The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1896-10-24
NEW YoRK's WILD BEASTS.
The Wolf, the Wildcat, the Lynx
and the Beaver Still Lingering in
the Woods.


Franklin county, although tired of pay
ing for the ears of slain black bears, has
recently reimposed the bounty on wolves,
though wolves are extremely scarce in this
county, as elsewhere in the Adirondacks.
A veracious old guide, more than forty
years in the business, says that the wolves
disappeared from his part of the county in
a single year. That occurred quarter of
4 century ago. They seemed one season
to be bowling from every square yard about
Wolf Pond, and the next year there was
not a wolf to be seen or heard in the whole
region.
Five or six years afterward, however,
this same guide rallied forty of his neigh
bors to hunt down pack of FIVE ferocious
creatures-part dog, part wolf-that raw
aged sheepfolds and roamed about the farm
buildings in broad daylight. The farmers
surrounded the pack and slew three of
them, but the other two, including a
mongrel-half wolf, half bulldogs
capped, after whipping all the dogs that
were brought to the hunt. Since that
time he has never seen nor heard wolf.
Panthers or catam0unts, as wildcats are
called in these parts, are now very scarce
save in the true wilds of the Adirondacks.
Some one now and then reports having seen
a wildcat while deer hunting, but the crea-
lures are seldom killed, and they are
oftener heard than seen. The males have
a way of walking by moonlight and yowl-
ing for their mates. The sound is about
the most bloodcurdling one that the will
derness knows. but the wildcat is not really
a dangerous creature save when brought
TO bay. The lynx, still found in these
parts, is no more dangerous than the wild
cat or the bear, but he has an unpleasant
habit of following the human pedestrian.
The guides tell stories of being followed all
night and half the day by these tireless
creatures The Adirondack lynx, how
ever, does notSattack man, though he is a
dangerous creature for any dog to tackle.
There are yet lingering traditions of the
DAYS when moose roamed the Adirondacks
An old guide recalls that his elder brother
shot a moose nearly fifty years ago on
Lower Saranac Lake. 1t is many years
since any have been seen in even the
widest parts of the wilderness. Caribou
had been thought extinct in these parts
for some years when guide shot one of a
pair near Meecham Lake, in lonely
corner of this county. They were proba-
bly, the last pair in the region.
Even the almost extinct beaver still per-
forms his miracle of instinct upon few
streams of this county. Most of the
beavers were trapped out of existence
twenty or twenty-five years ago, but now
that they are specially protected by law
they may survive for long time to come
A beaver colony has long operated, on the
outlet to Mcdonald Pond, twenty or
thirty miles from this point They have
several fne dams on the stream, one of
them backing up large area of water.
The outlet to the St. Regis lakes flows not
far from Mcdonald Pond, and on this little
stream there was recently a colony of
beavers at work They had FIVE dams on
single mile Of the stream, and it was
vastly improved for the guides BY the oper-
atoms Of the beavers, for the little Adiron-
dack boats easily foated on the water thus
deepened and slipped without difficulty
over the dam breasts.