Pennsylvania Game News - June 2013 - 11

Ira Parmenter

His obituary may cover Pennsylvania’s last elk hunt
This elk hunt occurred as late as 1867, although it was supposed that the last of
the Wapiti race in Pennsylvania had met its death twenty years before. Not any of
the animals nor any sign of them had been seen since 1845, when Seth Nelson, of
Elk county, shot what was supposed to be the last one, and its immense head and
antlers for years were exhibited at Peale’s museum, in Philadelphia, as those of the
last Pennsylvania elk. In the fall of 1867 this same Seth Nelson and Ira Parmenter
were hunting along the headwaters of Bennett’s creek, in Play Swamp, from which
water flows on one side to the sources of the Susquehanna, and from the other to the
Alleghany feeders. They were on the trail of a deer, when suddenly they heard the
peculiar whistle a bull elk sounds only at that time of the year, the whistle being the
call for a mate. The two hunters got their hounds on the elk’s trail and followed it
all day, when a heavy and prolonged rainstorm came up and the trail was lost.
The hunters roamed the woods for weeks trying to strike the lost trail, but did not
succeed. The news that there was still another elk left in the Sinnamahoning woods
spread throughout the region and clear to the Indian reservations over the New York
state line. Among these was a hunter and trapper famous on the Cattaraugus reservation,
known as Jim Jacobs. One day in the latter part of November, Ira Parmenter and Seth
Nelson started out to try again to find the trail of the lone bull elk of the Sinnamahoning.
There was a good tracking snow, and on the south edge of Flag Swamp they discovered
tracks in the snow that they recognized at once as an elk’s, and at the same time
they were surprised and by no means pleased to see Jim Jacobs appear on the scene.
Jacobs was an old man even then, although he lived and hunted for ten years longer,
when he was killed by the cats in Salamanca, N.Y. He had hunted elk for 50 years, and
knew all their habits and instincts perfectly. Parmenter and Nelson objected to Jacobs
joining them in the chase of the elk, and he was forced to leave the trail. The two men
followed the elk for four days, and it led them through the almost unbroken wilderness
of western Pennsylvania clear down to the head waters of the Clarion river, in Clarion
county. A blinding snowstorm came up, but they kept on, knowing that the elk would
not travel in the storm. At last they discovered that the elk had taken refuge in a laurel
thicket, and they felt that the prize was almost within their grasp, when a rifle shot
rang out upon the snowy air from the thicket. They made their way into the thicket,
and in a opening in the center stood Jim Jacobs one foot on the dead body of the elk,
and his rifle held threateningly as he faced the hunters creeping through the laurels.
The wily Jacobs had read the course of the elk by his knowledge of the animal’s
instincts, and had followed it as surely as if he had been on its track in the snow, and had
actually reached the laurel swamp where the animal took refuge before the elk reached
there itself. The two hunters, although disappointed and chagrined over their failure to
capture the prize they had followed for a hundred miles, were forced to acknowledge
the wonderful skill and unerring judgment of Jacobs, and aided him in carrying his
prize home. The head and antlers of the elk were in Jacobs’ house at Salamanca at
the time of his death, and are probably in that place yet. — The Sun, New York City
JUNE 2013

Pennsylvania Game News - June 2013

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