FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 22, 1902, 
"Alvah Dunning. 
Alvah G. Dunning, one of the oldest and best known 
guides in the Adirondack region, was found dead in his 
room at the Dudley House, Utica, on the morning of 
Tuesday, March 11, having been asphyxiated by illuminat- 
ing gas. Mr. Dunning went to the hotel the evening 
previous, arriving in time for supper. After the evening 
meal he complained of feeling somewhat ill and sat alone, 
half-drowsing, in a corner of the office. Shortly before 
8 o'clock he said he would retire, and asked that he be 
called about 8 A. M. The bellboy who showed him to 
his room asked him if he should not turn off the gas for 
him, but the old guide replied that he guessed he had 
been around on earth long enough to run a gas burner, 
and would take care of it himself. That was the last 
seen of him alive. When the clerk went to his room 
and called him in the morning, in accordance with his 
request, there was no response. The door of the apart- 
ment was accordingly forced open and the cause of the 
guest's silence was at once apparent. The room was 
full of illuminating gas, which had escaped from a gas 
cock nearly a quarter open, and its occupant was dead. 
Mr. Dunning' s death is believed to have been purely 
accidental. 
Alvah Dunning was born in the great northern wilder- 
ness eighty-six years ago, and nearly his entire life was 
spent within its confines. He attended na- 
ture's school, and with experience as a 
teacher, acquired such a knowledge of wood- 
craft as could never have been obtained from 
books or learned professors. Beyond a 
doubt he was one of the best woodsmen, one 
of the most expert hunters and one of the 
most successful trappers the Adirondack re- 
gion has ever known. His father moved 
from Vermont to Lake Pleasant, Hamilton 
county, N. Y., in 1804, being, of course, a 
pioneer in that portion of the wilderness. 
The elder Dunning was also a hunter and 
trapper, and a noted Indian fighter as well, 
having served under Sir William Johnson 
before and during the Revolutionary War. 
It is said that shortly after the war a num- 
ber of men were in a village tavern talking 
over Revolutionary exploits, when an In- 
dian — of whom there were several in the 
company — boasted of having committed a 
particularly atrocious murder, the victim be- 
ing a young white woman who had previous- 
ly resided in that locality. Dunn:'ng caught 
up a bundle of traps that lay near him and 
crushed the Indian's skull by a single blow. 
He was tried for his life and acquitted 
Alvah Dunning was born near Piseco Lake, 
Hamilton county, in June, 1816, and at the 
age of six years began to assist his father 
in trapp : ng and hunting. For several years 
he resided in the vicinity of his birthplace, 
and then removed to the Raquette Lake re- 
gion, acting, at the age of eleven years, as 
the guide for the first party of white hunters 
that ever visited that lake. Before he was 
twelve years old he had killed his first ■ 
moose, and he is quoted as saying that dur- 
ing his lifetime he killed upward of one hun- 
dred. It is said also that he shot the last 
specimen of the Adirondack moose. This 
was in March, 1862, and while he and Ben 
Batchelor were hunting together. They fol- 
lowed a bear which Dunning had wounded, 
and after going some distance came across 
the tracks of two moose, a bull and a cow. 
They killed the bull that day and pursued 
the cow all the next day, and killed her just 
at nightfall. Dunning also claimed that he 
trapped the last of the Adirondack beaver. 
When he removed to Raquette Lake Dun- 
ning built a home for himself on Osprey 
Island, which is the present site of the 
palatial summer residence of J. H. Ladew. 
of New York. He subsequently moved 
several times, but did not settle at any point 
very far from Raquette Lake, In the fall oi" 
1874 he erected a camp on Eighth Lake, Fulton Chain, to 
escape from the path of advancing civilization, but in a 
few years returned to Raquette and built at Brown's 
Tract Inlet, where he remained up to a comparatively 
recent date. The invasion of the wilderness by the sum- 
mer tourist, with the railroad and the modern hotels 
which soon followed, filled the old man's breast with a 
spirit of misgiving for his future comfort and welfare. 
He saw the site upon which had once stood his humble 
hut, and in which he had entertained Grover Cleveland, 
occupied by a bustling railroad yard. The waters where 
he had caught trout, hunted moose and deer, and trapped 
beaver and otter, were frequented by pleasure boats, and 
so he turned his face toward the setting sun and started 
for the Rocky Mountains, in the hope of enjoying the 
solitude which was no longer to be found in the Adiron- 
dacks. For a time he hunted and fished in the Dakotas 
and Michigan, but he failed to find the seclusion which 
he desired, and it was not long before he returned to his 
former haunts. Broken in spirit, he once more camped 
about Raquette Lake, and guided hunting and fishing 
parties for such men as Collis P. Huntington, William 
West Durant, Lieut.-Gov. Woodruff, J. Pierpont Morgan 
and others. He came out of the woods every winter of 
late years, and for a time last winter boarded with the 
family of James Raymond, No, 54 Spring street. Utica. 
