ounces. Harlan, in his Pennsylvania Natural History, evidently refers to the brown wolf when he says: “The wolf in Pennsylvania is reddish-brown color, the hair being tipped with “JAKE HAMERSLEY, Who Cleaned Out the Last Wolves in Northern Clinton County. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. “87 black, but especially so over the fore shoulders and sides. Bartram, in his natural history notes, says: “The wolves of Pennsylvania are a yellowish brown color.” This is the variety which is called in Trego’s “Geography of Pennsylvania” lupus uccidentalis, A better name would be canis occidentalis. Audubon gives the measurements of a black wolf as follows: Length of head and body, 3 feet 2 inches; tail vertebra, 11 inches; tail vertebra, including fur, 1 foot 1 inch; length of ear, 3 inches. C. W. Dickinson gives the length of the ear of a Pennsylvania wolf as 4 inches; “tail very long.’ These animals, being noted for their long, trailing tails, were called by the old settlers “the long-tailed hunters.” Others among the old-timers called them “Mountain Nightingales.” A black wolf, caught in Penn’s Valley, in Centre County, about 1857, measured, whole length, 4 feet + inches; tail, 1 foot; length of ear, 2 inches. The ears of this wolf were very narrow, the nose was more pointed and the tail was not quite so long as the grey wolves from the northern part of the State. The black wolf is known scientifically as canis lycaon. The measurements of a small wolf, taken in Sugar Valley before the Civil War, are given as, length from point of nose to root of tail, 2 feet 11 inches; tail, 1 foot 1 inch. The meas- urements of a western grey wolf are given as, nose to origin of tail, 3 feet 334 inches; length of trunk of tail, 1 foot 1 inch; ears, 334 inches. These are singularly like the measurements of the grey wolves noted by C. W. Dickinson in Northern Pennsylvania. While it 38 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. may be possible that the three varieties of wolves found in Pennsylvania were all variations of the one species, they exhibited marked differences, ‘The grey wolf of the Northern Counties was the biggest and strongest variety ; his prevailing color was dark grey, his head and jaws large, his ears long and pointed. ‘The brown wolf of the Eastern and Central part of the State was about the size of the animal which Audubon called the “red Texas wolf,” or most likely the size of a male coyote. It varied in color from a yellowish to a red- dish brown. It had smaller and squarer ears than the grey wolf of the North. The black wolf, which seldom if ever was found outside of the Seven Alountains, was shghtly larger than the brown wolf, more rangy in build, with long but narrower ears, and a tremend- ous length of nose. It varied in color from a sooty grey, or hyena color, to a jet, shiny black. Its tail was often so devoid of hair, especially in summer, as to resemble a black curved stick. It was the swiftest runner of all the three varieties. It was very moder- ate in its diet, and seldom attacked sheepfolds. It would have been an ideal animal for coursing with dogs. Audubon gives the height of a Western grey wolf as 2 feet 5 inches. C. \W. Dickinson says the Pennsylvania grey wolf was the height of a greyhound. A Pennsylvania black wolf was said to be ‘about the height of a half-breed shepherd dog.” A Pennsylvania brown wolf “resembled in height and general appear- ance a small sized foxhound.” From these meagre pen pictures perhaps those interested in the wolves of the op WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. : 39 Keystone State can evolve a series of portraits. It isa shame on our naturalists that none of these wolves were secured for our various museuins or zoological gardens. Regarding the howling of Pennsylvania wolves, Dr. McKnight, who often heard them, says: “T have listened in my bed to the dismal howl of the Pennsylvania wwolf, and for the benefit of those who have never heard a wolf's musical soirec, I will state here that one wolf leads off in a long tenor, and the whole pack joins in the chorus.” As previously stated, the black and grey wolves noticed by the first settlers in Pennsylvania did not bark but howled. Gradually they imitated the dogs, until they became as proficient at barking as the dogs themselves. Wolfer C. W. Dickinson, under date of September 10, 1915, thus further comments on the appearance of the grey wolf of Northern Pennsylvania: “Am send- ing you a photograph of a genuine grey wolf in his winter coat. This photo was taken the fore part of March, while his coat of fur or hair was at its best. If you remember, I wrote you of seeing this wolf in the Buffalo Zoo in March, 1914. My impression at that time was that this wolf would be in the heavy class of full-grown animals, and that I had never seen a wolf with a heavy coat of hair on his neck and shoul- ders. In August, 1914, I went to the zoo armed with a kodak, bound to get a picture of this same wolf. It being my first attempt at picture taking, it turned out a fizzle. Did not get a film that was any good. But I learned enough to satisfy me for my trip. The wolf 40 ° WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. had lost his winter coat, and his hair was as short and smooth as a common smooth-haired dog. It just dawned on me that I never before saw a wolf while he had his winter coat of fur on. “The late Spring, Summer and early Fall being the only times that we could trap or hunt them, and all of our experiences with the wolf family were while they had their summer coat, which is not one-quarter as long or heavy as their winter coat. And after looking _ this fellow over carefully we have changed our mind about the size of him. Instead of putting him in the heavy class we will put him as a medium-sized full- grown wolf. If I am fortunate enough to get to Buffalo the last of this month I will try to get a photo of this fellow in his summer coat, and, if successful, will send you a print so you can compare them, They are a hard animal to get a picture of, because they are so restless and uneasy. You will see that this is not a perfect picture, for the wolf moved his tail, and it just shows a blur, but this is the best view out of a dozen. Tt does not make any difference where this wolf comes from—whether it was Maine, Montana or California —he is a gray wolf, and the very same type of the grey wolf of Pennsylvania. When hunting young wolves, which was done in the latter part of May or fore part of June, it was a mystery to me, as I could not make out where all the long hair in their nests came from, but it is very plain to me now. It was all from their heavy winter coats.” HENRY B. KARSTETTER, Born 1842, Who Can Recount Many Incidents of the Days When Wolves Traveled Through Sugar Valley. Clinton County. