It’s difficult to say with certainty when the last eastern elk was killed, but most accounts agree that Jim Jacobs pulled the trigger.Article continues after advertisement
Known as “The Seneca Bear Hunter,” Jacobs had killed hundreds of deer and bear in his lifetime. A Seneca Indian, Jacobs was born on the Corn-planter Tract in Warren County, Pennsylvania, around 1795. Over the years, his hunting exploits had grown into legend, and with a body covered in scars from battling bears, he’d become a local folk hero not unlike Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. His hunting territory ranged for hundreds of miles, from the Allegheny River in southwest New York to the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, all of which he covered entirely on foot. He was tall and strong, and even into his eighties he was described as “erect as a pine and as strong and active as a buck.”
Killing bears made Jacobs his name, but killing elk made good supper. Elk were once an abundant source of food in the Alleghenies, both for the Seneca and for the settlers streaming in. One year, as work crews poured into the forest to build a new rail line, Jacobs fed the men elk steaks and “kept the surveyors, axmen and chain-carriers supplied with plenty of it all summer long.” Pennsylvania, and much of the rest of the East, had been elk country for thousands of years.
