(Oct. 17, 1903. 
Pine Creek country [Potter county]. She and the bull 
and calf had been discovered some time before Sterling 
Devins ran across the cow, by Leroy Lyman, on 
Tomer's Run, near the Ole Bull settlement [Abbot 
township]. Lyman got a shot at the bull, but the whole 
three escaped. The same party of hunters that cap- 
tured the cow killed the bull afterward in the woods 
on Kettle creek. The calf the dogs ran into Stowell's 
mill pond, and there it was killed. 
"A set of elk antlers of five feet spread and weighing 
from forty to fifty pounds, was not an infrequent tro- 
phy. George Rae, who was one of the great hunters 
of northern Pennsylvania in his day — and he is one of 
the greatest in the Rocky Mountains, even to this day, 
in spite of his eighty-five years — lived along the Alle- 
gheny at Portville. He had in his house and in his 
barn, the walls almost covered with the antlers of elk 
he had killed, on the peak of his roof, at one end, being 
one that measured nearly six feet between the extremi- 
ties. When George moved West forty years ago he 
left the horns on the buildings, and only a few years 
aeo many of them were still there, as reminders of 
what game once roamed our woods. 
"It required more skill to hunt the elk than it did 
to trail the deer, as they were much more cautious and 
alert. For all that, an elk, when started from his bed, 
did not instantly dash away, like the deer, but invari- 
ALLEGHENIAN ^^•APITI OR ELK {Cervus canadensis). 
From Audubon's Painting of Living Pennsylvania specimens. 
^9S 
- _ ^ — • - -— — ■- ■ ' " — — ^ — ■ 
The Pennsylvania Elk. 
[From the Mammals of Peniisylvania and Nev? Jersey. By 
Samuel N. Rhoads. Concluded from page 276.] 
Xhe following notes by my valued correspondent, 
Mr. E. O. Austin, of Potter county. Pa., regarding the 
habits of the wapiti in that county arc of much interest. 
Under date of March 4, 1901, he writes: 'T settled at 
tny preseiit residence, now in the borough of Austin, 
in 1856, then a peirfect wilderness. When I came into 
this region, a young man, I could not be surfeited 
with the stories told by old settlers and hunters as to 
what they had seen. On the First Fork of the Sinne- 
mahoning, near Prouty Run [Potter county], was the 
'Great Elk Lick' of this region. .About 1835 or .1836 
the first settlers came into this region.,^ The elk, with 
other wild creatures, then reigned here in their glory. 
Clifford liaskins, Charles Wykoff, the Jordans and 
John Glasspy, with others," were among the prominent 
men of the time. They were all settled within three 
or four miles of this lick. They all told me that they 
would go to the elk-lick to get a deer as often as they 
wanted one in the summer time. Here, sometimes, 50 
or more could be seen at a time, with the fawns playing 
around like young lambs. Clifford Haskins,said he 
went there once to get a deer, .when he saw several elk 
EpREST AND STREAM. 
not far from some rocky ridge or large rock, accessible 
to the elk. The dog attacks him with a great noise, 
and not much else. The ^beast runs for a rock as the 
best fort of defense from the attack. While his atten- 
tion is absorbed by the antics of the little dog, it is 
easy prey to put a rope over his horn with a long 
pole, or by throwing it noosed, and with two ropes 
on his horns and two strong men, wide apart, to hold 
him, he soon becomes tired and docile enough to be 
led out and home. This was not an unfrequent occur- 
rence in those times." 
The following article was published in the New York 
Times and reproduced in the Pittsburg Post of April 
19, 1896: 
"When I started in to amuse and profit myself by fol- 
lownig the chase in northern Pennsylvania," said Colo- 
nel Parker, of Gardeau, Pa., "elks were running in thcsie 
woods in herds. I have killed elk a-plenty in the 
Rocky Mountain country and other regions since, but 
I never ran across any that were as big as those of old- 
time Pennsylvania elk. I have killed elk on the Sinne- 
mahoning and Pine creek waters, and down on the 
Clarion River and West Branch, that were as big as 
horses. A 1,000-pound elk was nothing uncommon in 
that country, and I killed one once that weighed 1,200 
pounds. These were bulls. The cows would weigh 
anywhere from 600 to 800 pounds. 
in the lick and more in the clearing around it. It be- 
ing the first time he had seen elk there, he gazed in 
wonder, when more came in, until 40-or 50 had congre- 
gated. He watched their grim play for some time and 
then shot one. The rest started back, then stamped 
around their fallen comrade, gazing in a bewildered 
way, and stampeded with the noise of thunder when 
Haskins approached. Atnit Eleanor Wyckoff lived a 
mile and a half from Elk Lick. She told me she 
thought her brother, Mr. Jordan, was telling one of his 
big yarns when he told her of a similar view of elks, 
but one day after, when the men found they were 
around again, she went with her husband to see them. 
She said, 'First some came, then more, until the clear- 
ing seemed full of them and the men sa'id-there were 
aboiit 50 there.' Regarding the clearing above men- 
tioned—where the elk frequented a big lick, they rubbed 
their horns against the trees, sometimes iniplay or to ' 
rub off the velvet or skin- from 'the new horns. This 
process soon kills all the trees, except some big old 
ones, so that a clearing of 3, 3 or 4 acres is made 
around the lick. A few thorn trees [Crataegus] come 
up on it, which grow so low and stout as to defy them, 
when it is called a 'thorn bottom.' The elk are gre^ 
garious, living in small herds if unmolested, likely in 
families, but they congregate at the licks in summer 
in considerable herds. _ . • 
■"1 have no account of their 'yarding' in this county. 
