The Mountain Sheep and its Range 



abundance of feed. At this altitude the wind 

 blows so hard and continuously, and the snow is 

 so light and dry, that there would be no time dur- 

 ing the whole winter when the snow would lie on 

 the ground long enough to starve sheep to death. 

 Several small bunches of sheep winter on the Rig 

 Gros Ventre River. These, I think, are the same 

 sheep that are found in summer time on the Gros 

 Ventre range. I have occasionally killed sheep 

 that were scabby, but I have no positive knowledge 

 that this disease has killed any number of sheep. 

 In the fall of 1894 I discovered eleven large ram 

 skulls in one place, and since that time found four 

 more near by. My first impression was that the 

 eleven were killed by a snowslide, as they were at 

 the foot of one of those places where snowslides 

 occur, but finding the other four within a mile, and 

 in a place where a snowslide could not have killed 

 them, it rather dispelled my first theory. As 

 mountain sheep can travel over snow drifts nearly 

 as well as a caribou, I do not believe that they 

 were stranded in a snowstorm and perished, and 

 no hunter would have killed so great a number and 

 left such magnificent heads. The scab theory is 

 about the only solution left. The sheep are not 

 hunted very much here, and I believe their greatest 

 enemy is the mountain lion. 



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