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, Jefiferson 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, McKean 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, 



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