American Big Game in its Haunts 



there is hardly an exception. There is no place so 

 wild and forbidding that the prospector will not 

 enter it. If 'pay rock' or 'pay dirt' is struck, then 

 good-by solitude and big game. A second cause 

 is to be found in the cattle industry, which, as a 

 rule, is very profitable. One of the most success- 

 ful cattle growers in the country once told me that 

 cattle in Arizona would breed up to 95 per cent. 

 These breeders during the dry season leave the 

 mesas and climb to the top of the very highest 

 mountains, and, of course, the more cattle the less 

 game. A year ago I was in the Harshaw Moun- 

 tains, and was told by a young man named Sorrell 

 that a bunch of wild cattle occupied a certain peak, 

 and that on a certain occasion he had seen a big 

 mountain sheep with the cattle. 



"So far as I know, I never saw or heard of a 

 case of scab among wild sheep." 



Later, but still in 1898, Mr. Brown wrote me 

 that, according to Mr. J. D. Thompson, mountain 

 sheep are common in all the mountains bordering 

 the Gulf Coast in Sonora, and also in Lower Cali- 

 fornia. Mr. Thompson is operating mines in the 

 Sierra Pinto, Sonora, 180 miles southeast of 

 Yuma. This range is about six miles long and 

 800 feet high. The mule deer and sheep are 

 killed according to necessity. Indians do the kill- 



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