The wolf-hunt, in fact, was mainly a young men's and boys' affair, Putnam himself being only twenty-four at the time, and the wolf having been traced to her lair by young John Sharp, a boy of seventeen.
The slayer of the old she-wolf was the hero of the time; but he bore his laurels modestly, though exaggerated accounts of the affair were published all over the colonies, and even in England, where they were exploited in the public prints.

By rising to the occasion, and doing the right thing at the right time, he acquired a reputation for valor and firmness that stood him in good stead in those coming conflicts, the Seven Years' War and the Revolution.
Unknown to him, however, and unsuspected, were the heights to which he subsequently rose.

He devoted himself to his farm, becoming the best agriculturist in the region in which he lived, and also performed the duties of a good citizen, never shrinking from his share of civic burdens.

The youth of to-day could not do better than emulate the example of this illustrious American; and they might do worse than take part in the patriotic pilgrimages annually made to the scenes of his early life.

The citizens of his adopted State have religiously preserved intact the second house he built in Brooklyn, then Pomfret; and the she-wolf's den may still be seen, in the side of a wooded hill.