Their food in summer was nettles [Laportia]j elk or 
cow cabbage, elk grass (a wide-bladed bunch-grass 
common to the woods), and the tender growing twigs 
of most deciduous trees; and in the winter this elk 
grass, which keeps green all winter,- the edible brake 
or cow brake [Pteris aquilina]- or fern, and browse of 
deciduous trees. They migrate in families from sec- 
tion to section of the country, much like deer, but 
farther away. • ^ 
"John Glasspy told me of taking a contract to catch 
elk_ alive for some fancier. They find and single out 
their elk, when two men with a small dog, and each 
a coil of rope and well-filled knapsack of grub, start 
on the chase, and a long chase it is. But after three 
or four days the creature halts to see Avhat is follow- 
ing him. Then they let loose the little dog. The elk 
seems to wonder if he has been frightened by that little 
whiffet. The m«ri have chogen their time and place 
"The Pennsylvania elk's eyes were small, but sparkled 
like jewels. I have often seen a score or more pairs 
of these bright eyes shining in the dark recesses of 
the pine forest, when the shadows might have other- 
wise obscured the presence there of the owners of 
those telltale orbs. An infuriated bull elk's eye was 
about as fearful a thing to look at as anything well 
imaginable, but so quickly changeable was the nature of 
these huge beasts that two hours after having captured 
with ropes, one that had, from the vantage ground of 
his rock, gored and tr.ampled the life out of a half 
dozen of dogs, and wellnigh overcome the attacking 
hunters, submitted to being harnessed to an improvised 
sled and unresistingly hauled a load of venison upon it 
six miles through the woods to my cabin, and took its 
place among the cattlefwith as docile an air as if it 
had been born and brought up among them. 
"The elk that Sterling Devins had mistaken for a 
niirle, he and Ezra Prichard followed all the next day, 
but lost its trail. Some'' Pine Creek hunters got on its 
trail, drove it to its rock and roped it. When Devins 
and Prichard got back at night they found the Pine 
Creek hunters there and the elk in the barn eating hay 
and entirely at home. That elk had quite an interesting 
subsequent histoi-y. Elzra Prichard had, previous to the 
capture of this one, secured a pair of elks, broke them, 
and -for a long time drove them to farm work like a 
yoke of oxen. Sterling Devins was eager for a yoke 
of elk, and he offered the Pine Creek hunters $100 
for the one they had captured. They refused the offer, 
but afterwards got into a dispute about its ownership, 
and it was sold to Bill Stowell and John Sloanmaker, 
of Jersey Shore. These men took the elk about the 
country, exhibiting it, and made quite a sum of money. 
Next fall, although the elk was a cow, it became very 
ugly and attacked its keeper, nearly killing him before 
he could get away. No one could go near her, and her 
owners ordered her shot. The carcass was bought by 
a man who had a fine pair of elk horns. He was a 
skilled taxidermist, and he ma,naged to fasten the horns 
to the head of the cow elk in such a manner that no 
one was ever able to tell that they hadn't grown there. 
This made of the head an apparently magiiiificent head 
of a bull elk, and it was purchased for $100 on tiiat be- 
liei, by a future govsrnor of Pennsyjyaiiia. 
"That cow elk was one of the last. family of elk in the 
ably looked to see what had aroused %irn: Then*, ii" 
he thought the cause boded him no good, away he 
went, not leaping over the brush, like the deer, hut, 
with his head thrown back, and his great horn& almost 
covering his body, plunging through the thickets^ his 
big hoofs clattering together like castanets as Hie went. 
The elk did not go at a galloping gait, but traveled at 
a swinging trot that carried him along at amazing- 
speed. He never stopped until he had crossed water, 
when his instinct seemed to tell him that the scent of 
his trail was broken before the pursuing dogs. 
"At the rutting season the elk, both male and female, 
were fearless and fierce, and it behooved the hunter to 
be watchful. An elk surprised at this season did not 
wait for any overt act on the part of an enemy, but 
was instantly aggressive. One blow from an elk's foot 
would kill a wolf or a dog, and I have more than once 
jjeen forced to elude an elk by running around trees, 
jumping from one to another before the bulky beast, 
unable to make the turns quick enough, could recover 
himself and follow me too closely to prevent it, thus 
making my way by degrees to a safe refuge. I was 
once treed by a bull elk not half a mile from home and 
kept there from noon until night began to fall. I 
haven't the least doubt but he would have kept me there 
all night if another bull hadn't bugled a challenge from 
a neighboring hill and my bull hurried away in answer 
to it. 
"The whistle of the bull elk, as the hunters call it, 
wasn't a whistle, although there were changes in it 
that gave it something of a flute-like sound. The 
sound was more like the notes of a bugle. In making 
it the bull threw back his head, swelled his throat and 
neck to enormous size, and with that as a bellows he 
blew from his open mouth the sound that made at once 
his challenge or call for a mate. The sound was far- 
reaching, and heard at a distance was weird and un- 
canny, yet not unmusical. Nearby, it was rasping 
and harsh, with the whistling notes prominent. 
"The Pennsylvania elk was never much scattered. 
When I first came to the Sinnemahoning country, near- 
ly_ seventy years ago, the salt marsh that lay in the 
wilderness where my residence now is [Gardeau, in 
the extreme southeast corner of McKean county, al- 
most on Potter county line], was trampled over by 
h^rds of elk and deer that came there to lick th^ §alt 
