John G. Davis, old-time woodsman of McElhattan, Clinton County, gives the best description of a mammoth Canada Lynx (Lynx Canadensis) killed by John Pluff, at Hyner, in that County, in 1874. Pluff, who was a noted hunter in his day, died in January, 1914, in his 74th year. One evening when Pluff was at supper, he heard a commotion in his barnyard. Taking down his rifle he hurried out, only to notice a shaggy animal moving about among the feet of his young cattle. Courageously driving the steers into the barn, he came face to face with a gigantic Canada Lynx, or what was called, in Northern Pennsylvania, a “Big Grey Wild Cat,” or catamount, to distinguish it from the smaller and ruddier Bay Lynx. Taking aim at the monster’s jugular, Pluff fired, killing the big cat with a single ball. The shot attracted the neighbors, among them Davis, and they gazed with amazement at the giant carcass, the biggest cat killed in those parts since Sam Snyder slew his 10-foot panther on Young Woman’s Creek in 1858. The Canada Lynx measured four feet ten inches from tip of nose to root of tail (the tail measured four inches) and weighed seventy-five pounds. The next day being Thanksgiving, it was supplemented to the turkey feast, and all enjoyed the deliciously flavored white meat more than the conventional “Thanksgiving Bird.” This lynx was probably a straggler from the Northern Tier, as none of its kind have been about Hyner since. At the same time the Canada Lynx has been killed in many parts of Pennsylvania, as far south as the Seven Mountains and Somerset County, some claim, but never frequently. Jesse Logan, Indian hunter, of the Cornplanter Reservation in Warren County, who is now 107 years old, says that he cannot recall Canada Lynxes ever having been plentiful in any part of Northern Pennsylvania.⁠[*] Clem Herlacher has killed a number of these animals in Clearfield and Cameron Counties, but in widely different localities and different dates. He describes the Canada Lynx as follows: “The two most remarkable characters of the Canada Lynx are the beautiful pencils of black hair which ornament the ears, and the perfect hairiness of the soles of the feet, which have no naked spots or tubercles like other species of the feline race. The catamount, which is the true Pennsylvania title for this animal, is of an ashen grey in color, with a ruff of stiff dark hair about its neck and looks ‘chuffier’ than the common wild cat; it most resembles an Old English Sheep Dog. I know nothing of its domestic habits, though I believe it formerly bred in some of our northern counties. Dr. Merriam says that it has two kittens at a birth. The biggest catamount I ever killed measured, exclusive of the tail, forty inches, the tail measured four inches, or an inch shorter than most wild cats. Catamounts were driven into Clinton and Mifflin Counties by forest fires from their northern range, but never remained long. I think that the Canada Lynx is now totally extinct in Pennsylvania. It was a fierce fighter, but I have heard of Seneca Indians who tamed it to follow them about like dogs. Among the Pennsylvania Dutch it was supposed to be endowed with the power to look through opaque bodies, hence the old expression of a person with keen sight being ‘lynx eyed.’” Rhoads records instances of catamounts taken in Cameron, Potter, Columbia, Forest, Lackawanna, Lycoming, McKean, Monroe, Pike, Wayne, Somerset and Tioga Counties. Jesse Harman and son Ed., accompanied by Sam Motter, “California Sam,” a noted trapper, took a catamount at the head of McElhattan Run, in Clinton County, early in 1903. Out of a dozen cats caught by these hunters that winter it was the only Canada Lynx. It weighed sixty-five pounds and measured exactly five feet from tip to tip.