It is said that in 1865, while making his home at Raquette 
Lake and doing trapping, he drew his fur on a hand sled 
fifty-five miles to Boonville and returned with a load of 
provisions. By those who know him best he was spoken 
of as an affable, hospitable man of the old type of woods- 
men, all of whom were quite inclined to look on the 
game laws as infringements on the rights of those who 
lived in the woods. 
Dunning never tired of telling the story of how many 
years ago he trapped the last beaver in the Adirondacks. 
He was reconnoitering the woods one day in the spring, he 
said, and discovered a new beaver dam. New beaver 
dams had become so rare that this one was the first that 
Dunning had seen in a long time. The sight r«used him 
to rejoice, for beaver pelts were worth at that time from 
$20 to $25 each. He made the mistake of waiting to 
trap them until the next winter, when he thought the pelts 
would be in better condition. "I hadn't calculated on 
Uncle En os," he said, "and Uncle Enos was an old and 
experienced beaver trapper. I was sharing the camp of 
Uncle Enos at that time, and it is likely that I'd have 
carried my beaver through until winter all right if there 
hadn't been a cranberry marsh near where I had dis- 
covered the beaver dam. Uncle Enos took it into his head 
one day that he'd like some cranberries, and he went out 
to pick some on the marsh. A man named Gilmore hap- 
pened to be at the camp, and he went along with Uncle 
Enos, and if he hadn't I never would have trapped the last 
beaver. Uncle Enos found the marsh under water. 'Dry 
weather,' he said, 'and the marsh under water, eh? That 
means that there is a beaver dam somewhere around here.' 
Uncle Enos hunted for it and found it. He never said a 
word to me about it, but three weeks later Gilmore told 
me. Then I discovered later that Uncle Enos was keep- 
ing his eye on the dam, too, and intended to put in a 
trap by and by, when the season got right. I tried for 
awhile to keep my eyes on Uncle Enos and the beaver, 
too, but it was risky. I was afraid to take any chances, so 
I put in my trap right away. The second night I got a 
beaver, and it was a whopper. It weighed 50 pounds. I 
didn't get any more. That old fellow was the only tenant 
ALVAH DUNNING. 
From photograph, copyright, 1891, by J. K. Stoddard. 
the dam had, and he was the last of his race. If I had 
only put in my trap the spring before, or if Uncle Enos 
hadn't forced me to capture it for self-protection, the last 
beaver would have brought me $25, but as it was I . only 
got $5 for it." 
His account of how he killed his first moose before he 
was twelve years old, is very interesting. He had killed 
several deer, and even bears, but his father had up to that 
time refused to let him go moose hunting, because a 
moose hunt was apt to tax the pluck and endurance of 
hardy men. On this particular occasion his father had 
discovered signs of moose near their settlement, and he 
was going to run the animal down. The boy begged so 
hard to go along that his father told him that as the 
moose was not far away, he might lead the dog, which he 
was to keep in leash until he heard the word from his 
father, and then let it go. "Then you can follow," said 
his father, "and if you are there quick enough you can 
see me kill the moose." Alvah was glad to have that 
much of a part in a moose hunt, and took his rifle along 
to make the trip seem more real. He had often heard his 
father say that a moose was afraid of a man, and would 
flee at sight or scent of one until miles were placed be- 
tween them, but that a dog at his heels enraged a moose, 
and it would stop and engage its pursuer in battle. "I 
kept thinking of this," said Alvah, "and the more I thought 
the more I made up my mind I'd kill the moose that 
day if we ever ran across it. Father was stealing along 
on the ridge and I was keeping even with him, only maybe 
a hundred yards distant. By and by the dog began to pull 
the string and wanted to go. I made up my mind he had 
the moose scented, and I quietly slipped his collar and 
away he went. Father discovered that the dog was off 
and he yelled to me to know what I had let him loose 
for. "He slipped his collar," I yelled back, and away I 
went after the dog like the wind. I ran half a mile, I 
guess,, and then caught up to him. My scheme had 
worked. The moose had stopped to have a fight with the 
dog. This was the first moose I had ever seen. It was 
a big bull.- with a spread of horns that looked like a lot 
of canoe paddles sticking out all over his head. He was 
crazy wild, and an ugly customer for any one to meet 
just then. But I didn't want to have him meet me. I got 
the chance as the dog maneuvered him about and sent a 
rifle ball straight over the butt of his ear. The moose 
dropped like a lump of lead and hardly kicked- I ran 
over, and when father came up I was leaning on my rifle 
with one foot resting on the body of the moose. Father 
looked a little surprised, but didn't let on. 'You knocked 
him over, did you ?' he said. 'Yes,' I said, as if I had been 
in the habit of doing such a thing every day for years. 'I 
thought it wasn't worth while to wait and see you kill it.' 
