Elk once roamed widely across Pennsylvania, from the Allegheny National Forest to Kettle Creek State Park, where the bugles of bulls called cows to mate, but by the mid-1800s the population had been reduced to a small area in Elk County, and the last native Pennsylvania elk was killed near Ridgway in 1867. Recognizing their historic and geographic importance, the Pennsylvania Game Commission began restoring the herd, releasing 177 elk from the Rocky Mountains between 1913 and 1926 and providing a safe haven where they could live and breed. Today the state's elk population has recovered to an estimated 600 animals, with calves born every year, across a landscape that also supports other wildlife in state forests and state game lands.