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 41 C. W. Dickinson adds: “At the time I wrote the items about wolves in Pennsylvania, I was driven hard with work, so could not possibly look over any of my old records, so had to give you the size of our grey wolves by comparing them to a grayhound. Since then, I have found the measurement taken of a female wolf I caught in June, 1869. This wolf measured from tip of nose to end of tail 57% inches. From end of nose to base of tail 42 inches, length of tail 1514 inches. From heel of fore foot to top of shoulders hair pressed down 26% inches. The tusks 114 inches from the edge of gums to the point of the tooth. I took the measurement of the head from end of nose to base of vertebra but time had obliterated this so that I cannot make it out. The wolf in the zoo (see photographs) as he is trav- eling around in his cage, is about 40 inches from nose to base of tail. If his nose is raised to a line with his back, he would be an inch or more longer. His tail is about 15 inches. He stands about 24 inches high at top of shoulders. One thing I have omitted was the measurement of the ears of the female Pennsylvania wolf recorded above. This was done by holding the ear down so it was about level, then placing the end of a tule against the head, thus measuring the top side of the ear, which was 4 inches. The extreme length was to end of tail bone, plus the skin, and not to the end of the hair on the tail.” According to John Q. Dyce the wolves sometimes selected two dens for their breeding operations. One 42 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. was for the permanent abode, but a second generally ten miles distant, was kept in readiness in case the regular cave was noticed by some passing fisherman or prospector, who would be sure to report its exist- ence at the nearest settlement. When the wolfers ar- rived at the spot the entire wolfish family would have left for “parts unknown.” For that reason one of the parent wolves was constantly on guard. This sagacious trait saved many a litter of pups at the Wolf Rock dens at the head of Henry Run, Clinton County, that otherwise would have been quickly de- stroyed. Yet correctly speaking, wolves were home- loving animals, and their dislike of abandoning ac- customed neighborhoods contributed not a little to their speedy extermination in Pennsylvania. It is a misnomer to call them “wanderers ;" only im_ their last, dark, starving davs did they flit from place to place in Pennsylvania. Wan, the ey (APE wy 55), et MO ye ti VI. FORMER PREVALENCE. NE of the first enactments made by William Q Penn during his second visit to Pennsylva- nia in 1699 was to have a bounty placed upon the scalps of wolves. At a Court held at Chester, October 2nd, 1695, it was stated that “there are several wolves’ heads to pay for,” show- ing that there was a bounty on wolves’ heads as early as 1695. In 1705, wolves had so increased in numbers about Philadelphia that an Act was passed in that year for the killing of wolves (Col. Rec., Vol. II, pp. 212. 231). The amount paid was ten shillings for a dog wolf, fifteen shillings for a she-wolf. The great Quaker interested himself in the matter reluctantly, as he was a strong believer in the conservation of fur- bearing animals. See T. Clarkson’s “Memoirs of William Penn,” Vol I, p. 382. But a couple of cold winters had set the wolves to howling about the very outskirts of Philadelphia, and something had to be done to quiet the public clamor. Calves, pigs and sheep, taken in some instances by two-footed thieves, no doubt, were charged against the wolves, so they had to suffer. Hundreds of wolves were slain to collect the bounty. At first the numbers did not seem to de- crease, and a cry was made to double the bounty. This was done in some localities through private liber- ality. At the time of Penn’s death, in 1718, wolves 43 44 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. were practically exterminated east of Lancaster. Of course, they were plentiful still in the Blue Mountains and in the Lehigh and Pocono regions until a century later. But by the date of Penn’s demise they were known no more, except as rare stragglers, in the fertile farming regions in what is now Montgomery, Chester, Lancaster and York Counties. A wolf was killed in Bucks County in 1800, in Chester County in 1816, and one was seen in York County in 1834, according to S. N. Rhoads. At the time of the French and Indian War, when the.chain of forts along the Blue Mountains were attacked by redmen in 1755, wolves were present in large companies. While there is no record or tradi- tion extant of their having molested human beings, they proved a source of complaint as considerable as the redmen. Wolves and panthers, as well as the In- dians, pillaged the farms at the base of the Blue Mountains, carrying off much stock. ‘Twenty years later they were still numerous along the Blue Moun- tains, and women whose husbands had gone to the front in the Revolutionary War complained that there was no one to guard stock and children from packs of hungry wolves. One woman—Mrts. Barbara Schwartz, wife of a Revolutonary soldier—shot three wolves which had attacked her watch dog, the shooting occur- ring in her front yard near the present town of Shubert. After the war the returned soldiers formed hunting parties, so that by the close of the eighteenth century these savage animals were seldom seen east of the Blue Mountains. Until the middle of the nine- REUBEN McCORMICK, Born 1828, Who Has a Vivid Recollection of Sugar Valley’s Famed White Wolf. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 45 teenth century they were prevalent in Franklin, Adams, Cumberland, Perry, Schuylkill, Luzerne and adjoining counties to the North. In 1845 or there- abouts they are described as being very numerous in the Wyoming and Tomhicken Valleys. They were still found by the hundreds in the Seven Mountains, and to the South of them, and in Potter, McKean and Clearfield Counties. They were exterminated in the West Branch Valley, except as stragglers, about this time. The celebrated Black Wolf which regularly followed the packetboats on the West Branch Canal from Williamsport to Lock Haven at night, was killed during the great flood of 1847, by Mike Curts, where the old woolen mill now stands in Antes Gap. Mrs. Caroline Lanks, “The Little Red Riding Hood of the West Branch,” who as a small girl saw the wolf and alarmed the neighborhood, said that it was black with wide brown bars. “Black Headed Bill” Williams, old-timer and veteran Bucktail, of Pine Station, Clin- ton County, says that the last time he heard a wolf call on the Round Top back of his home was in the Fall of 1863, when he was home from the army on a furlough, Wolves from Sugar Valley often appeared on the Round Top, which rises direatly South of Mr, Wil- liams’ home, long after they had ceased to breed in its rocky caverns. Wolves in Clearfield County were plentiful on Mosquito Creek, in 1880, according to Leonard Johnson, formerly a well-known lumberman. They kept up such a howling at