FROM THE GAME FIELDS. 



The man who quits when he gets enough, with plenty of game still in sight, is a real sportsman. 



IN THE SALMON RIVER COUNTRY. 



Editor Recreation : 



I have just returned to this place with 

 Mack Miner. We have been through a 

 wild and practically uninhabited country. 

 We were along a well defined trail, over 80 

 miles without seeing an occupied cabin. 

 Few cattle range here, as the sheepmen run 

 this and the Southwest valley right down 

 to hard pan. We saw over 50,000 sheep 

 this side of Galena, a distance of 47 miles. 

 It would seem that the herders purposely 

 allow their camp fires to burn over the 

 country, because forest and prairie fires are 

 frequent, and the result is that weeds, 

 which the sheep eat, spring up in place of 

 grass. It is claimed that Hailey ships 250,- 

 000 sheep a year. We only saw 2 outfits in 

 the Stanley basin arid but a few stray cat- 

 tle, it being too hard to get them over the 

 divide. Bear and mountain lions are a 

 great menace to sheepmen. Sometimes one 

 grizzly will kill 40 sheep in one night, and 

 often the grizzlies will attack the herders 

 when the men try to drive them off. One 

 man was killed here recently in that man- 

 ner, and one herder told us he had been 

 chased up a tree, the night 'before we saw 

 him, by a bald face. One herder had just 

 roped a yearling grizzly, and one had 

 chased a cub to death. But it was my mis- 

 fortune to go through this entire country 

 without seeing a grizzly, although we 

 camped near these outfits, thinking it would 

 be a good place to get a shot at a bear. 

 Bradbury, a mule packer, whom the Gov- 

 ernment sent to the Philippines twice as 

 chief of packers, camped near us one day 

 for lunch. His dogs had just treed a black 

 bear, and he had shot at it from a consider- 

 able distance, and missed it. It was neces- 

 sary for him to ride around a mesa to get 

 nearer to it. While doing so his dogs left 

 the tree, supposing their master had aband- 

 oned it, and the bear made its escape. We 

 saw him again several days after and he had 

 a bear's scalp that he had got the day after 

 we had left him. He was taking it to 

 Hailey to claim a bounty of $10 for it. He 

 said the hide was too poor to keep. 



There has been considerable cattle and 

 horse rustling here of late, and the good 

 people of this place have made a round up 

 of thieves. One man was shot for horse 

 stealing, and his body was left on the 

 plains ; and the leader of cattle rustlers, 

 after being caught, committed suicide. 



Mack and I have been sleeping together 

 under 5 thicknesses of blankets, and on fir 

 boughs, in almost every camp. Saturday 

 night we slept in the old mining town of 



Galena, with its 75 cabins, and we were the 

 only human beings there. When we 

 crawled out in the morning we broke a 

 quarter of an inch of ice in our water 

 bucket. Almost every morning the ground 

 is covered with a white frost. Nights we 

 build large camp fires of the, dead pines 

 that are lying everywhere in the moun- 

 tains, and manage to keep comfortable un- 

 til it is time to go to bed. 



We get over about 25 miles of country 

 each day. The scenery of the Sawtooth 

 range is so grand and inspiring that we 

 dislike to go into camp. Each turn we take 

 in the valley changes the panorama of the 

 lofty, snow capped peaks, and keeps us 

 spellbound. The water and air are the pur- 

 est in the world, and when the sun shines 

 on us, as it almost always does in the val- 

 ley, it burns us as if it came through a 

 burning glass, the atmosphere being so 

 clear. We have had only one slight shower 

 in the basin, but for 3 days we admired 

 terrible thunder storms near us, rolling 

 along the mountain tops, and saw the rain 

 fall in sheets. Sometimes clouds would 

 hurriedly cross the prairie where we were, 

 in- their madness to get to the other range, 

 and then we would have to take a little 

 wetting; but all the time the sun was shin- 

 ing brightly not far away. 



We visited several small prospecting or 

 mining camps along the Salmon river, and 

 to my surprise each one had venison. 

 The men say fresh meat is a neces- 

 sity, and as long as it comes into their 

 camp they expect to eat it. One miner liv- 

 ing in Big Casino gulch kills deer for his 

 chickens and dogs. I know from good au- 

 thority that he often dynamites pools in the 

 Salmon river, and kills sometimes 100 

 trout at a time ; only taking about a dozen 

 of them, which he gives mostly to his 

 chickens. 



Where the Salmon river leaves the Stan- 

 ley basin an old man has a store, and 'this 

 particular place is known for hundreds 

 of miles as the store. He is about 80 years 

 old now, and has lived there, or in the vi- 

 cinity several decades. His only companion 

 is a hen, which he carries in his arms 

 wherever he goes. Stretching his long thin 

 arms in the direction of the Sawtooth 

 range, he said, "I don't care where you 

 men have traveled, you have never seen 

 such scenery before." 



Calling our attention to a long strip of 

 white running down the mountain he ex- 

 plained that it was not snow, though it 

 looked like it, but was a beautiful waterfall. 

 We asked him if its source was a lake, and 



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