38 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



from his bed on Yocum hill. The dogs took him down Little Kettle creek 

 to Big Kettle, and up that two or three miles. There the elk came to bay on 

 a rock. He kept the dogs at a distance until the hunters came up, when he 

 left the rock and started away again. Tome, knowing the nature of elk, said 

 that all they had to do was to wait and the elk would return to the rock. 

 They dropped poles and fitted up nooses. They waited nearly half a day> 

 and then they heard the bull coming crashing through the woods, down the 

 mountain sides, the dogs in full cry. He mounted his rock again. The 

 hunters he did not seem to mind, but the dogs he fought fiercely. While he 

 was doing that the hunters got the nooses over his immense horns and 

 anchored him to surrounding trees. They got the elk alive to the Allegheny 

 river, and floated him on a raft to Olean Point. From there they traveled 

 with him through New York State to Albany, exhibiting him with much profit, 

 and at Albany he was sold for I500. That elk stood sixteen hands high and 

 had antlers six feet long, and eleven points on each side, the usual number of 

 points being nine on a side. 



" The last elk in Pennsylvania is supposed to have been killed in the 

 winter of 1867, by an Indian named Jim Jacobs, from the Cattaraugus reser- 

 vation. Jacobs followed the elk from Flagg Swamp, in Elk county, to the 

 wilds of Clarion county, through a hard snowstorm, where it came to bay on 

 a rock, and the Indian shot it. It was a bull elk and none had been seen or 

 heard in the region for several years before that." 



I wrote Mr. E. O. Austin, of Austin, Potter Co., distant 7 miles from 

 Gardeau as to his view of the narrative of Capt. Parker above quoted. He 

 writes me that he knew Parker, Lyman, Pritchard, and others named, nearly 

 all of whom, including Parker, are now dead. Sterling Devins still lives in 

 Homer township, Potter Co. They all told substantially the same stories of 

 elk habits as given by Parker, who was an old veteran, not only in age and 

 hunting exploits, but in his latter days as a story teller. Mr. Austin writes : 

 ** What Col. Parker says of the habits of elk and other wild animals is very 

 correct, but he was in the habit of making a good story of his exploits." A 

 failing, I might add, which is common to so many " great, old men," that the 

 world knows how to make allowance for it. — Rhoads, 1902. 



Records in Pa. — Eastern Pa. — Kalm relates (Travels, 1781 ed., p. 199, 

 vol. 2) that the "Stags" [wapiti] came down from the mountains [of 

 Penna. and N. J.?] in 1705, and were killed in great numbers on account of 

 a great snow. Gabriel Thomas (History of Pennsylvania and West New 

 Jersey, (1698, p. 15), in the part devoted to Penna. speaks of the "red 

 deer," " vulgarly called stags,'' one of which he bought for two gills of gun- 

 powder. Farther on he states " there are vast numbers of other wild creatures 

 [in Penna.], as elks, buffalos," etc. Regarding the name " Stag," McKay, 

 in his Zoology of New York uses this as the common name for the wapiti. 