night, and such a scampering around the horse stables in a camp where 46 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. he was employed, that the horses would hardly be fit for work the next day, so terrified were the poor equines. Wolves were numerous on Potato Creek, in McKean County, up to about that same year. The old packs, such as had marooned Dan ‘Treaster in his barn in Treaster Valley, Centre County, up to about 1840, were about run out in the Seven Mountains by 1sst. They relied on company for the success of their hunt- ing operations, and they apparently lacked the courage to forage alone. In Penn's time packs of five hun- dred wolves had been noticed. Peter Pentz, who died in 1812, was once followed by a pack of two hundred, which was considered an unusually large number at that time. Dr. B. H. Warren, famous naturalist and custodian of the Everhart Museum at Scranton, thus describes an encounter with wolves in Tomhicken Valley: “The following memoranda came from Dr, ‘Thos. C. Thornton, of Lewisburg, Union County. This physi- cian is something over seventy years of age, and a son of the Dr. Thornton who had an adventure with the war-like wolves. When in Lewisburg, call to see Dr. Thornton. He lives next house to our friend, Hon. C. K. Sober, and he would be pleased to have you call to see him. In the late summer or early autumn, about the year 1848, Dr. T. A. H. Thornton was going from Tomhicken Valley, Luzerne County, to Catawissa, Co- lumbia County. At that period there were no wagon roads. The doctor's route was from necessity via WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 47 bridle paths and through unbroken forest. He was on horseback. By the most direct route, the distance to his destination, where a sick patient waited, was about eighteen miles. A few days before the doctor made this memorable trip a severe storm of wind and rain had uprooted a large tree which fell across the narrow path he followed in its sinuous course. In attempting, to ride around the obstruction the man got off the right road and took a path which led, after several miles had been covered, into a large swamp or bog where great beds of gigantic buck laurel or rhododendrons flour- ished. In this dismal place the doctor’s horse was mired, his legs sinking into the sticky black and wet mud up to the poor creature’s belly. The physician worked several hours to extricate the animal, but failed, and as darkness was approaching the horse was abandoned by the owner after removing the bridle and saddle-bags; the latter were carried on the doctor's shoulders. With this burden, and no food, the man started to walk to his destination, many miles off, and in a direction of which he was uncertain. About 10 o'clock at night—air cool, stars bright— the hungry wandering man was startled by the distant cries of a pack of gaunt and hungry wolves, which he soon discovered were rapidly following on his trail. Knowing the danger of these fierce brutes, he stopped and at once prepared to defend himself. A stout cane or club was quickly cut and leggin of heavy material was speedily pulled from his trembling leg. On this cloth a quantity of the stronger ammonia water was 48 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. poured. There v re no nearby drug stores in those days, and physicians compounded the remedies they administered» art they always carried medicines in making professional calls. Ammonia, then as now, was extensively used in lini- ments for external applications. The doctor fortu- nately had in his saddle-bags, with other drugs, a large bottle Full of ammonia. The howling, cruel and bloodthirsty pack of snarl- ing, snapping, vicious beasts, came near the spot where the doctor stood and after stopping for a few minutes, circling around and eyeing their victim with murder- ous‘gaze, they began the attack. Luckily for the doc- tor, he had taken a position where his back and sides were well protected by a ridge of high rocks, and the wolves were obliged to approach in front. They boldly plunged forward, led by a big wolf with sharp, white incisors and foaming mouth. The man stood erect, club in one hand, a heavy clasp knife, with opened blade, between his teeth, and the amnionia filled cloth in his right hand. When the animals came within a few feet, they paused as if to take a final survey of the human being they so confidently hoped to soon tear to shreds and devour. As the beasts paused the man struck at them with the saturated cloth he had pre- pared. The strong fumes and some of the fluid in nostrils and eves made the wolves beat a hasty retreat as they slunk off yelping, snorting and coughing. The man continued his journey, wandered for two nights and one day. To eat he had only some berries, bark “eleL ‘eyoNeG UNOS ‘oJUaDg ‘ajduiAsJeq png Aq paddess “SOM A14UM WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 49 and plants. The wolves pursued him most of the time, but on two or three occasions when they came near he drove them away with the ammonia. He finally had the good fortune to reach a settlement where he found friends, shelter and food. He was laid up for one week before he reached his home, where it required fully a month for him to recover from the hardships and exposure due to this thrilling and unus- ual experience.” Wolves were fond of “surrounding” human beings. James Wylie Miller, born April 29, 1838, and now re- siding at McElhattan, Clinton County, tells of the lum- ber camp where he worked on Hunt’s Run, Cameron County, being surrounded by a huge pack of wolves, which trotted around the building all night long, yelp- ing and howling. ‘That was in the winter of 1857. Philip H. Lamey, born in 1830, tells of his hunting camp near McCall’s Dam, on White Deer Creek, be- ing surrounded by a pack of wolves in 1848. They smelled some bacon hanging inside, and the hunters could see the brutes’ eyes as they eagerly peered. through the cracks in the logs.) Emmanuel Harman and companions were surrounded by wolves at a camp on Grove Run, Cameron County, in 1852. Earl W. Motz, the famous School Boy Hunter of Woodward, Centre County, thus describes the slaying of the last wolf in Penn’s Valley, Centre County. “The last wolf known to have been killed in Eastern Penn’s Valley was taken in the late 50’s. It was killed at the ‘Thomas Hosterman Farm,’ about two miles 50 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. north of Woodward, and was one of the large black species found in this region at that time. The wolves, thirteen in number, first appeared in September at the farms in this section. hey killed six sheep and wounded a number more the first night. The farmers heard them howl as they went into the woods about daybreak the next morning, The farmers who lived in the neighborhood, the Hostermans, the Garys, Vonadas and Hinksons, hunted and set traps for the wolves, but were unable to kill any of them. ‘The wolves left in a few weeks and did not return