150 SURVEYS OF FOREST RESERVES. 



DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN SHEEPMEN AND RANCHEES. 



One common and persistent source of opposition to the grazing of 

 sheep in the reserve is the ranchers who live along the routes over 

 which the sheep customarily pass as they are driven to and from the 

 mountains. These ranchers own plats, comparatively small in most 

 cases, of fenced arable land, taken up for the most part under the home- 

 stead act, and commonly, therefore, containing 160 acres. The fenced 

 area is not sufficiently large in addition to the land under cultivation, 

 to furnish pasturage for the few horses and cows required to work the 

 ranch and supply the mild luxuries of milk and butter. Their only 

 pasturage resource, therefore — for under the existing land laws they 

 can neither buy nor lease any more land from the Government — is to 

 run their stock upon the outside range. Between one rancher and 

 another the customary range of his neighbor, though he has no title to 

 it, is respected. But many of the sheep herders — not all — in driving 

 their bands toward the mountains in spring, when the new grass is in 

 excellent condition, without the slightest consideration for the rancher, 

 and often doubtless to pay back a score of an earlier year's quarrel, 

 will bring their sheep up to the very fences and the grass maybe eaten 

 off so close that for the remainder of the season a cow can not get a 

 nibble. There is no law, except the questionable law of the Winches- 

 ter, by which the rancher can defend his home, and he earnestly sup- 

 ports the demand for exclusion, believing- that if the sheep are kept 

 out of the mountains the industry would be ruined and his own little 

 range left free. I am confident, however, that this expected result 

 would not be effected by exclusion, but that the sheep would be 

 crowded into the lower range and the difficulty, except in a few favora- 

 bly situated places, would be increased. A remedy, and perhaps the 

 most easily aviailable one. has been suggested in the form of local leg- 

 islation prescribing limits (say a distance of half a mile) within which 

 a band of sheep shall not be driven toward a ranch. 



DIFFICULTIES BETWEEN SHEEPMEN AND CATTLEMEN. 



Under the present land laws any man has a right to graze any amount 

 of any kind of stock on any portion of the public lands (forest, Indian 

 and military reserves, and national parks excepted) at any time. Nat- 

 urally, sheep are very close grazers and an area on which they are 

 pastured can not be used for either cattle or horses. "They won't 

 work together." Furthermore, sheep are herded stock, while cattle 

 and horses are never herded. As a result, a sheep owner can drive his 

 sheep to any portion of the x)ublic range he may select, and can there- 

 fore exercise essentially a prior right to any choice piece of grazing 

 land and exclude all other stockmen from it. The only limit to a sheep 

 owner's progress over the public range is, first, mutual consent between 

 himself and his stock-grazing neighbors as to limits ; second, the use of 

 physical force. Between reasonable men mutual consent is usually 

 effective. Between men who can not come to an agreement various 

 discouragements are adopted, such as poisoning sheep by scattering 

 on the ground castor-oil beans or saltpeter mixed with salt, burning up 

 the sheep herder's camp when he is away herding his sheep, or oiiening 

 fire on a band with buckshot or bullets. Occasionally these amenities 

 end in the death of one or more men by shooting. Details of such cases 

 need not be given here. 



It is an interesting and important fact, however, that whatever the 



