American Big Game in its Haunts 



mountain lion. From the size of the track it 

 seemed as if the animal must have been enormous. 

 On soft snow, though, tracks spread and look big, 

 and besides that, these cats commonly spread out 

 their toes. There was no mistake about its being 

 a mountain lion, for I could see where the tail had 

 struck the soft snow and made holes in it. 



"Mountain lions were around there a good deal, 

 and E. De Long, who had a cabin a little further 

 up in the valley, told me that three times in his 

 experience of hunting up there he had come on a 

 place where a mountain lion had just killed a 

 sheep. In each case he found the sheep in nearly 

 the same place, and in each case the sheep was 

 freshly killed, and he dressed it and took it home. 



"This seemed to be a favorite place for the lions 

 to kill sheep. They are great hands to kill sheep 

 in about the same place. Far up on the Boulder 

 way up near the head Col. Pickett and I found 

 nineteen or twenty skulls of sheep by one rock. 

 There was a wonderful lot of them. They had 

 been killed at various times, and in a place where 

 they never could have been killed by snowslides. 

 It was under a very high rock, fifteen feet per- 

 pendicular on one side, and in the valley a game 

 trail passed close under this side. On the other 

 side the rock was not so high, but sloped off to the 



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