42 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



David, says he often talked with Gaylord about this hunt and long knew him 

 as a great hunter and, what is more rare, a truthful man ! A friend of Gay- 

 lord's, George Dewey by name, lumbering in Elk Co. came to Farrandsville 

 and told Gaylord of the elk. So Gaylord got his old hunting companion, 

 David, to bring his dogs. This was " after the big spring or summer flood of 

 1862, as they had to walk all the way up the river to the mouth of Hick's 

 Run of Bennett's Branch [owing to the absence of bridges and washing of 

 roads preventing use of horses]." They staid all night at " cracker " Hick's 

 cabin, who set them on the elk trail. They hunted all day and camped one 

 night. The next day at 2 o'clock they started the elk, and in a few minutes 

 it stood at bay and began fighting the dogs, when Gaylord came up and killed 

 it. They hired a team and got it down to the creek, where they built a boat 

 and brought it to Farrandsville by water. Pfoutz says he lived with or near 

 ■Gaylord 16 years; thinks it was in November, 1862, that the hunt occurred, 

 as he was in the Civil war at the time. He strongly denies the story that this 

 elk was procured from Indians, as implied by Nelson in the following com- 

 munication : " James David and Wilson Morrison were said to have killed an 

 €lk in Elk Co. in 1865. It was brought down the river in a boat. They did 

 not kill it, but bought it of 3 Indians." Cap. Clay thinks it possible this was 

 the Cornplanter elk of 1866. The dates nearly coincide, and the Susquehanna 

 was its natural portage to market. David may have been in both hunts. — 

 Rhoads. 



" The last elk killed in northwestern Pennsylvania was killed on Hick's run 

 in the southwestern comer of Cameron Co.[?], in November, 1861. A party 

 of old hunters, accompanied by a boy about twenty years old, went in pursuit 

 of elk [namely], William Pepper, Ben. Sweezy, Enoch Sweezy, Hamilton 

 Sweezy (the boy) and Frank Lewis. They found the trail of an elk on Hick's 

 Run, and Hamilton Sweezy having strayed away from the rest, was about to 

 to shout to his comrades when he heard the baying of hounds. He stood 

 still and soon saw an elk coming toward him. It passed within four rods, 

 and as it did so he shot it, the elk running about 10 rods and falling dead, 

 leaving Hamilton Sweezy the^honor [ ?] of killing the last elk in northwestern 

 Pennsylvania, or perhaps the last one in this state." — Dickinson. " Once very 

 plentiful all through the Allegheny range of mountains. Last killed in winter 

 of 1861-62, on Hick's Run, Cameron Co., by Pepper and Sweezy." — W. 

 Dickeson. [Not Dickinson, supra.'\ 



I was told by the hunters in our engineering camp, about 40 years ago that 

 one had been killed [?] a yeai or two before that [1857?] near where we 

 ■were camped on one of the branches of Elk Creek, in Elk county, in this 

 state."— Prof. J. E. Rothrock, Oct. 1899. 



Forest Co. — "There were elk here until, say 1835." — Hazlet. " Early set- 

 tlers saw and killed them up to 1830, I understand from good authority." — 

 Irwin. 



