30 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



found in abundance from the eastern edge of 

 the great plains to the Pacific, but it has 

 everywhere diminished in numbers, and has 

 been exterminated along the eastern and 

 western borders of its former range. The 

 bighorn, or mountain sheep, is found in 

 the Rocky Mountains from northern Mexico 

 to Alaska ; and in the United States from the 

 Coast and Cascade ranges to the Bad Lands 

 of the western edges of the Dakotas, wherever 

 there are mountain chains or tracts of rugged 

 hills. It was never very abundant, and, 

 though it has become less so, it has held its 

 own better than most game. The white goat, 

 however, alone among our game animals, has 

 positively increased in numbers since the 

 advent of settlers ; because white hunters 

 rarely follow it, and the Indians who once 

 sought its skin for robes now use blankets 

 instead. Its true home is in Alaska and 

 Canada, but it crosses our borders along the 

 lines of the Rockies and Cascades, and a few 

 small isolated colonies are found here and 

 there southward to California and New 

 Mexico. 



The cougar and wolf, once common through- 

 out the United States, have now completely 

 disappeared from all save the wildest regions. 

 The black bear holds its own better ; it was 

 never found on the great plains. The huge 

 grisly ranges from the great plains to the 

 Pacific. The little peccary or Mexican wild 

 hog merely crosses our southern border. 



The finest hunting ground in America was, 

 and indeed is, the mountainous region of 

 western Montana and northwestern Wyoming. 



