UNIVERSITY
OF PITTSBURGH

QL202

S559
v.l

LIBRARY

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

The Altoona Tribune Publishing* Co.

ALTOONA, PENNA.

19 17

COPYKIGHTFU ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Pennsylvania Lion or Panther

(REVISED EDITION)

" line panthere ou un lion, me disait
je, serait loge a souhait la dedans.'^'

— Bomhonnel

HON. COLEMAN K. SOBER,

For 21 Years a Member of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

World Renowned Shot — Intimate Friend of Aaron Hall.

INDEX.

Pages.

I. Preface 5-7

11. History 9-1^

111. Description 14-18

1\'. Habits 1 y-33

\'. Early Prevalence •34-28

\'I. The Great Slaughter -39-33

\'II. The Biggest Panther o3-39

MIL Diminishing Numbers -10-43

IX. The Last Phase 44-48

X. Re-Introduction : Sporting Possibilities 49-52

XL Superstitions 53-57

Xll. Tentative List of Panthers Killed in

Pennsylvania Since 1860 58-59

XIII. Ode to a Stuffed Panther 60-61

I

I. PREFACE.

THE object of this pamphlet is to produce a narra-
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 ]\Iary 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

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. Economically
the panther was of great value for the hide, meat, and
oil, and as the finest game animal which Pennsylvania
produced. As former Governor Glynn, of New York,
said in a message to the Legislature, "Game should be
conserved to furnish a cheap food supply." In the fol-
lowing pages will be found the bulk of the information
wdiich the w^'iter has been able to collect on the sub-
ject of the panther in Pennsylvania. It has been pre-
pared from 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 other works on
the cougar of the United States and Central and South
America. He does not seek to "split hairs" and make
the Pennsylvania Lion a separate variety, greater or
grander than its relatives in other parts. The state-
ment is herein made that Pennsylvania panthers were
the largest known in the East, and this the writer be-
lieves 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 leeendarv lore of the State. But the chief eftort

CLEMENT F. HERLACHER,

With a Panther Cub Taken in Treaster Valley, IVi:fflin County,

in 1893.

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER.

of these pages will he to (hsprove many of the stories
derogatory to the animal, to give a hearing to its side
of the case and a wider knowledge of its heautv 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. 'J'hen
there would he at least one published work which
would sliow the misjudged ''cougar" in a favorable
light. Though perhaps lacking in scientitic 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 vallev.
In Algeria, where wandering leopards or •"panthers"
are found, they are called Berrani, whereas those
wdiich 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 Avhich ani-
mals shall be destroyed and which spared. Just as
we look with scorn on the wasteful methods of the old-
time lumbermen of Pennsvlvania. we will before lone
cherish the same opinion of the men who wantonly
destroyed the wild life of the Commonwealth.

II. HISTORY.

Till'' history of the pantlier seems to l)e as old as
the Indians themselves. The Erie trihe who
were l)lotted out by the Iroquois in l().-)(i were
called the Yenresh, or "the long tailed." which was
(lallicised into "Eri." hence Erie, "the place of the
pruitlier." The French called the Erie, "Nation du
Chat," or Cat Nation, which was simply a translalion
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
!)Ut jjelieve that an animal which howded 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
l)rofit, the elk, as big as a small ox ; deer, bigger than
om^s. beaver, raccoon, rabbits, squirrels, and some eat
young l:)ear and commend it. The creatures for profit
only, by skin or fur, and which are natural to these
]iarts, are the wild cat. panther, otter, wolf, fisher.

10 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER.

minx, muskrat, etc." This shows that the sagacious
Quaker was awake to the commercial possibiHties 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 panther was
driven back as far as the western limits of the presenr
Chester County. By 1750 it was rarely found East of
the Blue Mountains. Here it made its stand for more
than three-quarters of a century. By 184:0 it was
driven further West, its limits being approximately a
line drawn across the State in a Northeasterly direc-
tion, beginning at the Eastern border of Fulton Coun-
ty, thjough Perry County, thence along the . North
Branch to Wilkes-Barre, and from thence across to
Honesdale. By 1870 the range was closed in to the
following counties : Clearfield, Centre, Mifflin. Clin-
ton. Potter, Lycoming and Susquehanna. By 1880
Clearfield, Centre and Mifflin contained the only na-
tive panthers, though wanderers from West Virginia
continued traveling through some of the Western and
Northern counties. In 1895 the range was limited 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 Pennsvlvania, heard the weird crv in Treas-

GEORGE G. HASTINGS,
Who Killed 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

12 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 Earner, 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. Earner, 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.

AFTER interviewing many old-time panther hunt-
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 A-'irginia 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

K-'4Ur.&^ I;*."'.;

I^^nfrr*?

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 dc
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 mancd male
panther near JNIcElhattan Run, Clinton County, in
1798. The Indians told the Dutch settlers on ]\lan-
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 fcVis 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 ]\Iiller Run, Lycoming County, in 1865, built a
fire and sufifocated 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. This is undoubtedly superior to fcUs
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 J.ynx, or big grey wild cat. The Pennsylvania
Germans u>ed 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 1T5 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 \\'arren County. Old Mifflin County hunters
described a panther killed by John Reager and
William Dellett near Alilroy in 1869 as being so
large that Avhen the carcass was thrown across tne
shoulders of a horse the head dragged on one side
and the tail on the other. According to the Pennsyl-
^•ania hunters the specimens of fclis 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 clam 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 unprc-
paredness, lingering 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 W^est 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. Rhoad's.

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IV. HABITS.

IT is unfortunate that when the Pennsylvania lion
was prevalent no local naturalists made an at-
tempt to study the habits of the noble animal. j\Ir.
S. X. Rhoads, in his "jMammals of Pennsylvania and
Xcw Jersey," gives us the most complete account, but it
was written years 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. In a 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 oy 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, wliere 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 the
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
voung in September. Audubon says gestation took
!>T davs. and Dr. Conklin, former director of Central
Park Zoological Garden, Xew' York City, claims 01
(lays 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 18T1 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 abandorfed by
their almost mature offspring. In "Fur News Maga-
zine" a writer from Perry County describes a battle to
the death between male panthers wdiich 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. The 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 wdio was
one of the pioneers in this vicinity. ]\Iany 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 slanchng 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 beer." 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 18)35, 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.

EARLY PREVALENCE.

LIONS in British East Africa were never more
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-
Ijility. S. 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.
/Vudubon 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
liunter's neighbors were engaged slaying panthers at
the same time. During these twcnty-tive years it is
estimated that six hundred panthers were killed in
Centre county. Eleven full grown panthers were
killed on Aledix Run, which flows through Clearlield
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
\isitor in Potter, ]\IcKean 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 Jnniata. I don't believe that more
than ten or twelve were captured in what is now ^Ic-
Kean county since the first white man settled there.
I believe that panthers, like wild cats, were afraid of
the cjrcy timber wolves which abounded there. Yet
the panther was almost as plentiful in Tioga, Bradford
and Susquehanna counties as it was in Centre or
]^Iifflin. Hundreds were slain in Susquehanna county
and Blackman's history of that county abounds with
instances of its appearance among the early settlers.
It was killed by the hundreds in ^^^•oming 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 w^ere of no
rare occurrence. Among the Jefferson county hunters
who killed fifty panthers may be mentioned ''Bill" 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 young
the season before. The 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 (18C5-1892)
Clinton County's Famous Panther Hunter.

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 27

hides. He thought so Httle 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.
\\'adsworth and J. A. Roan, residents of CHnton 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
W'ylie ]\Iiller, 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 A'alley 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, w^as
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 vv-as 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 occupa'nts considerably. John S. 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."

\dl^-^

VI. THE GREAT SLAUGHTER.

AXIINIAL drives, similar to those once held in
South Africa, were as plentiful in Central ami
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 lUiO, in
the vicinity of Pomfret Castle, a fort for defense
against the Indians, which had been constructed in
1T5G. "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 174:4:. History
has confused the two men, but as the wild hunter
ottered 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 w^ere 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, graduallv 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
guards 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 9,t the close of
the carnage: Forty-one panthers, 109 wolves, 112
foxes, 114 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. The percentage of panthers to the entire num-
ber killed is an interesting commentary on the early
prevalence of these animals. The choicest hides were
taken, together with buffalo tongues, and then the
heap of carcasses "as tall as the tallest trees," Avas
heaped with rich pine and fired. This created such
a stench that the settlers were compelled to vacate
their cabins in the vicinity of the fort, three miles
away. There 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 Creek. Black Jack's unpopularity with the In-
dians was added to when they learned of this animal
drive. The 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. Alitcheltree, 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 1S93, stands
well up on the list. Between the years 1S45 and 1869

32

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER.

he killed fifty panthers, principally in Centre and
Clearfield counties. As he began his career as a
hunter on Bell's and Tipton runs, tributaries of the
Juniata, he was often called the "Lion Hunter of the
Juniata." On one occasion when visited by Hon.
C. K. Sober, of Lewisburg, former State Game Com-
missioner, he had the hides of eleven panthers hang-
ing up at his camp on Rock Run. In 1849 the last
animal drive or "Ring Hunt" was held by the Pioneers
at Beech Creek, Clinton county. Several panthers, it
is said, escaped through the human barrier.

,*^,

VII. THE BIGGEST PANTHER.

WITH practically no written records it is well
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 IMcElhattan. 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
7 feet 9 inches ; the second, also a male, killed by
Lewis Dorman in Centre county in 1S6S, is 8 feet;
the third, a female, killed by Thomas Anson in Berks
county in 187T, is G 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
U'oman'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

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 jMatthew
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,"' w^as 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 IMuseum. The contents of
this A'luseum were removed, it is stated, to Jackson-
ville, Florida, about 1870. "Adirondack" :\Iurray,

JOHN Q. DYCE (1830-1904)

Who Trailed the Last Panthers in IVlcElhattan Gap,

Clinton County.

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 35

writing about 1869, says that the panther of the
''Xorth Woods" often measured twelve feet from tip
to tip. Simon Pfouts, of Leidy township, Chnton
county, caught a record panther in a trap near the
mouth of Beaver Dam run which measured eleven
feet six inches from tip to tip. This is mentioned in
}ilavnard's ''Historical \'iew of Clinton County." Dr.
Merrinm believes eight feet to be a good average size.
This would indicate a close similarity in dimensions
between the panthers of the Adirondacks. 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
^Ir. 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. Alerriam. 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
jMcElhattan, 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 Plufif, who died at Hyner, Clinton coun-
ty, in January, 1914, aged 74 years, also recalled the
circumstance. It is recorded at length in A'laynard'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 well
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. Wlien he
had arrived v.athin 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
ritle 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 tlie 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 Avell-trained dogs, he killed four panthers,
and the following day he killed another. :\Ieshach
Browning, in his entertaining work entitled "Fortv-
four Years a Hunter" (first published in Philadelphia
in 1S65), thus describes the l^illing 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 oft' 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. I found he was up and fighting again,

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.

"I 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 bodv."

VIII. DIMINISHING NUMBERS.

WITH the hand of all raised against them, it is
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
Alififlin County. In Clearfield County they had the
widest range, and increased most satisfactorily.
There was an almost impenetrable evergreen forest at
the head of jMedix 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 Clifi^ord, 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. Ill, Page
67) gives the weight of this animal as 146 pounds,

40

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 41

length 6 feet 5}^ 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. Xearby 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 186 7. 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, 1913. How
this panther wandered into Berks Comity, 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, wdio 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, Chnton
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 year, 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
from the Adirondack ^Mountains in New York, which
occurred so completely after the lumbermen's devas-
tation.

IX. THE LAST PHASE.

AND now the noble lion of Pennsylvania is re-
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 Youngxlale, 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 w^as 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 Shoe, Centre County, during the Civil War.
James Lebo, of Lucullus, Lycoming County, tracked
two panthers across his fields in February. 100!). They
were traveling in a northeasterly direction. During
the summer of that year panther cries were heard at
different points along 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 Cryder was found in 1896. Pan-
ther tracks were observed on the Pike by Dr. Rothrock
in 1913; in Detwiler Hollow, in the Seven Alountains,
in the same year, by several hunters. In Xovember,
191.2, three rabbit hunters scared up a panther which
was sleeping under the prostrate top of a pine tree, in
Detwiler. In November, 1913, several farmers heard
panther cries, and 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 Coimty, in the same month. There is probably
a panther path leading into Pennsylvania from the
Maryland and West A'irginia ^Mountains. This is
proved by the killing of a panther in November, 1913,
several miles north of Washington, 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 JMountain 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, ^lif-
fiin 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 A'^alley within the past thirty
years. The panther which Wilson Rishel heard on the
Sugar A'alley ^Mountain, south of Tylersville, Clinton
County, in 1S70, was heard the day previously at
Lamar, and the day before that in the east end of
Nittany Valley, according to Dr. Jonathaji INIoyer.
Emmanuel Harman heard the same panther the week
before in Gottshall Hollow. David Alark, born in
1835, 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. Herlacher camped in Treaster A'alley 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 MOVER,

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 Ahrahani Lincoln's
Gettysburg speech is to oratory ; it surely is the pearl
without price. Although the good doctor is nov*^ in liis
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 the Seven
Mountains silhouetted against the cloudless heavens;
one can feel the oppressive stillness uninterrupted by
the stirring of a single twig imtil the panther's song
begins. And that song, that terrible song, so filled with
anguish, a banshee-hke 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 v/as later denied. Alany per-
sons claim to have heard and seen a panther on tlie
Couder sport 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, nov/ of Clinton Coun-
ty, saw a panther which approached his camp fire in
the Seven ]\Iountains in 1885. PIcn. 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. j\I. 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 county, 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.

RE-INTRODUCTION: SPORTING
POSSIBILITIES.

AS man becomes more educated, he will shrink
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 wnll
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. Hart ^Nlerriam, in his intensely interesting
account of the animals of the Adirondack region, de-
scribes 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. He 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. This, 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, ennob-
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 Churchvard, near W^oodward. in

GEORGE SMITH (1827-19C1)
A Successful Elk County Panther and Wolf Hunter.

THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 51

John Penn"s \'alley. Henry Dorman, of Weikert,
Union County, had occasion to carry a strip of bacon
to a himber camp on Cherry Run. It was at (hisk, and
a panther scenting the bacon, followed him the entire
distance, occasionally howling mournfully. Packs of
I)anther 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 best for this purpose.
though many prefer the ordinary wdiiiTet or "tice."
Aaron Hall, the "Lion Hunter of the Juniata," slayer
of fifty panthers in Pennsylvania between 18^5 and
18G!), 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-
missioner, 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. \Mth 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 i^igs,
bed-covers and lap robes. The Seneca Indians made

52 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 ^lachtando 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." Pennsylvania can have all this and more, if
she will but set about to re-establish the superb sport.
In British East Africa, according to A. Barton Hep-
burn, of New York City, lions have been placed on
the protected list, the limit being four lions per hunter
a season. \Mny 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 Berks county, possessed several
trained panthers wdiich 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 Avas
evidently an early prototype of Colonel Jones, would
la^o the panthers and drag them back to his camp in
triumph.

XI. SUPERSTITIONS.

THERE has been a marked tendency with the
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 "style" to call the panther a coward, like has been
done with the African lion. Why? Because he wall
not attack men. The African lion is said to charge
when wounded, but the panther takes his medicine
and dies like a gentleman. Dr. ^lerriam 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 w^orld-wide repu-
tation, should set the matter at rest for all time :

53

•54 THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER.

