The White Sheep of Kenai Peninsula 



with its green vegetation brings nourishing food, 

 and this is the cause of the rings, which, therefore, 

 indicate the number of winters old a sheep is. 

 This was my head man's theory, and is, I believe, 

 a correct one, for in the smaller heads which I 

 have examined these rings coincided with the age 

 of the sheep as told by the teeth. Up to five years, 

 the age of a sheep can always be determined by the 

 incisor teeth; a yearling has but two permanent 

 incisors, a two-year-old four, a three-year-old six, 

 and a four-year-old or over eight teeth, or a full 

 set 



It was unpleasantly cold upon the mountains 

 this day, and as no other sheep could be seen, we 

 returned to camp by five o'clock. This was the 

 easiest day's shooting that I had had. 



As we sat by the camp-fire that evening, four 

 sheep were seen on the hills above us, two of which 

 I recognized as the small rams that had been with 

 the one I had just killed. We felt quite certain, 

 that these were the bunch of five rams which we 

 had seen when we were packing out from our first 

 hill camp. In fact, this was the only good band 

 of rams which I saw during the entire hunt. If 

 these were the same sheep, the two newcomers car- 

 ried good heads, for, as previously stated, I had 

 studied this lot carefully through the glasses. 



203 



