I recently became a member of the Chautauqua County Historical Society. One of the perks of the membership (in addition to free admission to the McClurg Museum in Westfield) is receiving the quarterly newsletter, TimeLines. The current issues has a small article regarding the wolf hunts that took place in Chautauqua County during the pioneer days. Coincidentally, I also wrote a brief article about the Wolf Hunt of Chautauqua County as described in History of Chautauqua County by Andrew Young (1875). I never got around to publishing the article until now.
Journey through the woods and forests of Chautauqua County today, and its highly unlikely you’ll encounter a wolf. But this wasn’t always the case. While some speculate that "wolves" encountered during the pioneer era were more often than not coyotes, it can't be denied that wolves were native to our area of the country and posed a significant threat to not only livestock, but people as well. This is why no one - man, woman or child - ventured from their houses at night without a torch or weapon for their protection.
When it comes to the menace of wolves in Chautauqua County, it’s believed no town suffered more than Stockton. Judge Bugbee (Judge was his first name, not his title or occupation), who would serve as town supervisor in the 1850s and whose family was one of the first settlers in the Stockton area, wrote an extensive description of one of the several “great wolf hunts” that took place in Stockton during the 1820s in an attempt to rid the forest of the beast once and for all.