"West Chester, Pa., Jan. 5, 1014.

Dear jNIi;. Shoemakei; :

I have your very kind letter oE January '^d. That
panther cry — 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. Th.ere 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 A'alley 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 I)}' 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. Rothrock."

Joseph H. Taylor, an able v>'estern writer on sport-
ing topics, accurately describes the panther's cry
which he heard during a flood at Lake Mandan, North
Dakota, in ^iarch, 1880.

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 Aluseum on the top floor of the old Academv

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, ]\Iyerstown, 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-
ficall}' for this and other before-mentioned reasons.
having as little peace in animal form as in their
human incarnations. Early German pionee/rsi 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 ISTO, 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.

57

dently thought him dead, and buried him in leaves to
be eaten on some future occasion. Michael Fetzer,
born 183-i, 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 tabic. He was soon chased away by the
dogs and disappeared in the forest at the foot of In-
dian Grave Hill. Franklin Shreckcngast describes
panthers concealed in the forest grinding their teeth
and snarling while Tom .\skey and he cleaned a deer
at a big spring near Snow Shoe. He said tliat 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-
ty— the great abode of these beasts in early days — was
killed on Rock Run in 188(i, 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. .
X Clinton

1860 John D. DeShay.
1860 Philip Shreckengast.
1860

Somerset

Clinton

Northumberland. .
Bradford

(1 Cub)

1860
1861
1860 Pest Wilcox.

1861 Tom Askey.
1860 Jesse Logan.
1864 Jake Sampsel.

1862 Faires Boyer.

1862 Faires Boyer.

1863 Sylvester C. Williams.

Snyder

March,

Warren

December,
December,
December,

Clinton

Clinton

Elk

1863 John English.
1863 John English.
1863 George Smith.

1867 Thomas Anson.

Centre

December 24,

1868 Lewis Dorman.

1875 William Perry.

1869 Dan Treaster.

Mifflin

February 27,
January,

1872 John Swartzell.

Lycoming

Clearfield

1865 George Shover.
1870 Seth Iredell Nelson.

1871 Seth Iredell Nelson.

Clearfield

1872 Seth Iredell Nelson.

1872 Andy Jackson Long.

1873 Seth Iredell Nelson.

Clearfield

Blair

1873 Solomon Boos.

Centre ^

Centre _

December 30,
December 31,
November 21,
August 4,
January 1,
December 15,

1871 George G. Hastings.
1871 George G. Hastings.
1873 Faires Boyer.

Berks

X McKean

1874 Thomas Anson.
1860 J. Eastman.

xSusquehanna

1874 Sam Odin.

1875 Jacob Kauffman.

Susquehanna

1867 Sam Odin.

58

"BILL" LONG,

Born in Berks County, 1790, Died in Clearfield County, 1880.

"The King Hunter" of the Pennsylvania Big Game Fields.

XIII. ODE TO A STUFFED PANTHER.

(These lines were written upon seeing the effigy
of the Dorman panther in the Natural History
Museum of x\lbright College, Myerstown, Lebanon
County, on November- 6, 1912.)

At twilight wlien the shadows flit,

Within tlie ancient museum I sit,

Gazing througli tlie dust-encrusted glas's.

(While hosts of savage memories pass)

At your eflRgy, ludicrously stuffed.

The fulvous color faded, the paws all puffed,

And bullet-holes in jowl and side

Tell where your life blood 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 almost 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 ia 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,

Whis-'pering 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 \et.'3 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 Shrelner Mountain, Centre County.

Wolf Days In Pennsylvania

(REVISED EDITION)

Ou alhz-vous, louves el louveleavrf

Xous allovs dans ces plaines et dans ces rallon.".

QiCy alkz-vousfairef

Nous allons rhercher bs brebis er/arees pour leur sucer le sanij ft muiujcr

leur chair.
Je vans defends, au nom du grand JJien vivavl, de /aire phis de mal a

ces betes egarees (jue la salute Vurge ne^en a fait a son enfant.

Saint Brive aveugle les loups; saint Jehan leur cas.^^e les dents rt

saint Georges leur serre la gueule.

— Ardennes Tradition.

INDEX

Chapter Pages

I. Preface 5- 8

II. The Last 'Wolf— Who Gets the Credit !)- 18

III. The Last Pack 19- 23

IV. Three Kinds of Wolves 23- ;Jl

\'. Description and Habits 32-42

\'I. Former Prevalence 43- 53

VII. The Biggest Wolf .51- 57

YIU. A White Wolf in Sugar \'alley 58- 60

IX. Cause of Extinction 61- 65

X. Wolf Hunting in Pennsylvania G6- 86

XL Possible Re-Introduction 87- 95

XII. Superstitions 96-111

XIII. Bravest of the Brave 112-116

XIV. Catching Wolves With Fish Hooks. . .117-126
X\'. Historical Data 127-128

Panther Killed by Lewis Dorman on Shreiner Mountain,
Christmas Eve, 1868.

I. PREFACE.

THAT a new book treating on the much-discussed
wolf can be written at all the animal must be
described' from an entirely different point of
view, else it would be supertiuous. 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.
\\^olves 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

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 hav-oc
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
were 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 Vv^ere completely exterminated. It is
an over-production of any one species of things that

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

carries the germ of trouble; Consiequently 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 bound's — 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 aiid sheep gave it
to tliem. 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 accjuiesce

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 heard of
"grouse"' 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 Amcricanus
Borcalis Miller is completely extinct. The race of
deer is only kept up by frequent introduction of speci-
mens from Western States ivlicrc there arc zvolvcs.
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.

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II. THE LAST WOLF— WHO GETS THE
CREDIT?

FRO]\r the mass of data and the number of claim-
ants it is indeed difficult to award the palm foi'
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 whicli
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 \'alley,
in IMay, 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 ^^luseum 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 1S96 ; a
New York State wolf, also probably escaped from
some zoo, killed by Daniel Rutan in Wayne County in
1887. 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

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 w^as 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" "]\Iammals 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 A'alley. 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 \"alley, formerly Black
Wolf A^alley, 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 \'alley. In 1884 Emmanuel
Dobson killed the last wolf in Forest County. In that
year Seth Iredell Xelson killed five brown wolves in
Clearfield County. Andy Long killed the last two
wolves in Jefl^erson County in 1881. Jake Hamersley,
of North Point, killed the last wolf in Clinton County
about 1877. In February, 1!)1.'), there was a "wolf
scare" in Horse \*alley, 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,"'
1!)14. An escaped coyote killed by A. B. Winchester
in Clinton County in December, 191.5 ; 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.
AMiitehead, of W'illiamsport, reported that two wolves
or coyotes were tracked in his game preserve on Larry's
Creek. Lycoming County, in Februaiy. I!)1G. Game
wardens reported to the redoubtable Eljr. 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
1886, in the Clearfield region between 1884 and 1893,
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
Ouinn'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 (18C9-1905)

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 Jefiferson 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 Jefiferson 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 bv wolves on :\Iill

14 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Creek in 1869. The last wolves in Elk County, on
which bounties w-ere paid, are recorded in Dr. W. J.
McKnight's "Pioneer Outline History of Northwest-
ern Pennsylvania" as follows : J. R. Green, Nov. 8,
18?1, one; j. Bennett, Jr., Oct. 28, 1873, one; A. J.
Rummer, Dec. 13, 1871, one ; J. R. Green, October,
1874, one; John Myers, Dec. 11, 1871, one; George
Smith, April 8, 1871, two; Charles A. Brown, Dec.
28, 1871, one; O. B. Fitch, December, 1877. one.
James Irvin collected the last wolf bounty in Warren
County in 1866. In 1865 several wolves were killed
by the Faddy boys, Seneca Indians, on the Cornplanter
Reservation, in Warren County. Wolves were plenti-
ful on Cornplanter's Reservation and on Kinzua Creek
as late as 1870. Indians killed the last wolves in W^ar-
ren County in the late sixties, but there is no record of
their having collected any bounties on the scalps. Jim
Jacobs, the old Seneca elk hunter, was conspicuous
among the redmen who hunted the last wolves in
Warren and McKean Counties. According to some
authorities this mighty Nimrod was killed by a train
near Bradford in 1880, although John C. French, of
Roulette, Potter County, declares that he saw him on
the Seneca Reservation, alive and well in September,
1881. But such an apparition would not surprise the
Indians, who firmly believed in ghosts. General
Egbert L. Allele, Civil War hero and pioneer of AIc-
Kean County oil fields, purchased two female wolves
from C. \Y. Dickinson, of Norwich, that county, as or-
naments to his estate on Riverside Drive, New York

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 15

Citv, ill Mav, 1.S72. He commissioned the hunter to
catch him a male wolf, hut 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 killetl. 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 LeRo}' Lyman, of the same County, caught live
wolves in 18G? which they kept for nearly three years,
finall}- 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 LS86, and we asked for infor-
mation which would lead to the identity of the
lads whose names were desired by Colonel Henry
\\'. Shoemaker, a noted author of Pennsylvania
mountain and forest tales and history.

'"A 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 'Sir. Ives by tele-
phone last evening. He said that in 1S8S, 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.

]\It. 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
wplf 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.
I'he 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.

"Mr. Ives says the pelt measured 7 feet 4 inches
in length from tip to tip. •

"In 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

C. W. DICKINSON,

Of McKean County, the Greatest Living Pennsylvania

Wolf Hunter.

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 \'alley 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 ]\Iills. 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 in
the valley below. Many farmers favored firing the
mountains to destroy their cover.

III. THE LAST PACK.

AS 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. IMcKean County, in 1847, and
subsequent years. They 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 Schzvartaegeist 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, says 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 Moun-
tains, evidentl}^ 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. F. Conser, a Mill-

n

DANIEL OTT (1820-1916)

The Veteran Hunter of Snyder County, Who Killed the Last

Wolves in the Susquehanna Valley.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 21

heini farmer, was working in one of his fields with his
son Harry in March, 1908, 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
jNIountains. It is said that wolves howled in Treaster
A'alley and High \''alley 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, wdiich was imdoubtedly
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 IMcKean
County during the first half of the nineteenth century.
At times it numbered a hundred an'mals, old and
young. Settlements along the Alleghanv divided it,

22 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 VHI, that the
Razey "wolf" was Col. Parker's escaped coyote. The
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.

IT is certain that there were three kinds of wolves
in Pennsylvania, although they may have been
color phases of one species, ca)iis mexicaniis
nuhUus. This might stand as a fact were it not that
there was a difference in localities inhabited by the
several varieties. While there may have been cases
where black wolves whelped grey or brown pups, and
inversely, yet the concensus of opinion of the old hunt-
ers, and it is on their observations that this book is
writtten, is that the wolves of Pennsylvania bred re-
markably true to color. The largest variety, the grey
wolf, was found in Xorthern and in Southern Penn-
sylvania, or, to be more exact, in the counties of the
Xorthern and Southern tier. The brown wolf, small-
est in size, was the variety that formerly abounded in
the Blue Mountains, in the \\'est Branch A^alley, clear
to Clearfield County, and in the ^^'estern part of the
State. The grey and brown varieties were less wary
and were more quickly exterminated than the third
variety, which was midway in size between. the two,
the black wolf, or conis lycaon. This animal strangely
enough inhabited the most limited ground for it was
seldom seen outside the confines of the Seven Aloun-
tains in Centre and IMifilin Counties. And in the
Seven Mountains the old hunters aver that there were
no wolves except black ones. The color of these black
wolves was subject to variation. Some were jetty black,

23

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
by the fact that its general contour was different from
the others. This will be seen exactly in Chapter IV,
by studying the descriptions and dimensions of the
black wolves as dift"erentiated 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. We were so much struck with this account and
the nohle 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 ]\Iountains
and in Clearfield and Jeft'erson 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 i\Iivart 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 IMountains. 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 \'alley 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
turkev 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 Avere 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. Ouiggle, born August 22, 1830, died
May 23, 1916, an intelligent gentleman who resided at
Pine Station, Clinton Countv, told of his brother, Wil-

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 27

liam Qiiiggle. who used to climb a certain big shellbark
back of their home and bark hke a wolf, drawing
manv brown wolves off the moimtains close enough to
be shot. When shown the author's tame coyotes at Mc-
Elhattan Springs Afr. Quiggle exclaimed : "Why, those
are the same animals that abounded on the Bald Eagle
Mountain 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 \'alley. 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
Quiggle 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
}kIcElhattan. in Clinton County. The stress laid on
the "barking" of these brown wolves is another point
in favor of the possibility of their being "prairie
wolves" or coyotes. Daniel Ott, born May 27, 1S20,
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 jMahanoy Mountain. Air. 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
(caiiis 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."
Hunters 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 uubilits. 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 \'incennes, Indiana, whom he vis-
ited, caught many black wolves in pitfalls. In the Seven
Mountains, in Centre and Alifflin Counties, the old

CHARLES IVES AND THEODORE FIERCE,
Slayers of a Wolf on Kinzua Creek, McKean County, 1888.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 29

settlers used this method of trapping Pennsylvania
black wolves. Daniel 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 ScJnvarzwald 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 Countv

30 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

wolfcr has this to say concerning the howHng of
wolves : "I wish I could describe 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. A Susquehanna County wolf hunter, contem-
porary with the Brown boys, is quoted in Blackman's
History as describing the wolves of that region as
"coarse, grey-haired, ugly looking things." Wolves
were prevalent in Pike County as late as 1830. Joseph
Brooks, a Yorkshireman who died in 1833, made a-
failure of his woolen-goods manufacturing near Ding-
man's Ferry because the wolves destroyed the slieep
in large numbers, while the lambs succumbed from
eating too much sheep laurel or "Lamb-kill." The site
of this unfortunate 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 *'King" (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
outfit in his saddle-bags and go to the White Deer
Mountains where he trapped until spring. He cap-
tured many wolves, luring them out of the forests by

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 31

imitating- tlicir cries. Edwin Grimes killed wolves the
same way in ^NfcKean County. For years Ileizmann
would regale the children at cabins where he stO])pe(l
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 Wliite Deer Moun-
tains contemporary with "King" Heizmann was
Jrdvey Hoffman, of Hightown, now White Deer.
His son-in-law, George Huff', born in 1835, states
that the last wolf that he (Huft") saw in the
Wliite Deer Alountains 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 Loyalsock-
ville, and dated "18.26," 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 altered conditions. }klany wolves in this re-
gion were poisoned by stuffing the hide of a lamb witli
lard, in which was hidden mix vomica. These wolves
bit into the "tempting morsel" and soon succumbed.
three being found near the Shrader Spring, in Hope
\'allev, one morninsr.

