THE BIG-HORN SHEEP 



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and see pictured in the German hunting-books of two or three centuries 

 ago, such as the quaint old " Adeliche Weidwerke." 



The mountain sheep of America, when the choice is open to them, 



SHOT! 



actually seem to prefer regions as wild and rugged as they are sterile. 

 The tufts of grass between the rocks, the scanty blades that grow on the 

 clay buttes, suffice for their wants, and the amount of climbing necessary 

 to get at them is literally a matter of indifference to beasts whose muscles 

 are like whipcord and whose tendons are like steel. A big-horn is a mar- 

 velous leaper, perhaps even better when the jump is perpendicular than 

 when it is horizontal. His poise is perfect ; his eye and foot work 

 together with unerring accuracy. One will unhesitatingly bound or drop 

 a dozen feet on to a little rock pinnacle where there is scarce a hand's 

 breadth on which to stand. The presence of the tiniest cracks in the 

 otherwise smooth surface of a sheer rock wall enables a mountain sheep 

 to go up it with ease. The proud, lordly bearing of an old ram makes 

 him look exactly what he is, one of the noblest of game animals ; his port 

 is the same whether at rest or in motion. Except when very badly fright- 

 ened, his movements are all made with a certain self-confident absence of 

 hurry, as if he were conscious of a vast reserve power of strength and 

 activity on which to draw at need. As a mountaineer he is the embodi- 

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