until December of the same year. About Christmas the pack again came into the val- ley. They killed a heifer, which had been left in the fields, and devoured a portion of it. Several inches of snow covered the ground at this time, and the farmers tracked the wolves to Hosterman’s Gap, and from there east into Pine Creek Hollow. The wolves appeared every night, and all efforts to trap them were in vain. One night two dogs which belonged to the Hostermans followed the wolves and drove them into the woods; there the wolves turned on the dogs and killed one of them and ate about half of its carcass. The farmers placed the remains of the dog in a tree and the carcass of the heifer on the ground anl set traps around the carcass of the heifer. In the morning the heifer was untouched, but the wolves had the snow tramped down under the tree in which the dog was placed in their efforts to get the dog. At last a trap was set at a place on a small stream WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 51 where the wolves always crossed when leaving the val- ley. The next morning the trap held a mammoth black wolf. After this one was killed the farmers set out poison and the wolves left immediately and never returnel afterward. They were seen later in the winter in Brush Valley. Although many wolves were seen and tracked since that time, that was the last one killed at the east end of Penn's Valley.” Substantially the same story was told to the writer by Charles W. Hosterman, of Wood- ward, born in 1847. Abe Simcox, who died at his mountain home on the south slope of “Sugar Valley Hill” in 1909, aged 68 years, killed a number of wolves at the Wolf Rock at the head of Henry Run, in Wayne Township, Clinton County, when he first moved “on the mountain” in 1861. Before his house was completed he lived in a hunting cabin near the “Rock” which was a famous rendezvous for wolves. One night, while at the cabin with Major W. H. Sours, of Pine Station, wolves climbed on the cabin roof, as if trying to get in at the smoked beef hanging on the rafters. With game be- coming scarce, the wolves grew desperate. This re- minds one of the similar antics of a fox described by the Stuart brothers in Volume II of their entrancing “Lays of the Deer Forest.’ After the Wayne Town- ship wolves were gone, Simcox, accompanied by Hugh McClure, made several successful wolf trapping ex- cursions to the head of Young Woman's Creek. That 52 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. was in 186-4 and 1865, after Simcox’s return from the Civil War. Simcox’s wolf traps are now in the author's collection. The last wolves of Wayne Township were probably killed by Jacob Earon, near his residence in the east end of Nittany Valley, who in 1861 lo- cated a wolf’s nest in a hollow log on the moun- tain above Kammerdiner Hollow. He killed the six pups, and returning the next day shot the mother wolf. Emmanuel Harman, of Mt. Zion, born May 25th, 1832, while trout fishing at the head of McElhattan Run, heard wolves howling one night at his camp; it was about 1870. Campbell Herritt, born in 1834, saw a lone wolf on a number of oceasions at his home on the Coudersport Pike, in 1856. H. J. Emery, born in 1839, tells of a wolf which plagued the farmers at the mouth of Pine Creek (Lycoming County) just before the Civil War. J. F. Knepley, born in 1837, tells of seeing a wolf near Camp Dodge on Slate Run in 1871, and how he tried to kill it to obtain the pelt as a rug for the wealthy lumberman Norman ‘Dodge. In speaking of the early prevalence of wolves, John Gunsaulus, of Snow Shoe, Centre County, who was born in 1837, relates how his mother used to go out of doors in the winter mornings at their home near the mouth of Rock Run and pound on the side of the house with a slab of wood to make the wolves stop howling. He believes that but for poisoning and forest fires there would still be wolves in Pennsylvania. W. H. Franck, born in 1848, relates that up to 1860 he heard DAVID A. ZIMMERMAN AND WIFE. Mr. Zimmerman Drove the Wolves Out of Eastern Sugar Valley. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. — 53 wolves howling as they crossed Sugar Valley on their regular path near Logan Mills. In his boyhood Jacob Franck, grandfather of W. H. Franck, was fond of taking trips to distant parts of the country to explore new game fields. In the win- ter months he often traveled on snow shoes, but if the ‘skating was good, would skim for miles on skates along the frozen surface of some river. On one occa- sion he was going up the First Fork of the Sinnema- honing to hunt with Joe Berfield, when night overtook him, but as there was a new moon and skating was good, he continued his way. Suddenly out of the gloom appeared a pack of gaunt wolves, which started to fol- low him over the slippery ice. Franck was tired; he had skated from the mouth of Scootac that day, but he put on “extra speed,’ moving so quickly that the wolves could not quite get up to him. He was able to reach “Daddy” Berfield’s cabin in safety, where he had the satisfaction of shooting two of the wolves from the landing. Had he been unarmed and fallen, undoubtedly the savage creatures would have attacked him cruelly. In the South Mountain region of Adams, Franklin and Fulton counties wolves disappeared co- incident with their passing in other parts of the State. Towards the last, when they became scarce it was always said that they had gone to Maryland and West Virginia where game was more plentiful. In those states the surmise was made that they had “gone North” into Pennsylvania. VII. THE BIGGEST WOLF. ROM “OM Nichols, a respectable Indian well F known along the Coudersport Pike. comes the story of the killing of the biggest Pennsylvania wolf. As may be supposed. it was a grey wolf. The slayer was none other than the famous halt-breed Jim Jacobson, whe, it is claimed, brought to earch one ot the last elks in Pennsylvania, and some say tie last twelve elks slain in the Commonwealth. But the mest re- markable part of the narrative is that this intrepid hunter was but ten vears of age at the time of tns matchless exploit! Ths biggest wolf was killed by the “httlest™ hunter. Jim Jacobsen, er to be more exact. Samuel Jimmersen Jacobsen, was barn at New Bergen, now Cartee Camp, in Potter County, im ists. The parental shack stood, it is said, on the site of Charles Schreibner’s barn. His father, Jacob Jacobson, was a native of Sweden Hill, net far from Couderspert, while his mether was Mary Jimmersen, daughter of King Jimmerson, a Seneca chieftain, who was said to be a son of Mary Jemison, the justly celebrated “Winte Woman of the Genesee. Jacob Jacobson was ot Swedish extraction, and died in Ts42.0 It was during the month of April. Is4s, that the now historic “Spring Buizeard.” a snew storm of unprecedented severity, eecurred, According to the Clinton County Times, this blizzard occurred in the latter part of \pril, is4 4. a4 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 55 Wild beasts of all kinds were driven from the forests, frantic with hunger. It appeared that the boy's mother had gone to Oleona to spend the day, leaving the fu- ture Nimrod in charge of the shanty. The ground was covered with snow, and it was bitterly cold. The lad, who was looking out of the window, noticed a large aninal walking about at the edge of the brook. Boldly he came out of the house, as he thought that the crea- ture, to judge from its color, was some one’s stray calf. When he got within twenty feet of it he saw, to his dis- may, that it was a gigantic grey wolf He did not falter; turning on his heel, he fled up the slippery bank and into the house, never once looking back. .