V. DESCRIPTION AND HABITS.

CW. DICKINSON, of Smethport, AIcKean Coiin-
^ 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 th^ 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

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 vounji 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 faithfull}^ 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 aie 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 Svinter, 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 fiue set of teeth, a
mouth split well ])ack ; he has a treacherous rolling
e\e. very keen ; he is heavily huilt through the butt of
jaws; ears about four inches long, inclined to be thick
and stantl up on his head like a fox's ears. He is
quite deep through the chest and well cut up in the
tlanks. 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 GO 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, X. 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, wdiicli
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 anv 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. At a 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 rnen 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 ]\Ir. 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 Mexicanns niibilis.
In size they were the largest of the Pennsyl-
vania wolves. In Williams' Civil and N^atural
History of A^ermont, 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. 37

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 occidciitalis. A
better name would be canis occidciitalis. 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 i 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 o.ld-timers
called them "Alountain Nightingales." A black wolf,
caught in Penn's \'alley, in Centre County, about 18oT,
measured, whole length, 4 feet -1 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 \'alley 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 3^4 inches; length of trunk of tail,
1 foot 1 inch; ears, 33/^ inches. These are singularly
like the measurements of the grey wolves noted by
C. A\'. Dickinson in Northern Pennsvlvania. 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 ]Mountains,
was slightly 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 ciu^ved 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

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 39

Keystone State can evolve a series of jjortraits. It is a
shame on our naturalists that none of these wolves
were secured for our various museums or zoological
gardens. Regarding the howling of Pennsylvania
wolves, Dr. McKnight, who often heard them, says:
"I have listened in my bed to the dismal howl of the
Pennsylvania wolf, and for the benefit of those who
have never heard a w^olf's musical soiree, 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 Xorthern 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 :\Iarch, 1914. Aly 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 the}'
had their summer coat, wdiich 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 wnll 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.
It 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 coukl 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, 18G0.

This wolf measured from tip of nose to end of tail
51^2 inches. From end of nose to base of tail 42
inches, length of tail loVj inches. From heel of fore
foot to top of shoulders hair pressed down 26j/2
inches. The tusks lyy 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 rule against the head, thus measuring the top side of
the ear, which was 4 inches. The extreme length was
to end of tail^one, 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 l)reeding operations. One

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 in their
last, dark, starving days did they flit from place to
place in Pennsylvania.

VI. FORMER PREVALENCE.

0X1"", of the lirst enactments made by William
IVmiii (luring his second visit tt^ rcnns}dva-
nia in 1691) was to have a l)ounty placed
upon the scalps of wolves. At a Court held at
Chester, October 2nd. 1 (;!)."), it was stated that
"there are several wolves' heads to pay for." show-
ing that there was a bounty on wolves' heads as
earlv as ]()!)5. 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, \''ol. 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," \'ol I, p. 082. 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 sufifer. 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 ITIS, wolves

43

44 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

were practically exterminated east of Lancaster. Of
course, they were plentiful still in the Blue Alountains
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 ofif much stock. Twenty years
later they were still numerous along the Blue ]\Ioun-
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 — Mrs. 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, w-as killed
during the great flood of 1847, by Mike Curts, where
the old woolen mill now stands in Antes Gap. ^Irs.
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 directly 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. ^VolYes w-ere numerous on Potato Creek, in
AIcKean County, up to about that same year. The old
packs, such as had marooned Dan Treaster in his barn
in Treaster X'alley, Centre County, up to about 1850,
were about run out in the Seven Mountains by 1880.
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 Aluseum 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 witl^ 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 1843, Dr. T. A. H. Thornton was going from
Tomhicken A^alley, 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. \W the most direct route, the distance to
his destination, where a sick ])atient waited, was about
eighteen niik>s. A few days before the doctor made
this memorable t'rij) 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 phvsician worked several hours to extricate the
animal, but failed, and as darkness was approaching
the horse was abandoned by the owner after removing
the l)ri(lle 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 juaterial
was speedily pulled from his trembling leg. On this
cloth a quantity of the stronger ammonia water was

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

poured. There were no nearby drug stores in those
days, and physicians compounded the remedies they
administered, and 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 ammonia 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 eyes 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

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
Covmty, 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 \Y. ]Motz, the famous School Boy Hunter of
\\'oodward, 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. They 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 and
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 eft'orts to get the dog.

At last a trap was set at a place on a small stream

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

where the wolves always crossed when leaving tlie 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 returned
afterward. They were seen later in the winter in
Brush \'alley.

Although many wolves were seen and tracked since
that time, that was the last one killed at the east end of
Penn's \'alley." Substantially the same story was told
to the writer by Charles W. Hosterman, of Wood-
ward, born in 184T.

Abe Simcox, who died at his mountain home on the
south slope of "Sugar A'alley Hill" in 1909, aged G8
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
witli IMajor \\'. II. 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 A'olume 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 1864: 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 AIcElhattan Run, heard wolves howling
one night at his camp; it was about 18T0. Campbell
Herritt, born in 1834, saw a lone wolf on a number of
occasions 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

Avolves howling as they crossed Sugar . \'alley 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
Mrginia Avhere game was more plentiful. In those
states the surmise was made that they had "gone
North" into Pennsvlvania.

VII. THE BIGGEST WOLF.

FROM "Old" Nichols, a respectable Indian well
known along the Coudersport Pike, comes the
story of the killing of the biggest Pennsylvania
wolf. As may be supposed, it was a grey w^olf. The
slayer was none other than the famous half-breed
Jim Jacobson, who, it is claimed, brouglit to earth one
of the last elks in Pennsylvania, and some say the last
twelve elks slain in the Commonwealth. But the most re-
markable part of the narrative is that this intrepid
hunter was but ten years of age at the time of this
matchless exploit ! Ths biggest w^olf was killed by the
"littlest" hunter. Jim Jacobson, or to be more exact,
Samuel Jimmerson Jacobson, w^as born at New Bergen,
now Cartee Camp, in Potter County, in 1848. 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, not far from Coudersport,
while his mother was Alary Jimmerson, daughter of
King Jimmerson, a Seneca chieftain, who was said to
be a son of Alary Jemison, the justly celebrated "White
W'oman of the Genesee. Jacob Jacobson was of
Swedish extraction, and died in 1852. It was during
the month of April, 1858, that the now historic "Spring
Blizzard," a snow storm of unprecedented severity,
occurred. According to the Clinton County Times,
this blizzard occurred in the latter part of April, 1854.

54

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 55

Wild Ijcasts 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,
v^ho was looking out of the window, noticed a large
animal 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 fied up the slippery bank
and into the house, never once looking back. As 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 firearm, wdiich 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 window 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 somersault 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 Xichols, Tall Chief and Dr. Johnny
Shongo, she reached the shanty about nightfall. Im-
agine her horror to see the hideous carcass hansfinsr

56 • WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

just inside the crude gate. Jimmy was watching for
her, and ran forward, rifle in hand. The Indians were
deHghted 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 4:o 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 expeii-

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
\'alley wolf, says: "Edwin Grimes, Sam Grimes, and
Ben ^lain agreed that the 'grand-daddy" wolf was at
least two inches higher at the shonlder than average
wolves, and one inch taller than the largest they had
ever seen. Continning ]\Ir. French said: ''The wolf
was not measured, but it must have been seven feet
long, without the tail. Ikn Main, who was 5 feet S
inches tall, could not swing the carcass free from the
ground by taking an ear of the wolf in each hand and
lifting the head 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 w^re killed prior to 1865, he continued killing
a few annuallv until the end of 18T5.

^—71

VIII. A WHITE WOLF IN SUGAR VALLEY.

50 QUIRE GEORGE WAGNER, who died at his
1^ comfortable mountain-top home in Rosecrans,
Chnton 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 b}' 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 tlie white vrolf
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 V^alley ]\Ir.
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

\\'ilson, 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 tht morning 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 ]\IcCormick, 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 w'as 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
"good luck" talisman. Its specialty for a long wdiile
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.

IT was some satisfaction to the admirers of the
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 olit 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 INIcKean 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 w^ere observed
across Penn's Willey, passing in a northerly di-
rection. Wolves were seen and tracked in Brush \'al-

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
Mountains. 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 1890, 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 ISTl Xew 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 aljout
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 sudi 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 Mrginia wolves disappeared mys-
teriously about the same time as in New York and
Pennsylvania. In the Adirondack* 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
evervwhere. The active measures of the State Forestrv

64 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Department, which checked wasteful fires, and the
wise foresight of the Game Commission which en-
forced game laws on the small lot of wild life which
remained, came too late for the wolves. When the
remnant returned they were very old and weak, and
may all possibly have been of the same sex. C. W.
Dickinson says that wolves being cannibals may have
had much to do with their decrease. Dan Treaster,
one of the noblest of wolf hunters, when asked why
he did not enlist outside aid to rid Treaster Valley of
wolves, stated: "Destroy their food supply and they
will go soon enough." There was ample verification
of his prophecy. But the improvident poisoners hur-
ried their passing. However hungry the wolves were,
they would have subsisted somehow were it not for
the poisoners. Famished from the lack of food, even
a poisoned carcass tasted good to them. The whole-
sale poisoning indulged in by the Griffins and C. W.
Dickinson in McKean County in 1878 destroyed all the
wolves in that section except a few stragglers and crip-
ples. In other words, the reproducing animals of
the packs were gone. So much for that locality. The
poisoning bee of the Penn's Valley farmers in 1857
put an end to the black wolves frequenting the east end
of that valley. So much for another locality. Robert
Askey, grandson of Samuel Askey, the mighty Centre
County wolf hunter, told the writer recently that very
few wolves comparatively were shot or trapped in the
Snow Shoe region. In his boyhood — he was born in
1839 — wolves were so prevalent about his home near

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 appioached 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. A terrific blizzard
ensued, which made it impossible for him to visit the
carcass for some time. When he did so he found the
bodies of a dozen dead wolves ndar the remains. At a
spring a little further on he discovered several more
dead wolves, and much vomit, where the stricken ani-
mals sought to relieve thernselves before drinking the
cooling water. There were also tracks leading into
the wilderness that could not be followed for the drifts.
Apparently the entire pack had tasted the poisoned
horse; few if any had escaped. After that no more
wolves were seen or heard in Snow Shoe or vicinity.
So much for a third locality. If the State were "fine-
tooth combed," in every section where wolves disap-
peared, poisoning would be found to be one of the
main causes. A few were shot or trapped, many
starved, especially the young died of starvation, the
great bulk were carried off by changed conditions of
life, consisting of absence of forest cover, loss of nor-
mal food supply, circumscribed range, and indiscrimi-
nate poisoning.

X. WOLF HUNTING IN PENNSYLVANIA.

By C. W. Dickinson, Smethport, McKean County,
the Greatest Living Wolf Hunter.

(Reproduced from the Altoona Tribune.)

AS to the killing of the last grey wolf in Pennsyl-
vania, I can only state that I believe the last
grey or timber wolf, as they are called in many
sections, was killed in McKean County in the latter
part of September or fore part of October in 1886.
(Charles Ives, one of the party, gives the date as 1888.)
Two boys from Bradford came up to Mt. Jewett, a
small town along the N. Y. & Erie R. R., about three
miles south of the famous Kinzua Viaduct. The boys
got oif the train at Mt. Jewett, went to the Nelson
Hotel, which was kept by a man by the name of W.
Wallace Brewer, who, by the way, was an old hunter
and trapper here. The boys stated they were going
down to the old Beaver Meadows to spend a week in
search of big game, and they each wanted to get a pint
of whiskey. Mr. Brewer informed them they were too
young to get any liquor, and advised them to go back
to Bradford, as big game was scarce in that locality,
and said he thought they stood as much of a chance
to find a gold mine as they did to kill anything larger
than a porcupine. The boys were not in a mood to be
discouraged; they shouldered their knapsacks and
guns and started for the old Beaver A^Teadows, which

66

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 67

are about a mile and a half from Alt. Jewett, on the
Kinzua Creek. When they were about half way to
the Meadows they heard a rifle shot up the valley about
a mile away. The boys took ofif their packs to rest a
few minutes, and one of them remarked, "Let's keep
watch for a few minutes in the direction of the rifle
shot, as we may see something coming this way."
Just then one said: "What is that coming?" The
animal came within about eight rods, jumped on an
old log and stopped and looked back toward the point
where the rifle report was heard. One of the lads
raised his rifle and fired and the game disappeared.
The boys went out to see what had become of the ani-
mal they had shot at. When they got to the place,
there lay some kind of animal, but what it was they
did not know, so they shouldered their knapsacks and
returned to the hotel, dragging the animal, as they
wanted to find out what it was. On reaching the hotel
one of the boys called on ]\Ir. Brewer to come out and
tell them what kind of an animal they had killed. As
soon as Air. Brewer saw the animal he exclaimed:
"Well, well, boys; you have got a prize. You have
got a genuine wolf, only he has got but tliree feet. The
left hind foot was missing. But that wolf has got
more dead sheep to his credit than any wolf ever had
before." Mr. Brewer then told the boys wdiat to do to
get the bounty on the wolf, which at that time was $25.
Now, I am sure this was the last grey or timber wolf
caught or killed anywhere in this section of Pennsylva-
nia, for all the Potter County or Blair County wolf

68 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Stories, which I will explain later on. There is a sect' in
of this State which used to be known as the wildcat c'ls-
trict, which included Potter County, Cameron County,
Clearfield County, Jefferson County, Elk County,
Forest County and McKean County, which was Jie
last home and breeding place of the grey wolf. Now,
we say grey wolf because this was the only species of
wolf we had in that section for the last 100 years,
except a few coyotes that were brought into McKean
from the western plains. We never had any black or
brown wolves in this locality — not for the last 100
years. It is true there was a little difference in the
color of some of them; some would be a shade lighter
or a shade darker than others, but this variation in
color was very small when compared with the medium
color. As the lumber trade was carried on more ex-
tensively in all of the above named counties except
McKean, in which the trade was carried on only in a
small way along the Allegheny River and Potato
Creek, it left the southern part of this county, the
northern part of Cameron county and the northern
part of Elk county a virgin forest, only traversed I '
hunters and trappers. In this section the wolves had
their last pow-wow. From 1850 until the last one was
killed, the number of sheep killed by wolves will never
be known, but the toll was heavy. To give the reader
something of an idea of these losses, will state some of
my near neighbors' losses. A man who lived within a
half mile of my father, wishing to make some of his
relatives in the middle Western States a visit, rented

^ff

HENRY WISE,

Born 1840, Who Can Recall Stirring Days When the Wolves Used

Their "Crossing" in Sugar Valley.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 69

his farm and stock to a man by the name of C. P. Rice,
the stock being ten or twelve head of cattle and about
forty sheep, giving Rice possession April 1, 1808.
About the 20th of May two wolves came in and killed
fourteen sheep for Air. Rice in one night, and fifteen
days later they came back and killed fourteen more,
making a loss of twenty-eight sheep. Besides this loss,
Air. Rice lost about one dozen of the orphan lambs,
making his total loss about forty sheep and lambs. In
18G9. about the 10th of Alay, wolves came in and
killed eleven sheep for C. A. Burdick in a single night.
Mr. Burdick's farm adjoined my father's farm on the
West side. Five days later the wolves came back and
killed the two that they did not get the first night.
Air. Burdick had thirteen ewes and none of them had
dropped their lambs yet, so the only way to estimate
his loss would be to say he lost all he had. Every
farmer that kept sheep had to contribute to "Air.
Wolf." Wolves were very cunning when they killed a
farmer's sheep. They would not return to get another
meal of the dead sheep, but would make a raid on
the live ones. It seemed to be their delight to kill as
long as they could find anything to kill. ' And it looks
as if they were afraid to return to the dead animal for
fear of getting their toes pinched. This cunning trait
of theirs made it extremely difficult to trap them.
Nevertheless, from 1865 until the last one was killed
we waged a relentless war on them. The winter of 187»1-
75 was a hummer. The snow was very deep and the
mercury went from 30 to 38 degrees below zero many

