The Mountain Sheep and its Range 



ago, when they secured a number of sheep. The 

 same correspondent calls attention to the very 

 large number of sheep which in 1888, and for a 

 few years thereafter, ranged in the high moun- 

 tains between the waters of the Yellowstone and 

 the Stinking Water. This is one of the countries 

 from which sheep have been pretty nearly exter- 

 minated by hunters and prospectors. 



Within the past twenty or thirty years mountain 

 sheep have become very scarce in all of their old 

 haunts in Wyoming and northern Colorado. This 

 does not seem to be particularly due to hunting, 

 but the sheep seem to be either moving away or 

 dying out. Mr. W. H. Reed, in 1898, wrote me 

 from Laramie, Wyo., saying: "At present there 

 are perhaps thirty head on Sheep Mountain, 

 twenty-two miles west of Laramie, Wyo.; on the 

 west side of Laramie Peak there are perhaps 

 twenty head; on the east side of the Peak twelve 

 to fifteen head, and near the Platte Canon, at the 

 head of Medicine Bow River, there are fifteen. In 

 1894 I saw at the head of the Green River, 

 Hobacks River, and Gros Ventre River, between 

 two and three hundred mountain sheep. There 

 are sheep scattered all through the Wind River, 

 and a very few in the Big Horn Mountains; but all 

 are in small bunches, and these widely separated. 



333 



