CAMP FIRES IN THE YUKON 105 



eration, for the reason that they could not only see 

 us equally well climbing the other side of the slope, 

 but would get our wind long before we had started 

 our real climb up the rocks. 



We were in a situation that often confronts the 

 hunter of this most difficult of all game. The keen 

 zest of sheep hunting is due not at all to the fero- 

 cious nature of the quarry, for mountain sheep are 

 not only utterly harmless to man, but are not even 

 destructive of other game; the lure lies entirely in 

 the difficulty and effort involved in obtaining these 

 beautiful pure-white animals, their noble heads 

 crowned with massive, curling, amber-colored horns. 

 The difficulties are many : the sheep not only have a 

 marvelously keen vision, but they match this fac- 

 ulty with an equally acute sense of smell, so that it 

 is utterly futile to attempt to hunt them within their 

 range of vision and quite as useless to try for them 

 even if hidden, when the wind blows from the hunter 

 to the sheep, as they stampede more quickly at the 

 scent of the hunter than at his appearance. 



When we add to the highly sensitive natural en- 

 dowments of the mountain sheep the fact that its 

 habitat lies at the very top of the crags, thousands 

 upon thousands of feet up, amid peaks of eternal 

 snow, to reach which man must not only have good 

 legs but strong heart and lungs, immense vitality, 

 and infinite patience, we have the two reasons why 

 sheep hunting is not only the most difficult of all, 