70 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA,

times. Two brothers, Mike and Dick Griffin, lived in
the southern part of Keating Township. They lost a
yearling steer. They drew the steer out into the woods
and skinned it. One of the men went past the carcass
of the steer one day and noticed that a pack of wolves
were making nightly visits to the carcass for their
meals, as he noticed a well traveled path where they
came down from the mountains for their evening
meal, and take the same path to the mountains. The
men purchased a bottle of strychnine and poisoned the
carcass. The wolves returned that night and ate their
last meal. They went back into the mountains. The
men followed the trail some distance and got dis-
couraged as the snow was very deep. They gave up.
They thought the poison no good because it did not
kill almost instantly. They found after a while that
the poison would kill their neighbor's dogs and even
kill crows that fed on that carcass. There is not a
doubt in my mind but what that was the last meal
any of that bunch ever ate. In June, 1877, the writer
found where wolves had killed a deer. It being in a
locality where young cattle were liable to feed, making
it dangerous to set traps, we decided to use poison.
None of the brutes came back after eating one meal
of the poisoned meat. In December, 1878, wolves
killed six sheep for a neighbor. We tied one of the
dead sheep on a hand-sled, drew it back into the woods
ahout one mile, following the trail where the wolves
had come in. We poisoned this carcass to kill. In
about two weeks we had a severe thaw ; the snow all

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 71

went off; the ground was as bare as summer time for
about two weeks. During this time the wolves came
and cleaned up the carcass of that sheep. This was in
January, 1879, and since that time the writer has not
seen or heard of a wolf track being seen in snow in this
part of Pennsylvania, except the two cripples which
were both killed in this County later on. In the
seventies the writer got the left hind foot of a wolf
in a steel trap. The wolf had got the body of the trap
over a knot on an old log. As the trap could not turn
around the swivel in the chain it was itseless and he
twisted his foot oft' at the ankle joint and got away.
Now this was the same wolf the two boys killed on
the Kinzua Creek in 1886. A man by the name of
Albert Goodwin took a fore foot off of a w'olf in a
bear trap in the fall of 1877. This wolf was caught
by Zack Carl in 1881 or 1882, and the only track seen
of a grey wolf in this part of the State by any hunter
or trapper after Carl caught the one he got, was the
tracks of the wolf with a hind foot off. And after the
boys killed that one on the Kinzua there has not a
single track or sign of a grey wolf .been seen in North-
western Pennsylvania by any hunter or trapper. Now,
at the date of the killing of the wolf in 1886, the large
piece of forest in this locality starting at Gardeau, on
the W. N. Y. & P. R. R., traveling a little south of
West to Johnsonburg, was about forty miles ; starting
at Clermont, in this county, and go in a Southerly di-
rection through this same forest to St. Mary's, in Elk
Countv, the distance is about twentv-five miles. At

72 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

the time of the above dates there were probably two
dozen hunters" cabins located at various points in this
forest, and they were usually occupied from the latter
part of October until December 31st, and none of them
ever reported seeing a wolf track after the Fall and
fore part of Winter of 1885, and for four or five years
prior to 1885 they saw no wolf signs, only of one or
the other of these wolves which had a foot off. Now,
the writer is certain there \v3lS not a single wolf raised
in this section in the last thirty-four or thirty-five
years. If a pair of wolves had raised a litter of whelps
anywhere in this section the damage to the owaiers of
sheep for a radius of thirty riiiles would have created
excitement enough so it would be known lor a hundred
miles around that neighborhood. As to the Potter
County wolf story, we would like to state some facts
in regard to this statement. While we remember very
well of reading the account of this at the time it hap-
pened, we wish to state a few facts in regard to this
subject. Col. Xoah Parker, an old hunter, who lived
at Gardeau in the southeastern part of Norwich
Township close to the Potter County line, went to
Colorado in ISSi for the express purpose of killing an
elk, and when he returned from Colorado he brought
home a female coyote. He made a dog house for it
and chained it up, as he dare not allow it to run loose.
Later on he bred this coyote to a dog he kept and the
coyote raised a litter of pups, but they proved to be a
lot of thieves. They would kill sheep or poultry and
steal all the meat around the premises unless it was

J. L. ECKEL,

An Authority on the Habits of the Wolves of Clinton County.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

under a lock and key. and in due time they were all
killed off for being common thieves. About two
months before Air. Razey caught his wolf, Col.
Parker's coyote broke her collar and made her escape.
She was seen a number of times before Air. Razey
caught the Potter County "wolf," but never seen after.
The wolf that Air. Razey caught was a female, and
as Air. Razey said it was a small sized wolf he caught,
we will bet a bushel of frogs to a pint of cider that
the wolf Air. Razey caught was Col. Parker's escaped
coyote. The writer was well acquainted with Air.
Parker and had a number of talks with him about this
matter, and Air. Parker told me that he had talked
with Razey about the wolf he caught, and he (Parker)
was dead sure that Razey's wolf was his escaped
coyote, and as Air. Parker expressed himself, he said :
"I am damned glad that Razey caught that coyote, for
I was afraid I would have a bill of damages to pay for
her depredations." We both thought that Potter
County was better able to pay Air. Razey the $25
bounty than to have some poor farmer lose twice that
amount in sheep. Now, with due respect to Air. Razey
we must say that we believe that he was honest in
his opinion that he had caught a wolf, for the follow-
ing reason : Take a small size grey wolf and a large
coyote and we don't believe that Potter County has
got a man today that could tell which one was wolf or
coyote. There are only two points to judge from —
the coyote is not as strong or heavy through the butt
of the jaws, and his tail is two inches or more shorter

74 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

than the tail of a grey wolf of the same size. During
the latter part of the nineties, a man living in the City
of Bradford, had a cage of young coyotes sent
him by a friend in one of the Western States. He
fixed a pen in his yard, put the five coyotes in it, and,
after a couple of years, these coyotes broke jail one
night and all made their escape. One of them was
killed the next morning in a neighbor's hen house,
where he had killed half the poultry in the house. The
next they were seen was near Rixford and Duke Cen-
ter, where two of them were shot while they were kill-
ing sheep. The next place the two remaining ones
were seen was on the farm of L. J. Gallup, in Liberty
Township (which adjoins Potter County). They
"came into Mr. Gallup's sheep pasture in mid-day and
killed a sheep. Mr. Gallup saw them kill the sheep.
He took his rifle out and shot one of them; the other
one made his escape, and the only thing we have ever
heard (until recently) of the lone coyote was an item
we saw about seven years ago in the Williamsport
Grit, which stated that a wolf had been killed in Blair
County, where there had not been a wolf seen for
forty years. At the time we read about this Blair
County wolf we were of the opinion that if anything
like a wolf had been killed in that locality it was the
last one of the five coyotes that made their escape in
Bradford. We saw an item clipped from the Altoona
Tribune of January 21, 1914, giving an account of
the killing of the 'Beaver Dam wolf,' and as the
writer of that article gave such a glowing account of

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 75

the event, we can't see why he should have been so
shy about his being known. Now, we challenge Air.
'County Contributor,' Hollidaysburg, as the writer
styled himself, to produce any authority to show
where a den of young wolves were raised in
the State of Pennsylvania, outside of McKean
County, within the last forty-five years. Next,
we challenge you to show us a single citizen of Blair
County who ever saw a grey wolf outside of a cage in
Blair County. Dare you come out and state when or
about what time the last bounty was paid on a wolf
in your county? Dare you state that you ever saw a
grey wolf outside of a cage or a zoo or park in Penn-
sylvania or anywhere else? Now, Air. County Con-
tributor, we know that there has not been a single
den of young wolves raised within this State in the
last thirty-six years. Had that Beaver Dam coyote
been a grey wolf, he could not have been less than 29
years old! At that age, would he have had as nice
teeth as you saw? Now, Air. Contributor, will you
tell us what is the natural age of a wolf ? In your
description of the Beaver Dam animal, you could not
give any better description of a coyote if you had one
to look at. That short, bushy tail > ou speak of is
about the only sure mark that you can rely on to tell a
large coyote from a small grey wolf. The old-time
hunters in this locality used to call our wolves the
"long-tailed hunters." Then, again, you say the people
thought this animal was a big grey fox. Just think
of that! One of our Pennsvlvania wolves is eight or

76 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

ten times heavier than a fox. You say a large dog
was badly chewed up by this animal. Now, Mr. Con-
tributor, we will wager $100 that there Is not a dog in
Blair County that could catch a big Pennsylvania grey
wolf in an all-night chase. And we will wager $100
more that you haven't got any two dogs in the county
that can whip one of them. We will put up another
$100 that you have not got a dog in your county that
can catch a coyote ; and we don't believe you have a
dog that can whip a coyote. You say young ]\Ir.
]\Ioore saw this animal jumping and snapping at the
throats of his father's sheep. Now, Mr. Contributor,
if one of our Pennsylvania w^olves had made a single
snap at a sheep's throat, that sheep would have been a
dead one before Mr. Moore could get his revolver out
of his pocket, to say nothing about shooting, for one
of our wolves would kill a sheep as quickly as a cat
could kill a rat. We have seen this trick done, and
would say that we were terribly surprised to see how
quickly it was done. I have the skin of a coyote
which was caught in Cherry County, Nebraska, and if
I wanted to fool anybody by misrepresentations, I
think I could fool nineteen-twentieths or more of all
the people in Central Pennsylvania by showing this
skin and saying it was a genuine Pennsylvania wolf,
but I have no inclination to deceive or fool any one.
The methods of hunting wolves in Pennsylvania are
only a few, as the wolf by nature is a night prowler,
and here in this heavy wooded mountainous country
the most skillful hunter could not make five cents a

DANIEL MARK,

Born 1835, Who Saw the Last Wolf in the White Deer Country,

on the Falsbarg, About 1870.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 77

day hunting wolves, only by hunting for a den where
they have their young. The writer only knew of
three wolves being shot by hunters while in pursuit
of game, unless they were hunting for a wolf den,
and then it is not one time in a dozen that the hunter
will see one of the old wolves. So you can see the
chance of a hunter getting a shot at a wolf is a good
way apart and far between. We were acquainted with
a good many of the old hunters in four or five coun-
ties, and not one in ten of them ever saw a wolf while
hunting or trapping, except the wolf was in a trap.
Our method of hunting wolves was to train a dog to
follow the trail of wolves on bare ground ; then, in
the month of May, go into a locality where wolves
have been killing sheep. If w-e could get the trail the
first morning after the killing the dog would follow
the trail nearly as fast as we cared to walk, but if the
trail was a day or two old, we might not be able to
keep the trail for 100 rods in a whole day. In a case
of this kind we could consult our compass and note the
course as nearly as possible, provided these w^olves
traveled in a straight direction, but if they traveled in
any direction to hit every every laurel patch or jungle,
we dropped that trail quick, for wolves that are rear-
ing young will go as straight to their den, after getting
a good meal of mutton, as a bee will fly to his tree
after getting all the honey he can cany. If you have
a good dog and can get a fresh trail of wolves going to
their den, you are sure to find the den, but you may
not find a w^olf after all, for if the den is in a ledge

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

of rocks you may not get a single wolf, for when the
young get to be six weeks old they are very cunning,
and the. old ones have been known to leave the locality
of their den and not return to that locality for six
months or more. And it is seldom they return for
three or four weeks. Our method of trapping them
around a den is to set a trap in every path that leads to
the den. The most successful method the old-time
trapper had was path trapping. The best method of
trapping for wolves by bait was to throw our bait
down in any place in plain sight of some knoll two or
three rods away ; set a trap on the knoll, for the wolf
would go over that knoll a dozen times before he
would venture up to the bait. Set no trap nearer the
bait than the one on the knoll, but if there should be
any old paths near, that is, within fifteen or twenty
rods, set a trap in each path. We would not go to
these traps oftener than three or four days; then we
would go past them just near enough so we could see
if they were setting all right — go fifty or a hundred
rods and go back on the other side of the valley.
Never go to the traps and turn around and go back,
for if you do, don't expect to catch a wolf in it. We
have never made a great fortune hunting or trapping
wolves, but we think we have come as near making
wages at it as any man in this section during our time,
for we have caught, killed and sold scores of young
and old ones besides what we poisoned. We are cer-
tain that we put quite a number out of commission,
possibly a hundred. Now we hope you won't think

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 79

hard of us for using poison on the wolf family. We
never used poison to kill any animals only wolves and
rats. All the wolf dens we ever found were under big
rocks or under a ledge of rocks, but old wolf hunters
have told us they found a nest in a hollow log or in
under a jamb of timber that the wind had blown down,
but the nests or dens we found, most were under big
rocks, and one was under a ledge of rocks and the
whelps were so cunning we were not able to coax a
single one out of that nest, and not one of them came
near enough to get into a trap set as far into the hole
as we could reach, and I don't believe the old ones ever
came back to that place that year. This was in June,
1876. This was the last nest of young wolves that
any one knows of in Northwestern Pennsylvania. We
don't know^ how many there were in this litter of
wdielps, but we know there was a nest of wdielps in
there, for they barked at my dog, but would not come
out so we could see them, but we are certain they got
into some hole or crevice where they could not get out.
The last wolf I captured and killed was about May
25th, 1878."

The financial side of wolf hunting in Pennsylvania
was epitomized by Wolfer Dickinson in the Altoona
Tribune, as follows : "As to the price of wolf hides
in this part of Pennsylvania in the days of the early
settlers, my father often told me that the price of
wolf hides from 1S30 to 1855 was from $1 to $2 for
grown wolves. The price varied according to the
season of the year the wolf was captured or quantity

80 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

of fur on the bide. The wolf was not trapped for
what the hide was worth, but for the bounty on his
scalp. This bounty law was changed many times.
Most of our laws of this character were local laws.
There were four or five counties in this locality that
had a bounty law passed, $25 on a wolf and $13 on a
whelp or pup, as they were commonly called. During
the first four years this law was in force the trappers
caught so many wolves that every man that was not a
trapper signed a petition asking the State Legislature
to change the bounty on wolves to $13 on a grown
wolf and $6 on a whelp, on all wolves caught in Mc-
Kean County, after the passage of said act, and the
law was changed to this effect. When this law was
passed none of the trappers would try to catch a wolf.
The wolves increased so fast that the next Legislature
was petitioned to change the wolf bounty to the origi-
nal amount, which was done. The early settlers in
Northern Pennsylvania were mostly very poor, and it
put them to their wits' end to get money enough to
pay taxes and keep soul and body together. Had it
not been for the wild game, the abundance of fish
and the small fur-bearing animals, such as 'coon,
foxes, marten and mink, all of which were very plenty,
four-fifths of the early settlers would have starved
out and been forced to leave or die. A true story of
some of the early settlers would be an interesting book
for the people of this age to read. Some of the fur
buyers who traveled through this country in early
days that my father told me about were 'Doc' Smith,

HENRY WREN

In War Time Regalia, a Hunter Who Often Matched His Skill

With the Wolves of the White Deer Region, Union County.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 81

a man by the name of Mr. Whittakcr, and Air, Short.
The fur-buyers that came through here in my boyhood
days were Dr. Neigus, Samuel Major, Mr. Jenkins,
L. Y. Miller, Emory Swetland, Henry Hobby and
J. M. Mcllhenny. I think it is about thirty-four or
thirty-live years since we last saw any of the above-
named gentlemen. Wonder if any of them are still
alive?"

