THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and well furnished with points, but without the heavy and palmated tops 
with long points so generally found in that race. They have not however 
the same angle of the beam as T. r. arcticus , being rather straight and 
somewhat upright as in T, r. osborni. Mr Osgood, who was hunting with 
Mr Charles Sheldon when he killed his specimens on the Ogilvy 
Mountains, just north of Dawson, Alaska, in July, 1904, definitely 
identified* the animals that were killed as true T. r. arcticus , but I do not 
know on what grounds he based his conclusions. Neither the upright 
horns nor the body markings are like those of members of that race, but 
rather bear a closer resemblance to a small race of T. r. osborni , whilst 
they were found high on the rolling tops of mountains in a habitat 
usually affected by this local race. I figure two specimens of heads from 
the Ogilvy Mountains which were brought in to Victoria in 1907. 
If a great series of specimens could be obtained from various parts of 
Alaska I believe that this buffer race of T. r. ogilvyensis would be found to 
blend gradually on the south and south-east with T. r. osborni and so 
merge into a big black caribou, and on the north and north-east into the 
smaller and paler true T. r. arcticus of the Porcupine and Peel Rivers. 
Taking the Ogilvy Mountains as a centre we should get every inter- 
mediate type of large and dark caribou, with more or less palmated or 
straggling tops, as we travelled south, and small and paler caribou with 
more spindly and hooped horns as we advanced north or north-east- 
wards. The position of T. r. ogilvyensis is, therefore, exactly similar to 
that of 0 . m.fannini amongst the mountain sheep and if one holds good the 
other must be accepted. 
It is now well known that the caribou of Alaska are roughly split into 
two great sections, namely the northern or “Peel River” herd (T. r. 
arcticus) which regularly migrates from north-east to south-west or north 
to south in the fall, and the “Southern herd” ( T . r. osborni) which are 
only partially migratory or stationary in all the high plateaux of most of 
the mountains found at the sides or watershed of the main Yukon (south 
of Dawson) and its confluents. 
In the fall enormous bands, variously estimated at between fifteen and 
twenty thousand, migrate south from the Peel River watershed and cross 
the Ogilvy Mountains close to Dawson, about November or early December. 
This “ Peel River herd ” picks up the Ogilvy Mountain caribou on its 
way and passes through them and moves north or eastwards as far as 
* See The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon, by Charles Sheldon, p. 40. 
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