The Mountain Sheep and its Range 



formerly very abundant. In the Crazy Mountains 

 he says he saw no sheep, and that while it was possi- 

 ble they might be there, they must certainly be rare. 

 In 1880 there were many sheep there. In the 

 Castle Mountains none were seen, nor reported, 

 nor any traces seen. The same is true of the Little 

 Belt, Highwood, and Judith Mountains. He 

 understood that sheep were still present in the bad 

 lands; immediately about the mountains and east 

 of them the country was too well settled for any 

 game to live. Earlier, however, in the summer of 

 1890, passing through the Snowy Mountains, 

 which lie north of the National Park, sheep were 

 seen on two occasions; a band of ten ewes and 

 lambs on Sheep Mountain, and a band of seven 

 rams on the head of the stream known as the Buf- 

 falo Fork of the Lamar River. In 1893 an old 

 ram was killed on Black Butte, at the extreme 

 eastern end of the Judith Mountains, near Cone 

 Butte, and it is quite possible that this animal had 

 strayed out of the bad lands on the lower Mus- 

 selshell, or on the Missouri. Even at that time 

 there were said to be no sheep on the Little 

 Rockies, Bearpaws, or Sweetgrass Hills. 



All the ranges spoken of were formerly great 

 sheep ranges, and on all of them, many years ago, 

 I saw sheep in considerable numbers. 



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