As to the varied causes of the disappearance of
wolves in McKean County, Mr. Dickinson adds :

■'During the time from 1840 to 1860 there were
probably 1,000 deer killed annually in McKean Coun-
ty. Eighty per cent, of this number were killed in No-
vember and December of each year. All the internal
organs and most of the heads were left in the woods,
while half of the hunters left most of the fore parts of
the deer they killed, only carrying out just what their
own family could use. This left a great abundance of
food for wolves, wild cats and foxes to feed on during
the rest of the winter and early spring months. This
awful slaughter of deer reduced their number to such
an extent that during the sixties some of the old hunt-
ers predicted that the deer family would become extinct
before 1900. They did not realize that taking the
supply of food from the wolf was sure to be a great
factor in exterminating the Avolf family. ]\Iany of
them during the hard winters starved to death ; others
were so hungry they would kill and devour a porcu-
pine and get so full of quills or spines it caused their
death; while others would kill the weaker members of

82 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

their own family. So by taking the food supply from
the wolf during the hard winter months his fate was
sealed."

As stated by Mr. Dickinson, sometimes the hungry
wolves turned on one another. Henry Wise, born in
1840, and a lifelong resident of Sugar Valley, in Clin-
ton County, relates that in the year of the panic of '57,
a pack of wolves in crossing the valley turned on one
of their fellows near the mouth of Schwenk's Gap
and devoured it. This bears out the old French pro-
verb, "Manvaise est la saison qiiand un loiip mange
I'autre." Henry B. Karstetter recalls the wolves cross-
ing Sugar Valley as late as 1859, and their persistent
howling when they reached the "Winter Side." Daniel
Mark, born in 1835, while out picking huckleberries
on the Falsbarg, a high mountain on the watershed of
White Deer Creek, saw a wolf, at close range, in the
summer of 1870. The sight of it frightened his dogs
to silence and he said nothing about it at the time, lest
it terrify his women companions. H. J. Schwenk saw
this same wolf a few years later. The last wolves in
"Wolfland," as the wild region at the head of Weikert
Run, in Union County, was called, were killed in
1857, when an intrepid band of hunters, consisting of
Bill Pursley (died February 3, 1893, aged 87 years),
William Moyer and Jacob F. Barnet, surprised and
killed a pack of eleven coal black wolves. Joe Berfield
and Henry Mason, the leading wolf hunters of the
Sinnemahoning Valle)', surprised and wiped out a
pack of twelve wolves on Loup Run, now erroneously

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 83

called "Loop" Run, in Clearfield County, in 1856.
C. W. Dickinson, in speaking of the wolf traps' used
in Northern Pennsylvania, says : "The best bear and
wolf traps used in this section by the old settlers were
made by a blacksmith who lived near Elmira, New-
York. A man named Ames put out a good trap — the
Ames trap. The Freeman trap sold by a man in Olean,
New York, was a very good trap. I did most of my
hunting with the number four Newhouse trap, made
by the Oneida Community. I have in my possession
three "Elmira"' traps over a hundred years old, and
good traps yet. I like them better than the Newhouse
bear trap, as I never cared for a trap with spikes in
the jaw. Few of our country blacksmiths could tem-
per a trap-spring that would stand ; they would either
bend or break." Some of the wolf traps made and
dated by John Hoffman, of Loyalsockville, nearly a
century ago, were still in use in the White Deer ]\Ioun-
tains as fox traps during the past winter (1915-1916).
Taenchels or animal drives, called in Pennsylvania
"Ring Hunts,'' with a special view of ridding sections
of country of wolves, were practiced by the Pennsyl-
vania pioneers. The hunters formed a vast circle, and
at the sound of a bugle, or the ringing of din-
ner bells, closed in towards the centre, where
the surrounded animals were shot to death by ex-
pert riflemen. Sometimes the lines wavered and
the intended victims made good their escape. The last
"Ring Hunt" for wolves in Susquehanna County was
held in ISo-i. An unsuccessful "Ring Hunt" was

84 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

held near Beech Creek, CHnton County, in 1849.
A "Ring Hunt" was held in Tioga County in
1818. One took place in Snyder County, led
by "Black Jack" Schwartz, "The Wild Hunter of
the Juniata," in 1760, in which 109 wolves were
slain. Settlers on the Blue Mountain and Second
Mountain held a "drive" which centered in the Cran-
berry Bog on the Berks and Schuylkill County line,
in 1830, as a result of which fourteen wolves paid the
death penalty. About that same year a "Ring Hunt"
was held by farmers in Crawford County. The last
wolf in Sugar Valley, mentioned as having
been seen by Daniel Mark in 1870, lingered
on about his favorite haunts for quite a few
years longer. J. D. Eckel, while on a hunting expedi-
tion in 1875, with William Beck, an old hunter, crossed
the mountain on the north side of the valley by way of
the Karstetter Path, when, on the north slope of the
mountain, about fifty steps from the summit, they
noticed a large grey wolf standing on the path in front
of them. Beck, who knew the wolf Avell, declared
that it was the last of its race left in Sugar Valley.
Mr. Eckel described it as about the size of a full-grown
shepherd dog, with stiff ears, and a greyish black in
color. When Dan Treaster, for whom Treaster Val-
ley, Mifflin County, formerly Black Wolf Valley, was
named, was living in the little valley aiso known as
Treaster Valley in Centre County; his cabin was fre-
quently surrounded' by wolves at night. On more than
one occasion, when, with his wife, he went to the log

JATv. ES WYLIE MILLER,

Born 1838,

Who, as a Boy of Twelve Years, Carried a Live Trapped Wolf

Two Miles to His Uncle's Home in Cameron County.

A Modern Prototype of the Spartan Youth.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 85

barn to feed the stock, they were surrounded by the
howling pack and marooned in the stable all night.
This historic old structure is still standing. J. L.
Eckel, a noted surveyor in Sugar Valley, Clinton
County, in the old days, and father of J. D. Eckel
mentioned above, often related how he was compelled
to keep his campfire burning brightly all night in
Sugar Camp Gap to prevent the packs of howling
wolves from coming too close to his sleeping quarters.
In the Pennsylvania forests, especially those in the
Northern and Northwestern counties, are many iso-
lated rocks, known as "elk rocks." On these huge de-
tached boulders the elks held the attacking packs of
wolves at bay. Colonel Noah Parker has vividly de-
scribed finding the skeletons of wolves about these
rocks, showing the elks' victories in these conflicts,
but sometimes he came across the bones of the antler-
ed monarchs lying among the skeletons of wolves,
showing that both the attacked and the attackers
paid the death penalty. Nick Montarsi, a popu-
lar young Italian, residing in Clinton County, who for-
merly acted as a "Butteri," or cowboy, on the Italian
Campagna, says that the reason the big white woolly
Italian wolf dogs, which are themselves partly wolf,
wear collars covered with sharp iron spikes is that
when the wolves attempt to catch them by the throat,
their jaws are lacerated by the spikes, and in their
agony they are driven away by the wolf dogs, thus pro-
tecting the flocks and herds from their fierce foes.

86 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

The celebrated Ethan Allen Crawford, born in
1792, thus described the method used by the wolves
in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in devour-
ing a sheep : ''They generally took no more than they
wanted at a time. They select the finest and fattest,
and' on him perform a curious act in butchering. We
have found, after they have visited the flocks, a skin
perfectly whole, turned flesh side out, with no other
mark upon it, excepting the throat, where there was a
regular slit cut, as though it had been cut with a
knife, down as far as the forelegs ; the flesh all eaten
out and the legs taken off, down as far as the lowest
joint; the head and back bone left attached to it; the
pelt left in the field, but a few rods from the house ;
they would sometimes set up a howling, and a more
terrific and dismal noise I never wish to hear than
this, in a clear still night. Their sound would'- echo
from one hill to another, and it would seem that the
woods were filled and alive with them." Crawford
kept a pet wolf, the antics of which are told of graphi-
cally in his wife's book, "History of the White Moun-
tains." The wolf was so tame that it rode on the box
seat of a stage-coach alongside of the driver from
Colebrook to Lancaster, in the "Granite State." A
ring hunt held in the Sandwich Range, in that state,
in 1830, resulted in the death of four wolves. The
rest of the pack "broke through" and escaped into the
forests.

XI. POSSIBLE RE-INTRODUCTION.

FRO?*I the number of hunters who took out licenses
in 1916 — upwards of three hundred thousand — it
would seem that they formed an important part
of the population of Pennsylvania. When it is con-
sidered how small a return they received for tl'teir ef-
forts, their spirit and enthusiasm for the chase seems
all the more, commendable. Despite the valiant efforts
of Dr. Kalbfus, there was very little found to kill
during the various "open seasons" which came to an
end on the first days of 191-1, 1915 and 1916. It is to
be doubted if two thousand deer were killed in the
entire Commonwealth during these three seasons.
With such meagre results the time is bound to be at
hand when a strong demand will be made to re-stock
the forests with game worthy of the name. Civilized
men are beginning to find that killing rabbits, quails
and squirrels is little better than a barnyard slaughter,
that they do not furnish the excitement expected. In-
telligent hunters read of struggles with wolves and
mountain lions, of coyote coursing, and dispatching
grizzlies in the West, and compare it to the feeble pas-
time of slaying a few mangey rabbits at home, to the
disparagement of the home sport. A strong demand
will be made to stock the Pennsylvania wilds, not with
more rabbits, quails, ring-neck pheasants and squirrels,
but with savage beasts, such as panthers, red bears and

87

88 WOLF DA.YS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

wolves. Deer and elk are here already, but without
the so-called predatory l)easts to harass them, they are
sure to deteriorate. Wolf and panther hunting can be
made the royal sport of Pennsylvania. Wolves, un-
molested, except at certain seasons, could soon make
themselves at home, and Vi'ould prove a great benefit
alike to sportsmen and to the game animals and birds.
As far as damage to sheep is concerned, it would be
less than is now done by dogs. As to the best variety
of wolf to introduce, the Black Woli' seems to have
been able to adjust itself to conditions; it was the last
to be exterminated. As far as known, the Eastern
black wolf is now extinct. The Western timber wolf
requires a wider range than Pennsylvania could aftord.
The grey Pennsylvania wolf is gone, but its congeners
in the West Virginia wilds might be introduced with
advantage. The brown Pennsylvania wolf is probably
extinct, as its relatives in North Carolina and Ten-
nessee has been recently killed to the last specimen
b)^ professional hunters. The Western coyote might
adapt itself, and could be introduced if no other varie-
ties were available. This animal, as already stated,
resembles the Pennsylvania brown wolf in many re-
spects. It affords sport wherever it is known, and is
hardy, is game and resourceful. However, it is too
prone to degenerate into a mere poultry thief to make
its introduction popular. The methods of the old
Pennsylvania bounty hunters would not be used by
the sportsmen of the future. These included trapping,
snaring", pitfalls and poisoning. The wolf hunting as

MRS. CAROLINE LANKS (Born 1836)
"The Little Red Riding Hood of the West Branch.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 89

practiced in Ireland in the eighteenth century, and in
France today, would be best suited to present-day
needs in the Keystone State. Years ago in England
the open season for hunting wolves was between De-
cember 25 and March 25. It furnished ideal "Christ-
mas" sport. A wolf hunt in France is described as
follows : "An open spOt is generally chosen at some
distance from the great coverts where the wolves were
known to lie, and here, in concealment, a brace — some-
times two brace — of wolf hounds were placed. A
horse was killed and the fore-quarters were trailed
through the paths and ways in the wood during the
previous day, and back to where the carcass lay, and
there they were left. When night approached, out
came the wolves, and, having struck the scent, they
followed it until they found the dead horse, when, of
course, they began to feed on the flesh, and early in
the morning, just before day-break, the hunters placed
their dogs so as to prevent the wolves from returning
to cover. When a wolf came to the spot, the man in
charge of the wolf-hounds suffered him to pass by the
first, but the last were let slip full in his face, and at
the same instant the others were let slip also; the first
staying him ever so little, he was sure to be attacked
on all sides at once, and therefore the more easily
taken." This is similar to the methods followed by
the Grand Dukes at Gatchina, in Russia. This aptly
portrays a sport of the future for Pennsylvania gen-
tlemen. Could anything be more blood-curdling or
inspiring? In Ireland the wealthy gentry hunted

90 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

wolves on horse-back. The animals were baited
to come into the open, and then mounted men
and wolf-hounds made after them, the effort being
put forth to prevent them from getting back to cover.
The huntsmen were armed with spears, and pinioned
the fierce beasts to the earth from their galloping
steeds. In our Western States, coyotes, and occasion-
ally timber wolves, are coursed on the open plains by
Russian wolf-hounds, followed by mounted hunters.
The wolves, if run down, are killed by the pack of dogs
or elses shot by the hunters. This is often done on
the Russian Steppes, by a stronger race of wolf-
hounds than has been developed as yet in the United
States. In an eft'ort to arouse interest in a better type
of wolf dogs, the writer of these pages oft'ered two
special prizes at the Dog Show of the Westminster
Kennel Club, held in New York in February, 1914,
for Russian wolf-hounds which had actually coursed
wolves, or were kept for this purpose in a wolf coun-
try. At present the Irish wolf-hound looks to be more
capable of running down wolves than the Russian
variety, which is called the Borzoi. The breeding and
sale of wolf dogs would add greatly to the income of
Pennsylvania mountaineers. A comparison of the
different varieties of wolf dogs can be gleaned from
the following, which is quoted from the New York
"World" : "Several years ago General Roger Wil-
liams, of Lexington, Ky.,was a judge in a wolf hunting
contest in Colorado, in which Russian wolf-hounds
and Scotch deer-hounds contested. Under the stipu-

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 91

lations only two clogs could be turned loose on one
wolf. Among the Russian dogs was one which had
won the gold medals in a wolf -killing contest at St.
Petersburg, offered by the Czar, and his owner claimed
that he could kill any American wolf. But the Russian
dogs failed, so did the Scotch dogs. One of the latter
quit fighting for a moment and its owner pulled a
revolver and shot the dog dead, saying he would not
have a dog which would quit fighting." A letter from
California states that Russian wolf-hounds are a fail-
ure on ranches where they have been installed for
the purpose of killing coyotes and wolves, and do as
much damage to live stock as the wolves. The writer
of this article is a lover of the Russian wolf-hound,
^nd has bred the dogs since 1906. But he believes the
race will have to be strengthened by actual contact
with wolves, or it will deteriorate into a mere showy
house-pet. In 1908 he obtained two coyotes and a
Bosnian wolf for a chase at ]\IcElhattan, Clinton
County. The wolf-hounds did not seem inclined to
course the animals, so the chase was never held. The
coyotes are now in the Reading Zoo, and the wolf was
sold to a traveling showman. According to the news-
papers this animal broke out of the wagon
somewhere near Rochester, N. Y., bit a cow which
was pasturing peacefully b}^ the road side, and
also frightened a little girl. The Russian wolf-
hound is a beautiful and intelligent animal, and has
been justly called the "aristocrat of the dog kingdom."
Perhaps a cross between this breed and the Irish wolf-

92 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

hound would produce the right sort for Pennsylvania
wolf hunting. With all these prospects there is a glo-
rious vista ahead for dog-lovers and true sportsmen,
if only we can get the right kind of wolves again ! We
will quote an old Irish poem about a celebrated wolf
hunter named McDermot, who was once the terror of
the wolves of Munster :

"It happened on a day with horn and hounds,
A baron gallop't through McDermot's grounds.
Well hors'd, pursuing o'er the dusty plain
A wolf that &'ouglit the neighboring woods to gain.

