The Bighorn 



There is something in the personality of the animal 

 which attracts one, and I well remember the old cow- 

 man who owned the Colorado bighorn and who in- 

 tended ' sending him to some zoological garden in Ger- 

 many. " There 's game for you, gentlemen," he said. 

 " The big sheep is every inch an aristocrat ; he may be 

 a sheep, but he possesses the attributes of goat, ante- 

 lope, and elk, so far as game is concerned." 



The bighorn stands about three feet in height at 

 the shoulders, and in his best condition weighs three 

 hundred odd pounds, and he has a coat of various 

 shades and tints. That of the San Antonio specimens 

 I have seen, Ovis canadensis, was a very light brown 

 and drab, a colour that so resembled the great cliffs and 

 washes in which it was found that, when standing still, 

 it appeared to melt and become a part of the basic 

 slopes of its home. 



The crowning glory of the animal is its horns, 

 which are massive, deeply corrugated, flat, and ranging 

 from thirty to fifty-two inches in length and from thir- 

 teen to eighteen inches in circumference. There is 

 something about these massive head ornaments which 

 stamps the mountain sheep as the aristocrat of his 

 kind. 



I have never hunted the sheep in Lower California 

 but am informed by Mr. Grosvenor Wotkyns and Mr. 

 Nordhoff, who has a ranch below Ensenada, that good 

 sport can be found there in the upper regions of the 

 southern Sierras, which are so accessible that the 



