NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 261 



at the salt licks, or were tracked down with the help of dogs 

 and shot. It was not thought unusual for a hunter to follow a 

 stag 40 miles before finally bringing it to bay. Shoemaker 

 (1915) writes of these final captures: "Taken by sections, the 

 last elk in the Blue Mountains was killed about 1800; in the 

 Pocono Mountains in 1845; in Lacka wanna County five or ten 

 years earlier. Caleb Mitchell killed the last elk of the Seven 

 Mountains at the head of Treaster Valley, Mifflin County, in 

 1857; James David killed the last elk in Clearfield County in 

 May, 1865. It was brought to Lock Haven on a raft from the 

 mouth of Medix Run, where it was killed . . . Jim Jacob - 

 son, a half-breed Indian, killed an elk in Elk County in 1867," 

 which according to Rhoads is the last to have been shot in the 

 State. Shoemaker (1915), however, says that this same 

 Jacobson killed others "annually until Nov. 19, 1875, when he 

 killed his last near Roulette, Potter County," and adds that 

 the very last Pennsylvania elk was shot on September 1, 1877. 

 Up to the middle of the last century "there was quite a thriving 

 business of catching elks alive in northern Pennsylvania. " 



In the adjacent State of West Virginia wapiti were common 

 till about the middle of the eighteenth century and thereafter 

 dwindled in numbers up to about the time of the Civil War. 

 Kellogg (1937), in summing up their brief history, notes that 

 "between 1830 and 1835, elk were killed at a deer lick near 

 'The Sinks' on Gandy Creek . . . Three elk were killed 

 on the Black Fork of Cheat River near Davis, Tucker County, 

 in 1843 . . . During 1845, seven elk were seen near 

 Durbin, Pocahontas County." McWhorter in a historical 

 account of the region states that an elk was killed in 1867 at 

 Elk Lick on Middle River, in the same county, and tracks were 

 said to have been seen even in 1873. At the present time a few 

 elk, escaped from an enclosure in Marlinton, are said to be at 

 large on the ridges of the eastern part of the State, but these 

 were imported. 



Still farther south, C. S. Brimley (1905) states that this 

 animal doubtless occurred in North Carolina a century and a 

 half previously, and it seems also to have been present in 

 Virginia in the years after early settlement, up to about 1847 

 (Audubon and Bachman, 1846-54). For Tennessee, Kellogg 

 (1939) has assembled evidence to show that "elk at one 

 time were plentiful . . . occurring not only in the high 