"Mac hears th' alarm, and with his oaken spear,
Joins in the chase, and runs before the peer,
Outstrips the huntsman, dogs and panting steedsi,
And struck by him the falling savage bleeds."

•

Alyriads of associations have been formed to pro-
tect song birds and other lesser creatures. Better still
would be an organization of red-blooded men to pro-
tect the wolf. But let it be clearly understood that this
would not include cases where the wolf has lately
gotten into cattle countries and subsists on a diet
"unauthorized" by nature. Only in cases where the
wolf resides in a region, uninhabited except by wild
beasts, and is pursuing the tenor of his way, upholding
nature's balance and adding to the picturesqueness of
the wilderness, should he be protected. And then
he should be safeguarded from extinction in every
possible manner. Bounty hunters and others who mis-
represent him should be kept away and this noble relic
of a grander and primitive age preserved for a

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MRS. SOPHIA BROWN SCHWENK AND HUSBAND

(late Sharon Schwenk). Mrs. Schwenk, as a Young Girl,

Had Many Adventures on the Wolf's Path in

Sugar Valley.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 93

more discerning future generation. A day will come
— and not more than two generations off — when all
of God's wonderful creations will be appreciated in
their proper places, and only disgust felt for the reck-
less and merciless generations who thoughtlessly and
selfishly wiped out our wild life, especially in Pennsyl-
vania In Stuart Brothers' "Lays of the Deer Forest"
it is stated : "In ancient hunting, the beasts of sport
were divided into three classes : Venerie, Chase and
Rascal. The first were, the hare, the hart, the zvolf,
and the wild boar. The second, the fallow-deer, the
fox, the marten, and the wild boar. The last, the gre,
bv badger, the wild-cat, the otter, and any beasts not
belonging to the first two classes." Thus it will be
seen that the wolf ranked as sport-royal, and in early
times was strictly preserved to be hunted by kings.
Today this noble beast, which was once the sport of
monarchs, stands in imminent danger of extinction by
cheap bounty hunters, mercenary trappers and poison-
ers According to the Indians and the early settlers
in the Pennsylvania mountains, there existed on very
rare occasions a certain kind of weather called "Wolf
Days" — cool days with very bright sunshine, and occa-
sional dark shadows, with brisk northwest winds —
days when trees, bushes, grasses, and water were
always in motion — on such days the wolves sallied
forth, the sunlight, with patches of shadow, and all
nature restless, blended with their striped, mottled or
shadowy coats as protective coloring, making them in
broad daylight practically invisible. On all other days.

94 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

except when ravenous with hunger and desperate, they
remained near their rocks or dens in the deep forests,
going abroad at night to howl at the imperturbable
moon or forage on inert game or peaceful flocks. The
swift, and sometimes contrary, breezes of the "Wolf
Days" bewildered the sense of smell in many dogs,
with the result that the wolves with a sly look in their
dark eyes would dart by the unwary canines, or spring
over a fence into a barnyard, killing a sheep while the
farmer milked his cows only a few feet away. While
deer in fenced enclosures or "preserves" are sure to
deteriorate without the predatory animals to keep them
from succumbing to what Charles John Andersson
called "inanition," which manifests itself in barrenness
and proneness to disease, it would be a foolhardy pro-
cedure to place wolves in "parks." The wolves would
"corner" the deer at the fences, killing them down to
the last one, thereby leaving none for the human hunt-
ers. However, in the open, predatory animals are nec-
essary adjuncts and assets to the game. Game ani-
mals, particularly elk and deer, must be kept moving,
ever on the alert, to be worthy of the name of game.
If their enemies are removed, they soon degenerate
to the level of domestic cattle, lose their fine heads,
(unless specially fed) decrease in size, and in
the end become prey to all manner of pesti-
lences. Nature's methods, and Nature's methods
alone, which includes the existence of wolves,
makes for the continuance of a fine, virile,
speedy race of deer. On the other hand, foxes, wild-

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

95

cats, minks and weasels should be allowed ingress to
preserves inhal)ite(l by game birds, as these animals
l)rey on rats, mice and other pests which are apt to
become overly numerous and destroy the eggs and
young of grouse, pheasants and quails. For the same
reason hawks and owls should be rigorously pro-
tected. If the wolf per se cannot be re-introduced in
Pennsylvania, he can be bred hack. The German
police dogs, so plentiful in Philadelphia and Pitts-
burg, are almost wolves; a few generations of wild
life and freedom in the mountains would make them
zi'olz-es in every sense of the word.

XII. SUPERSTITIONS.

IN Old-World countries the wolf was the origin of
many weird legends and tales. In the Northern
mythology it is stated that the giantess Sugerboda
bore wolves to Loke, den Onde, or the Wicked God :

"Eastward, in the forest of iron,
Sat the Evil One,
And there begat
The young wolves."

Likewise, the wolf of Pennsylvania gave rise to its
share of superstitions. Although only known to resi-
dents of the Commonwealth for two centuries, it left
an impress that will last for the next five hundred
years. Some of the old legends, however, have a
tendency to die out with the passing of the aged
people, the younger generations evincing little desire
to hand them down. There being few open fire places
left to cluster about on cold winter nights, family story-
telling is fast becoming a lost accomplishment. Fur-
thermore, unimaginative persons object to the hearing
or telling of stories the absolute truth of which cannot
be vouched for. Faith is unthinkable to such practical
individuals. Fortunately some few of the older stories
are still in existence, and several new ones have
cropped up during the past quarter of a century. Of
these last named the most celebrated is the one which
the writer of this article related in his volume of le-
gends, "Pennsylvania Mountain Stories," in Chapter

96

DR. J. H. KALBFUS,

Famous Pennsylvania Game Commissioner, Who Encountered

Wolves in Northern Lycoming County in 1859.

WOL.F DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 97

XIX, called "The Black Wolf of Oak Valley." As
the story in question happened within the past twenty
years, it was found necessary to alter and disguise
names of persons and places. Still there are many
who will penetrate this veil and can gather more infor-
mation upon the subject if interested. It appears that
a notorious mountain character, who was "wanted"
by the authorities on several charges, barricaded him-
self in his log cabin home, resisting arrest. The house
was set on fire, but rather than fall into the hands of
his enemies the fellow cut his throat and fell back
into the flames. Shortly after this a black wolf was
noticed running in and out of the pak-W'Ood where he
was buried. Hunting parties were organized, but the
wolf, despite its boldness, could not be shot. A re-
puted witch was appealed to, who advised that the out-
law''s body be taken from the oak grove and interred
in the cemetery of a religious denomination, beside
the grave of his mother. This was done, and the
black W'olf was seen no more. Going back a hundred
years, there is the story of Mrs. ]\Iike McClure, of
Wayne Township, Clinton County. This estimable
woman had gone to a neighbor's to borrow a Dutch
oven. Having secured it, and on her way home, she
stopped to talk with a friend, Mrs. Jake Simcox, who
resided on the bank of the river. She heard a scraping
sound by her side, and looking around saw the head of
a brown wolf appearing from a pile of rocks. Quick
as a flash she seized the Dutch oven, which had on the
top an iron circular handle, and bringing it down

98 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

crushed the wolf's skull. She carried the carcass
home, where her husband skinned it, and it was used
to cover their infant, which was then in its cradle.
So much for that story. Compare it to the following,
which is quoted word for word from James E. Hart-
ing's well known account of the wolves of Scotland in
''Extinct British Animals :" "Another story is on
record of a wolf killed by a woman of Cre-Cebhan,
near Strui. on the North Side of the Strath Glass.
She had gone to Strui to borrow a girdle (a thick, cir-
cular plate of iron, with an iron loop handle at one side
for lifting, and used for baking bread). Having pro-
cured it, and being on her way home, she sat down
upon an old cairn to rest and gossip with a neighbor,
when suddenly a scraping of stones and rustling of
leaves were heard, and the head of a wolf protruded
from a crevice at her side. Instead of fleeing in
alarm, however, she dealt him such a blow on the
skull with the full swing of her iron discus, that it
brained him on the stone which served for his emerg-
ing head." This emphasizes the words of the late
Andrew Lang, which were somewhat like this : "Su-
perstitions are ver}^ much the same, despite varying
climes and creeds." This story is probably centuries
old, and similar occurrences have revived its details
in the minds of the old people. Near the scene of this
adventure, about 1835, a pack of wolves drove a flock
of sheep belonging to James Williams on the ice
which covered the West Branch of the Susquehanna
River, and the animals slipped, and falling were easy

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 99

victims to their wolfish foes. Another "were-wolf"
of Central Pennsylvania also had its ha-Ditat in Wayne
Township. George Wilson long suspected that a cer-
tain woman in his neighborhood was a witch, and went
about in wolfish form at nightfall. One evening at
dusk he saw the wolf, which was of extraordinary size
and brown in color, crossing a field back of his cabin.
He quickly loaded his rifle with a silver bullet, and
made after the intruder. Taking careful aim, he fired,
but the darkness was too far advanced to make his aim
accurate, although he was a famous marksman. He
struck the animal in the left fore-leg, and it disap-
peared into the forest at the foot of lower Bald Eagle
Mountain (the Sugar Valley Hill) howling piteously.
He had barely gotten into his house, when the sup-
posed witch rushed into the cabin of a settler, who
lived about a mile away, with her left arm broken
above the wrist. The arm was put in splints, but it
never became straight again. It is interesting to note
that in the Seven Alountains the ghost wolves were
always black ; in the W^est Branch Valley brown, and
in the Northern part of the State grey, showing the
influence of the prevailing type on the imagination.
The old people in the Seven Mountains declared that
the Black Wolf's yowl said plainly : ''Dead Indian,
Dead Indian, where, where, where !" It was supposed
to indicate the proximity of Indian graves containing
treasure. It was an unvarying custom with the first
settlers in Sugar \*alley to have a wolf's paw nailed
over the door of sheep pen or stable, for good luck.

100 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

It was claimed to mean long life if one met a wolf in
the forenoon. Judge D. C. Henning, in his entranc-
ing ''Tales of the Blue Mountains" (published at
Pottsville in 1899), quotes an old lady as follows:
"When I was a child there were still remaining in
these (the Blue) mountains a remnant of the large
droves of wolves that were wont to infest these for-
ests in earlier times. It was said that their numbers
were reduced far more greatly from disease contract-
ed from devouring the diseased carcasses of dead
horses returned from the wars of the Revolution and
1812 than from any other cause. However, as the
wolf family grew smaller he became more mystical
and had imparted to him attributes which he never
possessed in reality. Because of his marauding and
ruthless nature he was more to be feared than the cat-
amount or panther, as these had their regular haunts,
where their presence might be always known ; but the
wolf was a tramp, and might be ever present, especi-
ally in the night time. He was invested with wonder-
ful and mysterious powers. He could cause the cows
to refuse to milk. He could lead the swine astray, and
he seemed at all times to be in league with the evil one.
He was said to be presided over by an analagous
king, the great seven-horned beast, part wolf, part
bear, and part panther, but larger than any of these."
As to the wolves in the Blue Mountains, George Potts,
an old soldier residing near Bethel (Millersburg), in
Berks County, says that there were still a few wolves
in the Blue Mountains when he returned from the

AMASA B. WINCHESTER

With a Stray Coyote Which He Killed in Clinton County

December 16, 1915.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 101

Civil War, in 1864, and that they were prevalent in
large numbers when he was a boy, over sixty-five
years ago. D. C. Ney, of Jonestown, Lebanon Coun-
ty, states that his uncle, Thomas Ney, killed wolves in
Indiantown Gap subsequent to 1840, that the wolves
maintained a path along the summit of the Second
]\Iountain as far west as the Susquehanna, thence into
the wilds of Clarks' Valley. Daniel Long, still living
in Shubert's Gap, near ]\lillersburg, killed a wolf near
his home in 188G. It came to his farmstead at butch-
ering time, making friends wnth an unsexed female
dog. The dog followed the wolf to the mountain, and
returning with it several days later the "fleet by night''
was shot by Long, who lay in ambush for it. The
hide, which Long says was black in color, was made
into a rug, and is said to be in Reading at the present
time. This was undoubtedly the last wolf killed east
of the Blue jNIountains, and was possibly a straggler
from the Seven jNIountains. John Simcox, son of the
wolf hunter, Abe Simcox. wdiile working at a prop-
timber job at the head of Kammerdiner Run, in Clin-
ton County, in 1900, observed a black wolf which came
to the camp ever}^ evening for two weeks and played
with a collie dog belonging to the camp boss. In 1901
John Simcox and' his brother Torrence saw three
wolves near the Wolf Rock on Henry Run. The
wolves, after resting on the rock, disappeared across
the run and up the steep slope of Sugar Valley Hill,
where wolves had many dens in an early day. Wolves
came close to John D. Decker's home in Decker \''alley

102 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

in the heart of the Seven Mountains as late as 1870,
seemingly seeking to lure the dogs into the forests.
They howled nightly on the ridges north of the Decker
home. Elizabeth C. Wright, in that entertaining book,
"Lichen Tufts from the Alleghanies," published in
1860, speaks of stag's horns often becoming entangled
in dense thickets of "buck laurel {Kalmla latifolia)"
on Kinzua Run, and the deer being held there until
killed by wolves. In Sugar Valley, as previously
stated, a wolf's paw was a "good luck" sign, and when
no longer obtainable, bear's paws and even wild tur-
key's claws were nailed on the barns. A wolf's head
was considered even more lucky, and old-timers re-
member these talismans on barns along the highways
in Sugar Valley and Brush Valley. In Angelo de
Gubernatis' "Mythologie Zoologique," Volume II,
page 155, it is stated "Bn Sicilc, on Croit qu'une tete
de loup augincnte le courage de celui qui s'en revet.
Dans la province de Girgcnti, on fait des sonlicrs de
peau de loup aux cnfants que les parents vculent
rendre forts, braves, et helliquenx." Old settlers in
Sugar Valley state that Indian children passing
through the valley with their parents were similarly
equipped. J. W. Zimmerman, son of the famous
hunter, David A. Zimmerman, relates an interesting
incident connected with the last wolves in the East
End of Sugar Valley. About 1847 the old Nimrod
destroyed a wolf's den in Green's Gap, consisting of a
she-wolf and a half dozen pups, but the dog-wolf es-
caped. One wintry night, after Zimmerman and his

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 103

bride had retired, a wolf's yowling was heard outside
the log cabin, which stood near Tea Springs. Still
lying in bed, the hunter picked up his rifle, and. firing
through the open window, hit and killed the brute as
he stood in the centre of the clearing, in the moonhght,
barking his defiance at the destroyers of his family.
J. R. Ramsey, of Treaster Valley, ]\Iifflin County, re-
lates how when his grandfather was a boy, about
eighty years ago, and courting the girl whom he after-
wards married, he was followed one night by several
black wolves. They pressed him so closely for such a
long distance that he determined to ward them off in
some way. Backing up against a large tree he began
throwing pieces of meat at the brutes from a basket
which he carried. When it was all gone, the wolves
made a closer approach, and not knowing what else
to do, he picked up a stone, and began striking it
against the blade of a scythe, Avhich he was also carry-
ing. As soon as he began this the wolves all ran away,
as if scared out of their wits. The woodsman said,
disgusted : "'The plague take you all. If I had known
you liked that sound so well, you should have had it
before dinner." This anecdote is strikingly like one of
a soldier in Ireland, mentioned by Harting. in his "Ex-
tinct British Animals." It appeared that a military
man, who was on his way to take passage for Eng-
land, had to pass through a wood, and, being weary,
sat down under a tree, opening his knapsack, which
contained some victuals, and commenced to eat. ^Sud-
denly he was surprised by several wolves, which were