\s he turned to slam the heavy plank door he saw that the brute had been at his heels. He had never heard of such conduct on the part of a wild beast, and deter- mined to be avenged. Slamming and bolting the door, he took down his late father’s frearm, which hung over a small ferrotype of that worthy gentleman. It was always kept loaded for just such an emergency, and now it had come. Softly opening the windew he took aim at the wolf, which stood sniffing at the door-sill. ‘There was a loud report, and the savaage beast turned a back semersault into the yard—dead. The tiny boy had shot it through the jugular vein. ‘Tying it up by its hind feet to the clothes-line, he left it until his mother’s return. Accompanied by several redskins— among them Old Nichols, ‘Tall Chief and Dr. Johnny Shongo, she reached the shanty about nightfall. Im- agine her horror to see the hideous carcass hanging 56 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. just inside the crude gate. Jimmy was watching for her, and ran forward, rifle in hand. The Indians were delighted to see that the half-breed boy possessed such courage, and danced and sang with glee. Then the carcass was measured. It was just one inch over six feet from tip to tip, and its estimated weight was 100 pounds. The tail, measured separately, was exactly two feet. The famous ‘‘Beaver Dam Wolf,” killed in Blair County, in 1907, according to enthusiastic chron- iclers, measured less than six feet, and weighed eighty- four pounds. The hide was stretched and cured ac- cording to formulas of the redmen and sent as a relic to Ole Bull, who, during his residence near New Bergen, had befriended the Indian widow and her Norse-blooded son. Unfortunately, the great violinist was on a tour when the skin reached New York, and it became lost before he returned to claim it. It is said that he wrote a note of thanks to the lad, which the celebrated hunter preserved to his dying day. ‘This early triumph decided the career of Jim Jacobson. He became a hunter, devoting practically his entire time to the pursuit of big game. Though jealous of his reputation as a Nimrod, he was modest and unobtru- sive. But his record as the slayer of a big elk in Potter County and the biggest wolf in Pennsylvania are now pretty firmly established. Edwin Grimes, while hunting in the Kinzua Valley in 1860, with Ben- jamin Main, killed a record grey wolf. The hide was sold to the veteran wolfer LeRoy Lyman, who pro- nounced it the biggest he had seen in his long experi- JACOB QUIGGLE (1821-1911) A Clinton County Gentleman Who Was Followed to School by a Brown Wolf in the Old Days. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 57 ence in the forests of Northern Pennsylvania. John C. French, in commenting on the size of the Kinzua Valley wolf, says: “Edwin Grimes, Sam Grimes, and Ben Main agreed that the ‘grand-daddy’ wolf was at least two inches higher at the shoulder than average wolves, and one inch taller than the largest they had ever seen. Continuing Mr, French said: “The wolf was not measured, but it must have been seven feet long, without the tail. Ben Main, who was 5 feet 8 inches tall, could not swing the carcass free from the ground by taking an ear of the wolf in each hand and lifting the heal at arms’ length about his own; but Edwin Grimes, who stood 6 feet 2 inches, could just do so.” Though most of the wolves taken by Le Roy Lyman were killed prior to 1865, he continued killing a few annually until the end of 1875. Vill. A WHITE WOLF IN SUGAR VALLEY. 9 OUIRE GEORGE WAGNER, who died at his comfortable mountain-top home in Rosecrans, Clinton County, a few years ago, in his 74th year, used to relate an interesting story of a large white wolf which plagued the early inhabitants of Sugar Valley. This animal, because of its unusual color, was shunned by the rest of the pack, being com- pelled to lead a solitary existence. Its isolated life made it misanthropic and added to its cruelty, for it was the terror of the stockmen for several years. Hunting parties were organized, traps and poisons of all kinds were set out, but it escaped them, creating havoc among sheep and calves. Of course the amount of damage done by it was greatly exaggerated by the old-timers, but that is neither here nor there. One night Philip Shreckengast, an old hunter living near Tylers- ville, heard a commotion in his barn, and hurrying out reached the door just in time to meet the white wolf emerging, his jaws covered with blood. ‘The aged Nimrod slammed the door on the brute, catching it by the tail. He threw a plough-share against the door and ran to the house for his rifle. By the time he got back the wolf had gone, leaving his bushy tail wedged in the door. Old Shreckengast used the tail for many years as a plume on the cock-horse of his spike team. During his career as a hunter in Sugar Valley Mr. Shreckengast killed ninety-three wolves. After all methods had failed to rid the valley of the white wolf, Jacob Rishel, an old settler, suggested calling the aid of George Wilson, a veteran of the War of 1812, who lived across the Nittany Mountains at McElhattan. 58 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 59 Wilson, who survived to the age of 102 years, had shot several “spook’’ wolves with silver bullets. On his way to Lock Haven one day Rishel had the good fortune to meet Granny McGill,.a reputed witch. ‘This grand old lady of eighty-six years suggested that be- fore calling in Wilson a home remedy be tried. It consisted in securing a black lamb, born in the Fall of the year, in the dark of the moon, and tying it near a spring trap. After much difficulty such a lamb was found in Isaac Cooper's flock, and tied by the trap, at the summit of Tunis Knob, south of Loganton, where the wolf's den was located. ‘The plan worked like a charm the very first time. After devouring the de- fenseless lamb the white wolf began smelling at the trap, perhaps in search of more good things. It sprang, catching him by the nose. In the raorning he was found by the hunters and beaten to death with clubs. John Schrack got the pelt, which served as a hearth rug in his home near Carroll for a long time. Few strangers would believe that it was a wolf's hide. The long white hair