a= 
A remedy, and perhaps the most easily available one, has been sug- 
gested in the form of local legislation, 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. Naturally, 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 
-attle and horses are never herded. As a result, a sheep owner can 
drive his sheep to any portion of the public range he may select, and 
can therefore 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 seat- 
tering 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 opening 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 
difficulties between cattlemen and sheepmen regarding winter ranges 
in the plains, they are agreed in desiring the summer-range privilege 
for sheep in the mountains, the sheepmen, of course, from its distinct 
addition to their grazing opportunities, the cattlemen because the 
temporary removal of sheep from the plains leaves a larger amount of 
summer forage there for their own stock, particularly in the canyons 
and moist bottom lands. 
OTHER DIFFICULTIES. 
According to the statistics given earlier in the report, 101,960 sheep 
were grazed last year in the Three Sisters and the Upper Deschutes 
range districts. It appears from examination of the original data that 
of these sheep only 8,660 were owned in Crook County, all the others 
being owned in the counties of Wasco and Sherman. Now as the only 
routes to the Three Sisters and the Upper Deschutes districts are 
through Crook County, it follows that 93,300 sheep not owned in Crook 
County, and paying no taxes there, were driven across that county, eat- 
ing up a large amount of forage that otherwise would have been ayail- 
able for the stock raisers of the county and causing damage to the 
roads, which must be repaired at the expense of the taxpayers of the 
ea ae 