104 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

coming towards him ; he threw them some scraps of
bread and cheese until it was all gone. The wolves
made a closer approach to him, and he knew not what
to do, so he took a pair of bagpipes which he had, and
as soon as he began to play upon them, all the wolves
ran awa}- as if they had been scared out of their wits.
The soldier, disgusted, cried out : "A pox take you all.
If I had known you loved music so well, you should
have had it before dinner." Hollister in his great
"History of the Lackawanna A^alley," tells of a pioneer
in Leggett's Gap who in traveling through the forests
dragged an old saw-mill saw after him over the rocky
trails ; the sounds effectually keeping away the packs
of wolves which formerly troubled him. This author
also tells of a woman, Airs. Nokes, who was "treed"
for an entire night by a pack of wolves. He names
Elias Scott as the most noted wolf hunter of the
valley. The sprightly and courageous Dorcas
Holt, of near Lewistown, is said to have poked
the barrel of a rifle down the throat of a
wolf which had the impertinence to look in at the
window where she sat sewing. At the present time no
skull, bone, hide or tail of any Pennsylvania wolf is
known to be in existence. During the prevalence of
these animals no one had the foresight to collect speci-
mens for the museums, probably as the extinction of
the species was not deemed imminent. But the poison-
ers hastened the end canis lupus; though skulls and
hides were probably in existence at remote farmhouses
for twenty years after this general disappearance. The

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WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 105

hide of the wolf killed by Dan Long, in the Blue
Mountains in 188G, was made into a rug, after the
proud Ninirod had collected a twelve dollar bounty on
the scalp at Reading. It was loaned to relatives of the
hunter's wife who resided at Bethel (^lillersburg).
There it was much admired for a number of years.
Later it was taken to Reading, where it is said to be at
present, and a strenuous search might locate it. In
the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg is the mounted
hide of the ''coyote'' killed at Beaver Dams, in Blair
County, in 1907. There is a bare possibility that it is
a real '"brown wolf" of Central Pennsylvania, that is,
if the prairie wolf and the "small brown wolf of Penn-
sylvania" are identical. C. S. \'an Xear, of Somerset,
Somerset County, had until recently the hide of a grey
timber wolf killed in the mountains of that county in
1897 by an old hunter named John Queer. But there
is considerable doubt if it was a genuine Pennsylvania
wolf, or a western wolf liberated or escaped in Penn-
sylvania. The hides of the wolfish dogs brought to
]\I. W. Straley at Chambersburg are pro'oably still in
existence, the male in the author's collection, the fe-
male in Mr. Straley's collection. The complete hide
of a black wolf is said to be preserved in the attic of a
farm house in High Valley, Centre County. A black
wolf's skull is said to be in the "upstairs" of a hog pen
at a farm on the "Winter Side" of Sugar Valley, near
Chadwick's Gap. A wolf's paw was preserved at a
farmhouse in Penn's \"alley, near the Fox Gap. The
Pennsylvania Indians possessed a small dog, described

106 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

by Dr. B. S. Barton as being "a cross between the wolf
and fox, or wolf and some other species of dog."
Later he mentions that the Six Nations had the breed
in a pure state as late as 1805. The Lenni Lanape
called it the Lenni-Chum, or "the original beast."
S. N, Rhoads quotes Dr. Daniel G. Brinton as saying
that the "original beast" had "pointed ears," and was
called "allum" by the Indians in New Jersey, "who
used it for protection and hunting, but likewise for
food, and especially for ceremonial purposes." It
probably resembled the celebrated Black Wolf Dog of
Florida. Another "were-wolf" that figured in the
annals of Wayne Township, Clinton County, was oft-
enest described by Jacob Dyce, an old gentleman who
passed away in that community about twenty years
ago when "well up in eighty." This wolf was a three-
legged animal, and defied the hunters and trappers for
a dozen years, until its hardy spirit was laid by a silver
bullet fired from George Wilson's rifle — the same vet-
eran who disposed of another of Wayne Township's
spook wolves, previously described. Among the In-
dians on the Cornplanter and Alleghany Reservations
is sometimes heard a story of a Polish trapper named
John Wallize, and his Indian companions, who, about
1835, was snowed in at his hunting cabin on Windfall
Run, Potter County, later the structure being buried
by a landslide. A pack of ravenous wolves are said
to have dug the captives out, but with a small show of
gratitude were killed by Wallize and comrades. This
tale was a favorite with the gallant Indian deerslayer,

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 107

Simon Black Chief, who had heard it from Tall Chief
and Jim Jacobs. The sagacity of Pennsylvania wolves,
especially the black wolves of the Seven Mountains,
was proverbial. It is related that the philanthropic
Ario Pardee was in the habit of taking solitary walks
through his vast Pineries, estimating the timber and
thinking out schemes for the betterment of mankind.
On one of these rambles he happened into a clear-
ing in High Valley, where he met a very small
boy named Israel Riter, who was tending a few ragged
looking sheep. The philanthropist perceived a large
black wolf standing at the edge of the clearing, no
great distance away, apparently watching the grazing
animals. He communicated his discovery to the young
shepherd, and advised him to set his dog on the wolf.
The boy replied that such would be a risky procedure,
as the wolf at the edge of the clearing was only there
to attract his attention ;• that on the opposite side of
the clearing there was no doubt another wolf, which,
as soon as he turned the dog on the first wolf, would
take the opportunity to carry off a sheep. The wealthy
gentleman, who doubted the extraordinary story, of-
fered young Riter that if he would try the expeririient,
he would make good any loss of sheep in dollars. The
boy agreed, and sent his dog after the wolf, which was
in plain view. No sooner had he done so when the
ambushed confederate rushed out from the opposite
thicket and plunged into the flock. At that moment
the philanthropist's Negro body servant. Black Sam,
who had been following his master unknown to him at

108 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

a respectful distance, appeared on the scene, and, rais-
ing his rifle, killed both wolves with two well-directed
shots. A similar story is told in Southern France,
showing the apparently universal intelligence of the
wolf family. Philip Shreckengast, of Tylersville,
Clinton County, recounted an experience along the
same lines that happened to him when watching a
flock of sheep in Little Sugar Valley. It is said that
Sam Emery, of White Deer Valley, sold the hides of
two brown wolves to John W. Grofi:', a fur buyer from
Lebanon County. C. W. Dickinson had tanned the
hide of a grey wolf which he killed in McKean County
in JMay, 1873, using it as a cushion on his mowing ma-
chine and land roller until 1898, when, on moving, he
burned it with a lot of rubbish. Many stories are told
of the intelligence of wolves, the remarkable case re-
corded in Stuart Brothers' "Lays of tlie Deer Forest"
of a blind wolf in the Highlands of Scotland that was
guided through the forests by a companion by means
of a rod held in the jaws of both is exceeded by a re-
cent experience of Bud Dalrymple, the famous wofler
of South Dakota. This hunter found a wolf which had
dragged a heavy trap to a cave, and was unable to get
about, but was fed by its comrades, the den being filled
with chunks of meat — which show that wolfish sagacity
was not all directed to rapine, but is compassionate
in the extreme. A fox trapped in Sweden Hill, Potter
County, was fed for several days by its companions,
as was another fox in Sullivan County. These episodes
were recounted in Pennsylvania newspapers in 1915

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 109

and 1916. Wolves are said to have fought over the
bodies of Captain Harry Green, the "Regulator" from
the Juniata country, and his companians, who were
murdered by Indian marauders in Green's Gap, Clinton
County, in 1801, their howling and yelping being so
Vociferous that settlers were attracted to the spot, and
who gave the remains decent burial. White Mingo, a
celebrated Indian who was murdered at Stump's Run,
near Swinefordstown, now Middleburg, in 1768, gave
an exhibition of personal bravery as a wolf-hunter never
since equalled in Pennsylvania. When the first white
settlers came to Aliddle Creek \'alley, about 1765,
they were troubled with incursions of wolves from the
surrounding mountains. White Mingo came to the
rescue of the pioneers by smearing blood and tallow on
his moccasins and making a trail in the forest. The
wolves took up the scent, until soon a pack of one
hundred rapacious beasts were at the heels of this
savage prototype of the Pied Piper ! He timed the
process so that the animals emerged from the woods
near the present town of Beaver Springs, where set-
tlers concealed behind stumps- and sheds shot them
down to the last one. The last pack of wolves — thir-
teen in number — to visit Middle Creek Valley came to
a barnyard near Beavertown during the cold winter of
1810, killing a huge ox in sight of the frightened
tenants of the premises. A device known as the '"wolf
knife" was successfully tried on the wolves in Jack's
]\Iountain, back of Beavertown. It consisted of a
sharp knife blade imbedded in frozen fat, and placed

110 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

along a path frequented by the animals. When a wolf
stopped and licked the fat, the blade would cut his
tongue. The sight of the blood would infuriate the
pack, causing them to fight among themselves until
sometimes half the pack would be slain. That there is
some connection between the "wolf-notes," those wild,
inexpHcable variants sometimes struck on a violin, and
wolves, is attested to by the following anecdote of
Lewis Dorman, the famous hunter of the Seven
Mountains, who died in 1905, and is buried in St.
Paul's Churchyard, near Woodward, Centre County.
As is well known, Dorman was a violinist of note.
One summer evening, when camped in High Valley,
he was tuning an old' fiddle belonging to Jacob
Riter, when accidentally a sharp "wolf note" was
struck on the strings. It was answered by a wolf on
the summit of the Red Top. Dorman repeated the
"wolf notes" as best he could, eventually drawing the
v^olf off the mountain and bringing it to the edge of
the clearing. The next night the hunter played some
good music on his own violin, but the \volf paid no
attention to it. But when again he drew the bow
across the weakest part of the old, imperfect violin,
the wolf was quick to respond from his mountain re-
treat. John Jones, a Pennsylvania poet, thus alludes
to the wolves in his magnificent poem of pioneer days,
"The Retrospect" :

"When nigMs were long and winters cold,
The wolves would prowl in hunger near —
Around the house — while in the fold

The frightened lambs all cringed with fear."

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Ill

Confirming Judge Henning's remarks on the pois-
oning of the wolves in the Blue Mountains, which ate
the glanderecl carcasses of horses from the War of
1813, Mrs. Ella Zerby Elliott, in her "Blue Book of
Schuylkill County," published in 191(5, quotes an
old Pottsville settler, Jeremiah Reed, as saying that
the wolves died by the scores after eating the pois-
oned meat. Mrs. Elliott says : "In Schuylkill County
the depredations of wolves about butchering time in
the late Fall of tlie year, when they scented the odor
from the freshly killed domestic animals, were par-
ticularly annoying and dangerous." Mrs. John Cobb,
of Luzerne County, killed with a pitchfork a wolf that
had the impertinence to enter her barnyard one morn-
ing during the cold winter of 1835.

XIII. BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE.

THAT the presence of wolves in a country brings
out 4:he bravest characteristics in mankind can-
not be denied. It is the pabukim of heroes.
Some famihes have fought w^olves for generations,
and in the wars of men they demonstrate w^iat they
have learned of valor in the chase. Take the Quinn
family, for instance. Their crest is a wolf's head,
erased, argent. They have been known as a race of
wolf hunters and warriors in the North of Ireland for
centuries. Terrence Quinn was noted among the
earliest Indian fighters in Central Pennsylvania, and
escaped from the awful massacre at Dry Valley in
1778. He was a noted wolf hunter in his day. He
died in Buffalo Valley, August 10, 1831, aged 93 years.
His son, Samuel Michael Quinn, was appointed an en-
sign in the Rangers commanded by the celebrated
Peter Grove. In 17'88 young Quinn,' then in his
twentieth year, was selected as an assistant surveyor
and sent into the wild regions of the West Branch.
He camped at the mouth of the run, which was named
after him, Quinn's Run, near the present town of
Lock Haven. Modern innovations have changed the
name of the run to Queen's Run. One of the young
surveyor's companions, Peter Farley by name, was
seized with an attack of palsy and confined to his bunk
in the shack, which stood on the bank of the run

112

re «J

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 113

where it emptied into the Susquehanna. A panther's
tracks were noticed in the snow, and young Ouinn
went after it, accompanied by his faithful bull dogs.
After a long chase he overtook it at the head of Rat-
tlesnake Run, where the Blanchard cabin was after-
wards built. Far up in an enormous white pine, the
stab of which is still standing, the panther was
crouched, its bright eyes, to use the hunter's own
words, "glowed like the eyes of a demon." Quietly
and quickly he raised his gun and fired, then stepped
back and began to reload his muzzle-loader. As he
did so the mammoth brute came tumbling down, its
dead body falling in the big spring. Carrying the hand-
some hide, the hunter returned towards his cabin,
thinking to cheer his sick companion with the story of
his exploit. As he neared the shack the bull dogs be-
gan showing signs of alarm. It was almost dark, but
he could make out four wolves crouched close to-
gether outside the door, motionless, their long noses
scenting the warm air which came from beneath the
door. His gun being reloaded with a heavy bullet, he
took careful aim and fired, before the wolves could
become aware of his proximity. The heavy charge
penetrated the throats of all four wolves, killing them
instantly. The shot aroused the sick man and he
called out : "Is that you, Mickey ?" to which the young
hunter replied in cheer> affirmative. He pushed open
the door, kicking the carcasses of the four wolves be-
fore him. Peter Farley, who lived to be nearly ninety,
said that he could never forget the sight which greeted

114 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

his eyes. In the doorway stood Quinn with the pan-
ther hide over his shoulder, and the four dead wolves
piled about his feet. The dogs formed the background
of the picture. The excitement w^as a help to the sick
man, and he soon recovered. The two young men
killed, while camped at Quinn's Run, over one hun-
dred wolves, which naturally reduced the boldness of
these animals in that neighborhood. Later in life
Samuel Quinn returned to Buffalo Valley, where he
became noted as a generous patron of sport. He loved
good horses and encouraged horse racing in that re-
gion. On his way down country he found a stray
horse in a forest. On its back were remnants of a
saddle, showing that it had once belonged to some
trader who had been ambushed and slain by redmen.
The young Ranger was fleet of foot, and ran after it,
and caught it by the mane. The animal was a dark
brown in color, with a white face, well put together
and was an entire. Quinn made a rude bridle out
of hides and rode the animal home. He named the
horse Aoidh, wdiich is the Gaelic for Stranger. On
the way a pack of wolves put in an appearance, and
the young Nimrod shot a dozen of them from the
horse's back, in the true old-fashioned Irish style. He
used the brown horse for many years as a stock horse,
and the dam of Sea Turtle, which won a twelve mile
race from the Great Island to Jersey Shore, about
1835, was one of his numerous progeny. It is said
that when he won this race he wore a wolf's tusk sus-
pended by a string around his neck. Thus equipped, ,;j

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 115

racer was considered invincible on the course. Rank-
ing a close second to Samuel ^Michael Ouinn, in point
of personal bravery, is James Wylie Aliller, now of
Clinton County, who was born in what is now Cam-
eron County, in ISoS. He began trapping wolves on
Wykoff's Run, near Sinnemahoning, when only twelve
years of age. On one occasion, when visiting his trap
line, he found a large dog wolf in one of the traps.
The animal was badly frightened at the sight of the
intrepid young hunter, and, lying down, '"quit" com-
pletely. Fearing nothing, young Miller picked up
wolf and trap, and throwing them over his shoulders,
started for his uncle's home, a distance of over two
miles. He was a sturdily built lad. and despite the
fact that the wolf weighed seventy-fi\e pounds, made
the journey easily. \\'hen the uncle saw the boy
coming with the huge live wolf on his back he gave
him a good scolding, pointing out the dangers of such
a proceeding, that the wolf might have turned around
and snapped his face oft"! Though Young Miller was
more careful in the future, he once or twice liberated
wolves he had captured to see them battle with his
dogs. He states that the last wolves in Cameron
County made their headquarters on Square Timber
Run, where they lingered on until after the Civil War.
The- wolves of Cameron County and further
north were of the large grey or "timber"' va-
riety, much more formidable than the small
brown wolves of the West Branch Valley, which
were exterminated at an earlier period. Wolves might

116

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

be living in the Cameron County wilds today, he be-
lieves, but for forest fires, the lack of food supply,
and, above all, reckless poisoning. According to Seth
Iredell Nelson, a man named William Bonsai, while
riding horseback through a forest in Clearfield Coun-
ty, killed a wolf with a club; that was about 1891 or
1892. J. E. Cleveland, of Bradford County, driving a
pair of fractious colts from Fox Centre, Sullivan
County, to his home in Canton in the fall of 1877, en-
countered a large wolf in the road which badly fright-
ened' the team. Ebenezer Leach, of Luzerne County,
told of a fawn in Leggett's Gap pursued closely by
two wolves, which ran up to him and placed its head
betw-een his legs for protection.