and bob tail made it resemble the pelt of an Angora goat. Reuben McCormick, of Penfield, Clearfield County, uncle of J. W. Zim- merman, now in his 89th year, recalls the kill- ing of this white wolf very well. Unfortunately the head was not mounted with the skin, but was set up on a pole above old Mr. Rishel’s sheep-fold, like a murderer on London Bridge. It remained there until a heavy wind blew it down, and it was eaten by hogs. Children were afraid to pass the sheep-pen after dark while the wolf's head was on the pole. Truthful youngsters declared that it snapped its jaws and that 60 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. its eyes flashed green light on particularly rough nights. No wolves came near the pen while the head was in evidence. A week later a pack pillaged the pen to the tune of ten early lambs. Another report has it that they were stolen by trout fishermen and roasted at an orgy held in the Gotschall Hollow. A female sheep dog owned by a farmer in the east end of the Valley, during the hey-day of the white wolf, gave birth to a litter of tailless white pups. These were immediately put to death, as it was feared that they would bring bad luck. A preacher met the white wolf in the graveyard at Brungard’s Church, and the animal ran out of the gate yelping piteously. It acted, the preacher said, like a yellow cur that had had boiling water poured on it, or as one old free-thinker, Dennis Haley, of Robbin’s Hollow, put it, “it feared the sky- pilot like the devil would holy water.” After it was skinned its flesh was found to be full of scars, the result of conflicts with brown and grey wolves, which hated it as much as did the human residents of the region. Sugar Valley was also plagued with a ter- rible wolf of great boldness, which resembled the famous “Bete de Gevaudan” of France. John Schrack killed this wolf one night at a sheep-fold near Carroll, where it was unsuccessfully leaping up at a sixteen foot stockade, on the top of which one of its paws, nipped off in a steel trap, was impaled as a “sood luck” talisman. Its specialty for a long while was frightening the school children who had to cross the wolf's path or “crossing” which ran north and south through the valley about a mile west of Carroll, on their way to the old red school house. PHIL. WRIGHT, Slayer of Wolfish Dogs in the South Mountain Region. IX. CAUSE OF EXTINCTION. T was some satisfaction to the admirers of the l wolfish race in Pennsylvania to feel that their dis- appearance was not entirely due to the hunters. Comparatively few were trapped or shot, as the bounty records will show. Rev. Joseph Doddridge, in his “Notes,” ascribes the rapid diminution of wolves in Pennsylvania to hydrophobia. He relates several in- stances where settlers who were bitten by wolves per- ished miserably from that terrible disease. Man, how- ever, was directly responsible for their passing out of sight. By destroying their food supply they were com- pelled to die of starvation or strike for a new country. The prevalence of wolves in McKean County in the late seventies was due to their desire to pass through there to New York State. The open country north of Allegheny and Cattaraugus Counties, in New York, made it impossible for them to reach the Adirondack wilderness, and they congregated in the vast forests of original timber in Potato Creek, where they starved to death and were slaughtered or poisoned. The black wolves of the Seven Mountains made a similar effort to reach the North Woods. David Frantz, a celebrated wolf hunter who lived near Coburn, Centre County, said that in 1898 and 1899 wolf tracks were observed across Penn’s Valley, passing in a northerly di- rection. Wolves were seen and tracked in Brush Val- 61 62 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. ley, Sugar Valley and along the Coudersport Pike in the winters of those years. One or two lingered about Henry Campbell's saw mill, near Haneyville, in the early part of 1898. Hiram Myers quotes John Bilby as saying that wolves were observed near the Stevens Fishery in that vicinity in 1900. Wolves were seen in Penn's Valley in 1900, 1901 and 1902. In 1908 a black wolf was observed traveling south towards the Seven A\fountains. How far north these wolves traveled can only be conjectured. Doubtless some of them got as far as the northern border of the Black Forest, there turning back at the vast stretch of arable land ahead of them. Their instinct told them to go north; for some reason they did not travel south. All the native wolves of Southern Pennsylvania were grey. and between these and the black variety existed a marked antipathy. Perhaps they dreaded going south and encountering their old-time foes. In the north there were no native wolves after 18390, and in that respect the way was. clear. In the southern counties few native wolves hung on after 1890, but they were constantly re- inforced by wanderers from West Virginia and Mary- land. Be it as it may, the two or three black wolves which remained were back in the Seven Mountains in 1908, and doubtless died of starvation during the fol- lowing year. They were probably the same as left that region ten years before, and were therefore very aged specimens at the time of their return. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, in his remarkable treatise on the mammals of the Adirondack region, in speaking of the disappear- WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 63 ance of wolves in the North Woods, says: “In the year 1871 New York State put a bounty on their scalps, and it is a most singuar coincidence that a great and sudden decrease in their numbers took place about that time. What became of them is a great and, to me, inexplicable mystery, for it is known that but few were slain. There is but one direction in which they could have escaped, and that is through Clinton County into lower Canada. In so doing they would have been obliged to pass around the north end of Lake Champlain and cross the river Richelieu and before reaching the extensive forests would have had to travel long distances through tolerably well-settled portions of country. And there is no evidence that they made any such journey.” Doubtiess more Adi- rondack wolves were killed than were born, and, like the wild pigeons which were similarly affected, they had to come to an end. In other words, the old ones all died out about the same year. In Pennsylvania it was starvation and poisoning that wiped out the wolves. In \West Virginia wolves disappeared mys- terious!y about the same time as in New York and Pennsytvania. In the Adirondacks deer were plentiful at the time the wolves disappeared. In Pennsylvania when the black wolves made their ineffectual break for the North, wild life was at its lowest ebb in the Seven Mountains. The bulk of the original pine and hem- lock was gone, disastrous forest fires were annually laying waste vast areas, hunters and trappers were everywhere. The