American Big Game in its Haunts 



sheep frequent southern and southwestern ex- 

 posures, and spend much of their time there. I 

 have seen places on the St. Marys Lake, in 

 northern Montana, where there were cartloads of 

 droppings, apparently the accumulation of many 

 years, and have seen the same thing in the cliffs 

 along the Yellowstone River. On the rocks here 

 there were many beds among the cliffs and ledges. 

 Often such beds are behind a rock, not a high one, 

 but one that the sheep could look over. In places 

 such as this the animals are very difficult to detect. 



Although the wild sheep was formerly, to a con- 

 siderable extent, an inhabitant of the western edge 

 of the prairies of the high dry plains, it is so no 

 longer. The settling of the country has made this 

 impossible, but long before its permanent occu- 

 pancy the frequent passage through it by hunters 

 had resulted in the destruction of the sheep or had 

 driven it more or less permanently to those heights 

 where, in times of danger, it had always sought 

 refuge. 



To the east of the principal range of the wild 

 sheep in America to-day there are still a few of its 

 old haunts not in the mountains which are so arid or 

 so rough, or where the water is so bad that as yet 

 they have not to any great extent been invaded by 

 the white man. Again to the south and southwest, 



298 



