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 Avhole- 

 sale poisoning indulged in by the Griffins and C. W. 

 Dickinson in ]\IcKean County in 1878 destroyed all the 

 w^olves in that section except a few stragglers and crip- 

 ples. In other words, the reproducing animals of 

 the p^cks 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 