active measures of the State Forestry 64 WOLE DAYS IN PMNNSYLVANIA, Departinent, which cheeked wasteful fires. aad) the wise Foresight of the Game Commission whielr en forced game Eiws on the small lot of wild tite whieh remained, came too late for the wolves. When the remnant returoed they were very old and weith, aed nay all possibly have been of the same ses, CL W Dickinson says that wolves being canmibals may ave had much to do with Chetr decrease, Dan Treaster, one of the noblest of wolk lanters, when asked wry he did not cnlist cutside aid to rid Treaster Valley of wolves, slitted: “Destroy their food supply and they will po soon enough.” “There was aiiple verifieation of his prophecy. Bat the tuiprovident poisoners hur ried their passing, Llowever hungry the wolves were, they would have subsisted somehow were it nat for the poisoners. Manmished Front the lack of food, even a poisoned carciss tasted good to then. The whole sale poisoning indulged in by the Griffins aud ©, W. Dickinson in Melvean County tn i878 devtroyed all the wolves in that section except a few strapelers and crip: ples. In other words, the reproducing animals of the packs were pone. Soamnel for thar tocatity. The pomsoning: bee of the Penns Valley farmers tn V85% put anend to the black wolves frequenting: the east end of that valley. Seomuely for another locality. Robert Ackey, grandson of Samuel Ackey, the mighty Centre County wolf linnter, told the writer recently that very few wolve. comparatively were ohol or trapped in the Snow Shoe repion. In his boyhood le was born i 139 wolve, were vo prevalent about his home dear EDWIN GRIMES, Born 1830, and son, EDWIN GRIMES, Jr. This Aged Hunter Has Had Many Thrilling Adventures With Wolves in the Forests of Northern Pennsylvania. WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 65 Snow Shoe that they approached the buildings every butchering time, howling vociferously. They fre- quented the old fields and abandoned sugar camps, and could be heard yelling somewhere almost every night. There was an especially heavy snow-fall in the early part of 1859. Thomas Askey, Robert Askey’s father, killed an aged horse which he poisoned and dragged on a sled four miles into the forest. 126 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. sack was gone, and the two wolves with it. The thought struck us the boy might have gone to the den, so we ran to it, and got there just in time to see that boy back out from under the rock with the seventh wolf. Now, we don’t believe that there was another boy of his size and age within the State that could have been hired to go there into that den. My cousin, whose name is F. A. Gallup, is still alive, and resides in the vicinity of Smethport. We kept our traps set in the paths for two months, and did not catch a thing except hedgehogs, rabbits and woodchucks.” According to Dr. McKnight, Dickinson was not the only Pennsylvania hunter who caught wolves with hooks. In the good doctor’s “Pioneer Outline His- tory of Northwestern Pennsylvania,” it is related how Bill Long, “The King Hunter,” in 1845, used an iron hook to draw eight pups out of a wolf’s den four miles from the present town of Sigel, Jefferson County. Holmes Wiley, a noted wolf hunter of Gar- rett County, Maryland, whose expeditions often ex- tended into Southern Pennsylvania, made a specialty of entering wolf dens and capturing the pups alive, often encountering and vanquishing the justly infur- iated parent wolves. XV. HISTORICAL DATA. EFORE bringing to a close this treatise on the B wolves in Pennsylvania, it might be well to men- tion some evidences of their historical antiquity and connection with the early Indians. After the Erie Indians had been vanquished and departed from the region south of Lake Erie it was not occupied by any Indians for a number of years. As a consequence the entire country south of the lake became infested with great packs of wolves. When the distinguishhed ex- plorer, Rene La Salle, passed along the southern shore of Lake Erie, in 1680, the wolves had increased to such numbers as to endanger travel through the entire region. The present Crawford, Mercer and other Northwestern Counties were swarming with wolves when the first travelers passed through that region. Wolf Creek (or Tummeink, “Place of Wolves”), in Mercer and Butler Counties, is a name which no doubt belongs to this period of wolves. The early French pioneers called the Lenni-Lenape Indians “wolves,” because they were first brought into contact with the Munsee, the “Wolf” tribe of the Lenni-Lenape. The name of this clan was “Took-seat,” meaning “Round Paw,” and having reference to the wolf. The Minsi (often confused with the Munsee) was the “Wolf” clan of the Munsee tribe. A Minsi, or Minisink, was a member of the Wolf clan of the Wolf tribe of the 127 128 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. Lenni-Lenape. During the various periods of Indian hostilities in what is now Pennsylvania, the Munsee, and especially the Minsi, were the most hostile to the white settlers because of having been driven from the country adjacent to the Delaware River by the various purchases of the Penn family, and then driven from the Susquehanna, notably at Wyoming, by the various Susquehanna purchases. The Munsee were usually allied with the Mahickons and the Senecas, and be- came veritable “wolves” in their raids on settlements. The above information was furnished to the writer by Rev. Dr. George P. Donehoo, of Coudersport, one of the great authorities on the Indian period in Pennsyl- vania, and the able secretary of the State Historical Commission. The history of the Indians is closely interwoven with that of the wolves, and further re- searches will surely unearth a wealth of interesting materials. END OF PART I. (Part II will comprise the Moose, Elk, Bison, Beaver, Pine Marten, Fisher, Glutton and Canada Lynx.) se COED GRAVE OF JACOB F. BARNET, One of Bill Pursley’s Companions on the Great ‘Surprise’ Wolf Hunt of 1857. ADDENDA. MMON WILT, the Lock Haven blacksmith, A states that in the fall of 1876 two boys, Joe and Oliver Lenhart, aged 10 and 12 years, respec- tively, residing near Westover, Clearfield County, while shooting at mark with an old shot gun saw a panther stealthily entering the lot. With a well- directed shot they killed the monster, which measured eleven feet from tip to tip. It is related that Daniel Karstetter, when residing near Coburn in the old days, heard a snarling under the bake-oven, and on in- vestigation found a huge panther engaged in devour- ing a domestic cat. The long rifle was quickly put into position and the great brute was killed instantly from a bullet planted squarely between his eyes. * * * * Jesse Logan, Indian hunter, stated that the favorite method of the redmen of hunting the panther was to follow its tracks in the snow, the hunters traveling on snow shoes, and being armed with long oak shafts much like those used in playing the game of Snow Snake. These were sharpened to the fineness of knife- blades at the tips. When the animal was overtaken it was speared to death by the Nimrods. This exciting sport was carried on by the Pennsylvania Indians until early in the Nineteenth Century. 