"Huntsmen Tell Startling Tale"

October, 1914--Last Monday our fellow townsman and famous hunter, Henry Brown, was busy seeking deer on Hennessy Mt. when he saw the greatest phenomenon he ever encountered in his years in the woods. Standing on a trail waiting for a possible deer he heard a crashing of the underbrush and saw emerging what he for a moment took for two deer. He was about to shoot when he discovered it was not two deer, but one body and two heads.

The left head was that of a buck with a central horn showing that it belonged to the caribou species while the right head was that of a doe. He did not fire at the strange creature, but watched it rapidly disappear down the trail. Upon his return he mentioned the occurrence but was laughed out of court.

The next day a local character, "Pussy Foot Dan," a hunter of repute, stalked a deer on Hennessy Mt. and from a vantage point saw the two headed deer drinking from a pool. He states the freak would drink with one head while the other would keep guard, then the operation was repeated with an exchange of heads; but at no time did the deer drink with both heads at once. He also states that the freak deer had six legs instead of four, the coloring being peculiar, different than anything he ever saw on a deer.

At the present writing no others have seen this strange creature. Jacobus Delong, one of our oldest residents, maintains that in the early 1870's there was seen on the shores of Lake Placid a two headed deer, that he himself saw the strange creature one night when jacking deer but was unsuccessful in killing it. Jacobus states that there was an early legend among the Indians of a species of two headed deer which made their home on the shores of Lake Placid. A visitor, who does not want his name mentioned, offers a reward of $5,000 for this strange deer dead or alive. Here is a chance for one of our hunters to make a fair winter's salary.

Lake Placid News

Aurora Ramsay works in the Brewster Research Library at the Adirondack History Center Museum in Elizabethtown.

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