THE MOUNTAIN SHEEP 
also attacked the wapiti, and this was probably produced by contact with 
domestic sheep, which, in 1880-90, were introduced in some numbers. 
Anthrax also further curtailed their numbers, whilst eagles and mountain 
lions have always effected great havoc amongst the kids. 
The Bear Paw Mountains, in 1880, even then a great wild sheep resort, 
were almost decimated in ten years by scab and anthrax, and it is doubtful 
if a single wild sheep exists there to-day. Here the hills are not high and 
the sheep, so conservative in their habitat, could not climb away from the 
infected area. 
Next to man there is little doubt that the mountain lion is the greatest 
enemy of wild sheep in the Eastern Rockies. 
Mr Hofer, long resident in Wyoming, relates that he and Colonel Pickett 
found nineteen or twenty skulls of sheep close to one rock. They had been 
killed at various times by mountain lions, or perhaps by a single individual. 
The marauder seemed to have lain hidden on a high rock, fifteen feet per- 
pendicular on one side, and to have watched a game trail which could be 
plainly seen on both sides below the rock. As the sheep passed he leaped 
on the back of one. Sheep are said to leave a range of hills where mountain 
lions are in the habit of attacking them, and do not return for some time. 
Mr Hofer also gives some interesting details of the habits of wild sheep 
and their indifference to man when he is above them. “ In old times,” 
he says (“ American Big Game in its Haunts,” p. 294), “ it was sometimes 
possible to get a * stand * on sheep, and, in my opinion, sheep often, even 
to-day, are the least suspicious of all the mountain animals. A mountain 
sheep always seems to fear the thing that he sees under him. If a man goes 
above him he does not seem to know what to do. I could never understand 
why, when one is above him, he stands and looks. I have sometimes been 
riding around in the mountains, and have come on sheep right below me. 
I have often thrown stones at them, and sometimes it was quite a while 
before I could get them to start. Finally, however, they would run off. 
They acted as if they were dazed.” Yet he observes that under other 
angles of view mountain sheep were always wild and ran at once on 
seeing him. Yet, like all wild animals that are clever, mountain sheep 
soon learn to know where man will not molest them, for in the Yellowstone 
Park to-day, between Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner, sheep may 
often be viewed from the road at short range, and the drivers of the 
coaches sometimes flick at them with their whips to make them get out 
of the way. 
335 