129 130 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. The history of the panther in Pennsylvania is not complete without mention of Jesse Hughes, one of the leading hunters of Lycoming County. Many are the tales recounted of his adventures with the Penn- sylvania lion. On one occasion he was driving his team through Antes Gap, in the direction of Jersey Shore, his sled being loaded with freshly killed beef. Near the old Woolen Mill a panther leaped from a tree, narrowly missing the sled. Hughes always car- ried a rifle under the driver’s box, which he brought quickly into position and with a well-directed bullet, ended the monster’s life, as it lay sprawling by the roadside. John Vanatta Phillips, of Chatham’s Run, Clinton County, a relative of Hughes, also had an oc- casional “run-in” with the lion of Pennsylvania. One Sunday morning, immaculately attired (he was known as the best dressed man in the county), Phillips was on his way to Sunday School. His path lay through a dense wood. A tree had been blown across the path, on which lay a huge tawny panther fast asleep. Phil- lips not wishing to make a detour, took off his tall beaver hat and struck the sleeping brute a heavy “crack” across the back of the neck. The panther woke up, uttered a piercing yell, and galloped off into the depths of the forest. It is related that on one occasion Daniel Karstetter was resting after a hard day’s hunt in Allemingle Valley near Coburn, and had fallen into a doze lean- ing up against a giant hemlock, when waking sud- ‘WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 131 denly he beheld a pack of twenty wolves staring at -him. He opened his mouth to shout at the inquisitive brutes, but found himself speechless. He complained of hoarseness for several days afterwards. This inci- dent recalls the old French superstition that the sight of a wolf produces dumbness, the saying being when persons suddenly become hoarse that “Il a vu le loup.” (He has seen the wolf.) The early scarcity of wolves in Western Pennsylva- nia is attested to by the statement in the “History of Mercer County” that in 1807 bounties were paid on the scalps of only thirty-one wolves in that county. Former Governor Pennypacker, in his “History of Phoenixville,’ published in 1872, stated that the last wolf discovered and killed in the dense woods at Val- ley Forge, Chester County, met its death in 1780. Further on in the book he says: “In March, 1731, Moses Coates purchased 150 acres of land along the Northern Bank of the French Creek, where North Phoenixville now is, and erected a dwelling. At this time the only inhabitants upon the Manavon Tract were himself, Francis Buckwalter, and an Indian named Skye. ‘The wolves were so numerous that the sheepfold for security, was placed against the house, and for many years afterwards, in the Winter morn- ings, the snow would be found beaten down by the struggles of these animals in their efforts to effect an 132 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. entrance. When they became too daring, a gun dis- charged from the window into the pack would dis- perse them temporarily.” of: ae 2k oa Jacob Meyer, an elderly resident of Carroll, Clinton County, recently told A. D. Karstetter, Postmaster of Loganton, that one Winter night during the Civil War, after “sitting up” with his “best girl,” he had occasion to cross the Wolf’s Path, on the Northerly side of Eastern Sugar Valley, when homeward bound. It was in the “we sma’ hours” and the stars had begun to wane. Suddenly Meyer heard a yelping and snarl- ing, only to find himself surrounded by a dozen huge grey wolves. The animals kept surrounding him, gnashing their teeth, and switching him with their hairy tails, but made no further effort to molest him. But when he started to walk, they acted as if they wanted to trip him. He was unarmed so decided to make the best of the situation. The wolves gambolled about him until at the first grey streaks of dawn they disappeared up the path in the direction of Nittany Mountain. Meyer was almost frozen, being deprived of the power of speech for several hours after return- ing to his residence. Meyer's adventure recalls an almost similar experience of William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania, as described by former Governor Pennypacker. ‘he famous Quaker, who had been inspecting some property in Chester County, near Phoenixville, became belated and lost his way. Night “SOAIOM HOKIG JO SHILd AG WUBIN 4eAO pauooueW U92O WAM ZIM PUe Ja}SB94] UPC B4BUM “ALNNOO S3YLNAD) AA TIVA YHALSVEYL NI NYVE ‘WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 133 settling on, he was surrounded in the dense forest by a pack of snarling, snapping wolves. The ugly brutes played about his feet all night in a most tantalizing fashion, severely trying his nerves and temper, he being, of course, unarmed. At about daybreak the wolves departed, leaving Penn to get back to civiliza- tion as best he could. Ever afterwards he referred to the hill where he had been tormented by the wolves as “Mount Misery” and the hill where emerged from the forest in safety as “Mount Joy.” * * * * Juliana Barnes, or Berners, an early English hunt- ress, born about 1388, like other writers of the period, places the wolf among the four animals of venery, or sport royal, the others being the hart, hare and boar, in her “Book of St. Albans.” (Published after her death.) * x * * It is a singular circumstance that the Lovett family, who were noted as wolf hunters in England in the “Middle Ages’”—their arms are three wolves, passant, sprang into prominence as wolf hunters in the Black ‘Forest of Pennsylvania during the second half of the Nineteenth Century. Their name is said to be derived from Luvet, or Loup, meaning wolf. 2k ok ok ok “Jack” Allen, a New Hampshire hunter, (born in 1835) is said by the noted author, Charles E. Beals, Jr., 134 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA, to have been followed by wolves for many miles while skating one night on the River Saint John, in Maine, years ago, recalling Jacob Franck’s similar adventure on the Sinnemahoning in Pennsylvania. ok Xe 1K 3K It is stated that at the funeral of the noted Indian Chief Passaconaway, in Maine, in 1682, animals to the number of 6,711 constituted the funeral offering, among them 240 wolves. * ok oc ok John W. Crawford, of Chatham’s Run, Clinton County, reports that one morning during the cold weather in February, 1917, an animal probably a coyote but resembling a wolf, was seen crossing the old canal bed on the Charles Stewart farm, near that place. (The above paragraphs were inadvertently omitted in the compilation of the book.) eG wr eee eaeoree