Father didn't say anything, but went to work to skin out 
the big creature. As he peeled the hide off I could see- 
that he kept looking for the bullet hole, and he got the 
hide entirely off without finding any. 'Why,' said he, 
'this moose ain't been shot at all ! It dropped dead be- 
cause it was scared to death.' That sort o' made me 
sink, and I told father to look at the butt of the moose's 
ear. He did. He looked at the butt of both ears. There, 
wasn't any bullet hole. My heart went clear down in my 
boots, for I had a plain, open shot at the moose, at not 
more than a hundred paces. But when father found the 
bullet in the moose's brain, I felt good again. The moose 
must have lowered his head a trifle just as I pulled the 
trigger, for the bullet had gone in at his ear and lodged 
in the brain without even making a scratch on the skin." 
Mr. Dunning leaves a sister, who resides 
in Syracuse; a nephew, who lives at Panley's 
Place, near Stratford, Herkimer county, and 
a ,niece, whose home is in Catskill. The 
father of ex-Postmaster Charles A, Dun- 
ning, of Rome, is a cousin of his. 
Utica, N. Y. ; March 12. W. E. WoLCOTT. 
Alvah Dunning was one of the "Men I 
Have Fished With," concerning whose 
qualities as men and fishermen Fred Mather 
wrote so felicitously. We are sure that 
many of the readers of Mr. Mather's sketch 
of Mr, Dunning will be glad to see it again ; 
and here it is, as published in Forest and 
Stream in 1897. and afterward republished 
in the volume, "My Angling Friends" : 
C9nly men who possess strongly marked 
personalities are capable of making strong 
friends and as equally strong enemies. The 
truth of this has been well shown in the re- 
plies to letters asking for information about 
the old woodsman who is probably the oldest 
of Adirondack guides. Carefully sifting 
these replies, it seems that Alvah is well 
liked by sportsmen whom he has served, and 
by a few dwellers in and around the great 
region of mountains and lakes which com- 
prise about one- third of the great State of 
New York. Others dislike him, and among 
Adirondack guides he is, for some reason, 
the most unpopular man in the woods. To 
me any old man in the woods is interesting, 
and as individuality; crops out more strongly 
in men who have never assumed the mask 
of civilization, we will try to see him with 
unprejudiced eyes. 
Alvah will be eighty-one years old next 
June. He is tall, spare and wiry. A look 
at his picture, taken a few years ago by 
Stoddard, will show that his strongly 
marked face is full of character, grit and de- 
termination, and it looks like a face that 
could not be developed outside the woods. 
You can see that he dressed himself before 
he would pose for Stoddard, and that his 
new hat must be "taken" at all hazards. 
That is not the hat that the old man would 
wear when tracking a deer or poking 
through the brush up a stream to observe 
where the otter "uses." This proves that Al- 
vah is really human, and has his vanities as 
well as the rest of mankind. 
It was in 1865 that I first met Alvah and 
fished for trout with him in the Brown Tract 
Inlet and Raquette Lake. I was then re- 
gaining health after a long struggle all sum- 
mer, and a couple of weeks with Alvah put on the finish- 
ing touches. 
The old man— he was "old" to me then — took good 
care of me, and I returned much improved. His talk 
of woods life was very entertaining, and it was only 
a iew weeks afterward that I became acquainted with 
his mortal enemy, Ned Buntline, also a fishing com- 
panion, so that I got Alvah's story while it was fresh. 
Friends of each man have so mixed up the case that it 
resemble the histories of Bonaparte as written by a 
French or an English pen. 
Said he: "These woods is a-gittin' too full o' people 
fer comfort — that is, in summer time; fer they don't 
both the trappin' in the Winter ; but they're a-runnin' all 
over here in summer a-shootin' an' a-fishin', but they 
don't kill much, nor catch many fish; but they git in the 
way, an' they ain't got no business here disturbin' the 
woods." 
"They pay you well for working for them, don't they. 
Alvah?" 
"Yes, they do, durn 'em; or I wouldn't bother with 
'em ; but I druther they'd stay out o' my woods. They'll 
come anyhow, an' I might as well guide 'em, fer ef I 
don't some un else will, but I druther they'd keep their 
money and stay out of the woods. I can make a livid' 
without 'em, an' they'd starve to death here without me. 
They're the durndest lot of cur'osities you ever seen; 
know more about guns an' killin' deer than any man in 
the woods, but when it comes to fishin' tackle, you'd 
oughter see it." 
This talk occurred after we had fished several days 
and had looked over the otter "uses" and other interesting 
things to be found in the wilderness, and the old man's 
remarks seemed to be so severely personal that they 
provoked me to say: "I am very sorry to have dis- 
turbed you. and will go back home in the morn- 
ing." 
The old man looked up and said : "I didn't mean you ; 
'cause you seem to know how to sit inter a boat an\ to 
know the voices of the birds an' how to fish. Now, don't 
