When, as a young boy, in 1897, the writer first paid a visit to
Loganton, “the hunting capital” of Sugar Valley, Clinton County, and
was invited to inspect the barber-shop trophy room of that prince of
Pennsylvania wild cat hunters, Clem. F. Herlacher, the most noticeable
object in the collection was a long-tailed, cat-like specimen which
occupied the place of honor over the central mirror. “That is,” said
Herlacher, pointing to the trophy, “what the first settlers called a
‘wild cat’; in reality it is the cub of the panther, _felis couguar_.
The old-timers ofter ran across these huge kittens in the woods; they
were always blundering into the traps, or their dogs were killing
them, and they did resemble ‘cats,’ with their fluffy fur, broad
faces, and long tails. But gradually the truth dawned on them when
they found these ‘wild cats’ trailing along with mature pantheresses,
or smaller-sized ones were taken from panther nests on rocky ledges.
They were not wild cats at all, but half-grown or cub panthers. During
the time when our forefathers were calling the cub panthers ‘wild
cats,’ they were calling the true, stump-tailed wild cats ‘catamounts,’
making in that designation another absurd mistake. The true wild cat
is the bay lynx, whereas the catamount is really the Northern or
Canada lynx, always a rare animal in Pennsylvania, and unknown in
most of the counties except in the ‘Northern Tier.’” At the close
of this dissertation, the words of which became indelibly? impressed
on the writer’s mind, Herlacher pointed to a second stuffed animal,
on a shelf above another of the mirrors. “There,” he said, “is a true
wild cat--_Lynx Rufus_--a fine specimen; it weighed thirty-five pounds
when I killed it two years ago near ‘Captain Green’s Trench,’ in Green
Gap, down the valley. See, it has a short tail, about six inches, is
more distinctly mottled than the panther cub, its fur is shorter and
smoother.” The writer then inquired where the panther cub had been
obtained. Herlacher replied that he had on two successive years--1892
and 1893--secured panther cubs from a nest in the Panther Rocks, in
Black Wolf or Treaster Valley, Mifflin County. He had trailed the
old panthers on their regular crossing from Sugar Valley. It was in
Treaster Valley that the noble Pennsylvania lion or panther made its
last permanent abode in Pennsylvania, the cubs taken by Herlacher
being, as far as known, the last panthers born in a wild state in the
Keystone Commonwealth. As curios they were in great demand, but he
regretted not having taken them alive. The great hunter had given away
all but the one adorning the shelf above the central mirror. Later it
became moth-eaten and was thrown away. Alas! for a priceless natural
history specimen. And from the above it will be plain to the readers
of these pages that the original “wild cat” was the panther cub, the
wild cat of today is the bay lynx, the real catamount is the Canada
lynx. But the next few chapters will go into these matters more in
detail. Emmanuel Harman, of Mt. Zion, Clinton County, aged 84 years,
and many others, have regaled the writer with the story of the wild-cat
panther-cub blunder of the “pioneer naturalists.”
[Illustration: “CLEM” HERLACHER, Loganton, Clinton County,
Greatest living Pennsylvania wild cat hunter]
[Illustration: Decorative divider]