SAMUEL N. RHOADS,
Author of Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey," (Pub-
lished 1903) — The Great Authority on Pennsylvania
Panthers and Wolves.

XIV. CATCHING WOLVES WITH FISH HOOKS

CW. DICKINSON is very fond of relating the
following remarkable anecdote, which he has
written out and which is reproduced verbatim :
"I will try to give you an account of a hunting and
fishing trip when we caught two wolves with a fish /
hook. On May 14th, 1872, the writer started out to
find a den or nest of young wolves. As there had
been numerous losses of sheep slaughtered by wolves
over a territory of about fifteen square miles, we had
learned by experience that somewhere within this ter-
ritory there was a den of wolves consisting of two old
wolves- and a litter of whelps. On this point we were
dead certain. But in what locality was this den ? From
experience we had learned that these cunning brutes
would not kill sheep at this season of the year within
three or four miles of their den, and as three-fourths of
this territory was a solid forest and the den might be
outside of this territory, as wolves have been known to
go fifteen or twenty miles from their den to kill sheep
when they were rearing their young. In the south-
western part of this territory and a mile and a half
from any neighbor's lived an old German by the name
of Adam JNIartin, who kept quite a flock of sheep, win-
tering annually from 60 to 100 sheep. His farm was
on top of the mountain, and the east side of his farm
adjoined an abandoned farm of three hundred acres

117

118 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

of cleared land, which Mr. Alartin utilized as a pasture
for all his stock, except his hogs and calves, which he
kept near his house so it would be handy to feed them.
Mr. Martin's sheep ran at will on the abandoned farm
from the time snow went off in the spring until he
drove them to his farm after winter set in. During
four years prior to May 14th, he did not lose a single
sheep by wolves. We looked at this fact as being al-
most positive proof that the wolf den was within two
or three miles of this abandoned farm, which is lo-
cated on the top of the mountain between Red Mill
Brook and Robin's Brook. These two streams empty
into Potato Creek about four miles east of the aban-
doned farm. So, on May 14th, we set out in quest
of the wolf den, with our knapsack on our back, con-
taining three wolf traps, a small quantity of salt and
three or four days' rations for myself and my faithful
dog Rover, which always was my companion on my
hunting or trapping expeditions while he lived. Dur-
ing spring, summer and fall a hunter or trapper always
carried a fish line, a few extra hooks and package of
salt. In case provisions began to run low he could
catch all the trout in fifteen minutes a man could eat
at one meal. After traveling about eight miles we came
on the old abandoned farm known as the Bunker Hill
farm. We took to the tall timber in a northwesterly
direction. In less than an hour we had the trail of
wolves, which Rover could follow about as fast as I
cared to walk. After we folloAved this trail for twenty
minutes we left it, as the wolves seemed to be going

~ re

IL t

^ E

lU ^

E I-

t- 2

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 119

m all directions, just looking for a woodchuck, "coon
or a rabbit to make a meal of. We started on our
original course and in about tbirty minutes we had
another trail, which was zigzagging around as bad as
a fox in a meadow hunting mice. These crooked trails
we did not want. We wanted to find the trail of
wolves that Avere traveling in a straight line in any
one direction, for that was the trail to lead us to the
den, so we struck out again. About 2.30 P. J\I. we
struck a trail that looked better to me, as they were
traveling a little east of south and going as straight
as a bee would fly to his tree. We followed this trail
until after sundown, came to a small spring run and
decided to camp for the night by this run so as to have
water handy for supper and breakfast. We gathered
a pile of old chunks of wood for a fire, for at this
season of the year the nights are cool in the mountains.
After we got a good camp fire started we ate our sup-
per and we began to howl like a wolf and kept this
up at intervals of every twenty minutes until 10.30,
when we got two wolves to answer us. They were on
top of the mountain and northeast of us. In about
forty minutes they answered us again on the top of a
hill to the northwest and about a half mile away.
Next time they answered south of us, and clear at the
top of the mountain. We knew they were about in
the edge of the northeast corner of Bunker Hill farm.
Then we laid dow^n by the camp fire and went to sleep.
We were up with the birds in the morning, ate our
breakfast and ready to start on the trail just as the

120 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

sun came in sight in the east. Right here we made a
blunder, as the dog wanted to take the trail we were
following the night before, while I had made up my
mind to go to the top of the mountain where the wolves
had answered me first the evening before. When we
went about one-third the distance to the hill top we
found a path or trail that only an experienced woods-
man would detect. This path led straight up or down
the hill, and as old Rover wanted to go down hill, we
decided to follow him. We had gone about thirty
rods when ' we came to a flat rock. This rock was
about level on top and about sixteen feet square. The
ground on the hillside was as high as the rock, while
the down-hill side of the rock was about three feet
above the ground. The leaves that had fallen from
the trees for ages lay on this rock the same as they
did on the ground around it. Here on top of this rock,
about the centre part of it, was something that looked
nice to me. Here in the leaves was a wolf's bed that
had been occupied many times. It resembled a dog's
bed in a straw pile; a ring of leaves about six inches
high all worn fine. And at this season of the year,
being the time all animals shed their winter coat, there
was wolf hair enough in this bed, and mixed with the
broken leaves in the ring around it, to make a dozen
birds' nests. Now we are sure we are going to find
the coveted prize. As we looked for the path from
this rock we could not see any, so decided we were "in
wrong" and retraced our path up the hill. After we
had gone six or eight rods past the point where

TIMBER WOLF IN SUMMER PELAGE.
(Photo Taken in Buffalo Zoo by C. W. Dickinson.)

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 121

we first hit this path, we noticed a path coming
into the path we were following, but at the angle
the path came would indicate we were going in
the wrong direction. A few rods farther on a path
came in on the opposite side, and a little further on
another path, and other paths, and auguring wrong
for us to be going in the right direction, and the path
we were following kept getting smaller until we got
on top of the mountain, when we did not have any
path. As it was very cold, there being a heavy frost,
and the sun shone in through an open space, we sat on
an old log in the sunlight to get warm and to think the
subject over. After a few minutes we thought we
would howl and see if the wolves would answer us.
In about two seconds one of them answered. It was
about fifty rods away in an easterly direction. Before
the sound had died away the other one answered about
the same distance away, but to the west. They kept
howling to each other, so we kept still and waited.
The sound of the one east was getting nearer. Directly
we saw the animal coming. We got in position to
shoot it, but to our surprise our rifle would not stand
cocked. We tried to hold the hammer back with our
thumb and shoot by letting the hammer slip from
under the thumb, but the thumb hid the sights, so the
wolf got away with a whole hide. I took my
lock off and found that oil that had been put on the lock
the Fall before had become gummy and thick, and the
cold night had made it so hard it would not let the "dog"'
work enough to catch in the cocked notch. After

122 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

scraping the thick oil out with the point of a knife
blade I found the lock would work all right. After
putting the lock back in place we retraced our steps
back down hill to the flat rock, wondering all the time
at what made the path end so abruptly at that point.
Two or three years prior to this a beech tree that stood
at the upper edge of the rock had broken off and fallen
down the hill over this rock. The force of this tree
falling down hill had carried the butt of the tree about
half way across the rock. As we got to this rock old
Rover trotted through the bed, jumped on to the butt
of the tree, trotted down the log until he got among
the limbs, jumped off on the right side, and as soon as
he started from the log I could see the path very
plain. I stopped him, went down to where he was.
told him to go on ; he went about five rods to the side
of a large rock that was about fifteen feet high and
about thirty feet square. The dog walked along to
the corner of the rock, turned to the right, and as soon
as I turned this corner the dog was looking into a
large hole under and about the middle of the rock. The
first glance told us we had the den sure, whether we
got any wolves or not. We let the dog go in under the
rock and after a minute called him out by chirping to
him. The young wolves followed him to the mouth
of the hole. There were seven of them, pretty little
"cusses," too, but how were we to get them? That
was the perplexing problem. We began to look for a
small sapling that forked out three or four feet from
the ground. We soon found one, the prong being

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 123

about six feet long. These prongs we twisted into
switches, taking hold of the two switched prongs
about half way to the top, from the point where they
separated from the prongs together with the tops of
each prong pointing in opposite directions, then tied
them with a small string, then wound the top end of
one prong around the butt end of the other several
times to the point they pronged, tied this fast, then
wound the other side in the same way. This left a
hoop about two feet in diameter. We took our
hatchet, cut the sapling so the part below the prongs
was three feet long. We sent the dog into the den. As
soon as we heard the whelps whining around the dog
we chirped to him. He came out, the whelps trotting
along with him until they were within two feet of the
hole. We had one hoop in position before calling
the dog out. We stood as much out of sight as possi-
ble and allow us to see into the hole, holding our hoop
close up against the rock, and when the little "brats"
stopped to bark at us we dropped the hoop over two
of them, giving them a quick jerk. They rolled out-
doors about three feet. We dropped our hoop and
clinched them. Holy smoke, how they did yell! At
first they tried to bite, but as soon as they found out
we were not going to hurt them, we could handle them
as well as you could handle little puppies four or five
weeks old. The experience we had with other dens
in former years, we were certain we could not fool
these little chaps again the same day. We went forty
rods from the den, cut three clogs, one for each trap

124 WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

we had with us ; we set a trap in the two paths that
seemed to be the most traveled. Then we went back,
let the dog go under the rock again, but nothing doing.
Could not get a whine from the little fellows. We
went and cut a little sapling a little larger, for a good
fish pole, cut the top off at a point where the pole was
three-eighths of an inch in diameter, tied the largest
fish-hook we had on to the top end of the pole. Then
we crawled under the rock as far as the cavity was
large enough for us to go, then ran the pole on under
the rock, judging from the feeling to tell whether it
hit a stone or hard ground or an animal. Directly I
was sure it hit an animal. I gave a little jerk, and at
that a young wolf began to 'ki-yi.' I backed out from
under the rock, pulling the pole with me, and I pulled
the little wolf out. We found the hook was fast in
the muscles of his foreleg close to the body. After
getting the hook out of the leg we put the pup into the
knapsack and crawled into the den again, and in less
than five minutes we had another one hooked. This
one was hooked through the left forefoot. After
getting him oft" the hook we crawled under again and
fished until we w^ere so tired we had to quit, and as it
was late in the afternoon we set the remaining trap
in the hole and went home, taking the four wolves
with us. Early the next morning we took six wolf
traps and went back to the den. On arriving there we
found everything as we had left it the day before.
We took up the trap in the hole as cautious as possible,
got my hoop and let the dog go under. We soon heard

GRAVE OF BILL PURSLEY,

Weikert, Union County, Died February 3, 1893, Aged 87 Years,

Wlio With William Meyer and Jacob F. Barnet Surprised

and Killed Eleven Black Wolves in Their Nest on

Weikert Run, 1857.

WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 125

the whelps whining. We chirped to the dog, and as he
came out one whelp came close enough. We caught
him with the hoop. Then we tried the fish pole again.
Nothing doing! We went and set the six traps in the
paths that came in towards the den. We went to the
den, let the dog go under again, but nothing doing.
Tried the fish pole again. Got nothing. We had a
heavy chalk line with us. I took the wolf we got in
the morning, tied this chalk line to his neck, crawled
under as far as I could get and let him go back into
the den, letting the line out as fast as he went in. He
went whining along until he found company. Then
we began to pull him back. He began to whine and
kept it up until we drew him up to us. Now it was as
dark as night, our body filled the hole so we could see
nothing. We felt back of the one we had, and got one
of the remaining ones by a leg, held on to him, backed
out of the den; so now we had six out of the seven.
A cousin of mine, a slim, puny boy of sixteen, wanted
to go with me this day, and I took him along, as he
was so anxious to see a wolf den, and as it was after-
noon we went to where I had camped the first night
out, to eat our dinner. It was not over fifty rods from
the den. After dinner I asked my cousin to go trout
fishing with me for an hour or two. He said he would
rather lie down and sleep, as he got up so early, so I
went fishing for one and a half hours and caught 85
nice trout, but on my return I was startled not to find
the boy. I 'hollered' as loud as I could yell, but got no
answer. As we looked around we noticed our knap-

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 P". 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. AIcKnight, 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 w^olf dens and capturing the pups alive,
often encountering and vanquishing the justly infur-
iated parent wolves.

XV. HISTORICAL DATA.

BEFORE bringing to a close this treatise on the
\\olves 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, IMercer 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 wath 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 INIinsi, 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 PAET I.

(Part II will comprise the Moose, Elk, Bison,
Beaver, Pine Marten, Fisher, Glutton and Canada
Lynx. )

GRAVE OF JACOB F. BARNET,

One of Bill Pursley's Companions on the Great "Surprise"

Wolf Hunt of 1857.

ADDENDA.

AMMON WILT, the Lock Haven Ijlacksmilli,
states that in the fall of 181 G two boys, Joe and
Oliver Lenhart, aged 10 and 13 years, respec-
tively, residing near Westover, Clearfield County,
while shooting at mark with an old shot gun saw a
j)anther stealthily entering the lot. ^\'ith 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

denjy he beheld a pack of twenty wolves staring at
liim. 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 "II a vu le loup."
(He has seen tiie wolf.)

* * * :t^

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.

^ -(' T^ 'H

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."

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. The famous Quaker, who had been
inspecting some property in Chester County, near
Phoenixville, became belated and lost his way. Nlight

•WOLF DAYS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 133

settling on, he was surrounded in the dense forest by
a pack of snarhng, 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
w^olves 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." (PubHshed after her
death.)

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 zvohrs, 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 zi'olf.

^ ^ ^ ^

"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.

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,
amongf them 240 wolves.

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.)