THE FRONTIER ONCE MORE 211 



find no trace of them. Close questioning of 

 the hunters and mountaineers, from Huntsville 

 to Bear Lake, satisfies me beyond a reasonable 

 doubt that sheep in northern Utah have become 

 extinct. Therefore Utah's only remaining 

 mountain sheep are in the south. It is exceed- 

 ingly difficult to estimate the number with any 

 degree of accuracy, but from the reports which 

 I gathered through personal inquiry among of- 

 ficials and hunters, and through correspondence, 

 I should place the number at not far from three 

 hundred, and should say also that they are 

 slowly increasing under the protective laws 

 which prohibit all hunting and provide an ade- 

 quate and severe penalty for infringements. 



As for the birds, the natives about Hunts- 

 ville and in that region generally believe pro- 

 tective laws are unjust and that they have a 

 moral right to shoot when they please; and 

 they do shoot a great many chickens, and some- 

 times other game, out of season. Several of 

 them boasted to me of having done so, and one 

 showed me a chicken he had just killed. Utah 

 is particularly well adapted to game birds, and 

 in a few isolated sections they are fairly plenti- 

 ful, but wide areas are not stocked at all and 

 others are very poorly stocked. 



The brook, the headwaters of which I came 



