The Bighorn and the Antelope. 143 



Rocky Mountain sky, as if cut in cameo fashion by the deft hand of 

 a Grecian sculptor. With his sturdy, massive body, his thick-set 

 limbs firmly planted on the ledge, his small head carried high, as if 

 the heavy horns were a mere feather's weight, he looks the emblem, 

 not of agility, as does the chamois, but of strength. Of all game 

 that calls the Rocky Mountains its home, he is the truest type of 

 their grand solitude and barren vastness. 



The bighorn, of which the fur hunters used to speak as the 

 Grosse corne, Cimarron, is known in the West as the mountain 

 sheep. It is closely related to the monster of his species, the 

 Nyan Argali, or Ovis ammon, the most famous game of Thibet. 

 Our game is slightly smaller, but the horns are very similar in 

 curve and shape. 



The horns of the largest bighorn are of stupendous girth, the 

 head weighing as much as 4olb. I was fortunate enough to bag, 

 among the seventy or eighty bighorn I got, an uncommonly fine 

 ram, each of his horns girthing igin. at the base. It is, or rather 

 was for I lost this grand trophy by fire as already mentioned 

 probably one of the finest heads of which we have any record. 



At the American Trophy Show at Earl's Court there were no 

 really Ai bighorn heads. Mr. H. Seton-Karr, M.P., had a good 

 ram's head, 38jin. long and i6|in. circumference, while Mr. Gerald 

 Buxton exhibited three fine trophies he bagged in one stalk on 

 ground where I had stalked a few years before. The largest of 

 the three measured 36in. and i4^in. Unforeseen circumstances 

 prevented me from sending my best (which were in Austria), and 

 the one I sent, which was the longest there (39^1.), was not of my 

 o'wn killing, but a head I found on the roof of a deserted hunter's 

 cabin in the Flathead country. 



Mr. St. George Littledale shot a very fine ram in Colorado in 

 1874 (see illustration), measuring 39$in. and I5|in. 



The extent to which the horns of this beast shrink in circum- 

 ference after death is surprising, so one cannot be too particular in 

 stating whether measurements were obtained at the time the beast 

 was shot, or years afterwards. Tapes, too, are by no means as 



