The Black Moose in PennsylvaniaShoemaker, Henry W. (Henry Wharton)
History
The Black Moose in Pennsylvania
Shoemaker, Henry W. (Henry Wharton)
Moose
to the Bald Eagle's Nest in Centre County. An Indian hunter named
Harthegig was the trainer, while two warriors named The Big Cat and
Killbuck, accompanied the consignment to the nest. According to some
authorities the European "Elk" or Moose has performed similar service
in Sweden.
[Illustration of oppossum]
V. MOOSE HORNS.
Few and far between are the traces of Moose horns in Pennsylvania.
But they do exist, and probably in some remote farmhouse garret a set
or two are still to be found. The writer, when engaged in antiquarian
studies along the Blue Mountains accidentally learned of the last known
pair. They hung for many years above the front door of Heller's stone
tavern, near the Wind Gap, in Northampton County, once the famous
pathway of the Moose from Northern to Southerly regions. It was related
that Marks John Biddle, a celebrated lawyer of Reading, while stopping
at this tavern, when on a horseback journey, noticed the horns, and
asked about them of the landlord. Old Jacob Heller obliged his guest
by taking them down and letting him measure them. They had a width of
78-1/2 inches and weighed a trifle over 91 pounds. Dr. Hornaday in
his "American Natural History" tells of a Moose killed in the Kenai
Peninsula, Alaska, in 1903, the antlers and skull of which weighed
93-1/2 pounds. The Record Moose Horns in the Field Columbian Museum,
Chicago, weigh about 92 pounds. This Record Moose was taken in the
Kenai Peninsula in 1899. The late Captain F. C. Selous (recently killed
in battle in British East Africa) stated that the antlers of a Moose
which he killed on the McMillan River, Canada, in 1904 had a spread of
66-1/2 inches and weighed 75 pounds.
[Illustration: JOHN Q. DYCE (1830-1904),
A Hunter Who Delighted to Tell of the Times When Moose Were Visitors to
the Wilds of the Keystone State.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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