Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER n, 1911. 
VOL. LXXVII—No. 20. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
THE REGION HUNTED. 
A Sheep Hunter’s Diary 
Pictures and Text by the Judge 
W E decided on Sept. 12 to try the Big Flat 
country off to the northwest. Jack, Na¬ 
poleon and I, with three pack horses, took 
the trail down Big Creek to Tyee Jimmy’s re¬ 
cent camp, leaving Doctor at “our stream,” fish¬ 
ing. Having faiied to bring along a rod, I spent 
an hour around camp trying to find a straight 
switch long enough to use as a substitute, but 
so gnarled and stunted are the aspens, pines and 
every other thing in this high country that I 
could discover nothing over three feet long 
without forty crooks in it. The “rod” which I 
finally selected was perhaps five or six feet long 
and as crooked as a ram’s horn, but I succeeded 
in getting a mess of trout for supper. 
Sept. 13.—Mighty cold last night. Two inches 
of ice. Up at 4:30. Climbed a thousand feet 
up on top of the Big Flat country, an enormous 
high old glacial moraine, dotted here and there 
with little lakes, broken by dikes and great walls 
of volcanic rock, and abounding in ptarmigan. 
We camped at the base of a bare mountain, just 
on the further edge of the moraine, beside a 
beautiful trout stream, at 11 a. m. Jack and I 
went on further up, past four little green glacial 
lakes, along this stream to a real glacier, dis¬ 
charging into the uppermost of these green lakes; 
elevation probably 9,000 feet; the lower glacier 
wall of green ice, fifty to one hundred feet high, 
extended for half a mile into the green water. 
While resting here I thought I heard the call 
of a loon, but Jack did not know the bird at all. 
After some searching with the glasses I located 
a pair of these great divers swimming along the 
(Continued from last week.) 
ice. No food could have attracted them to this 
high altitude, for these glacial lakes are devoid 
of life. Possibly they had merely stopped off 
while traveling, or was it merely a pure love of 
the wilderness, a touch of that insane wanderlust 
which their crazy laughing call implies, which 
drove them to this green glacier lake? 
Jack discovered a ewe and lamb up alongside 
the glacier, which we studied with interest 
through the glasses. There were signs of many 
rams about, and we hunted faithfully until dusk, 
without success. Back to camp in time to catch 
trout for supper. I am going to put my horse 
blanket under me to-night and sleep on the 
ground instead of on the army cot, which is 
colder than Greenland’s icy mountains. The 
horse blanket is pretty sweaty, but Jack says: 
“It don’ smell bad; you ain’ used to it, dat’s 
all.” Napoleon shot a marmot this afternoon 
and has his hide tanning in the sun. His car¬ 
cass adorns a nearby log, and a tiny weasel 
keeps sneaking up to nibble at it every time he 
feels sure we are not looking that way. 
Sept. 14.—Our weasel joined us at breakfast 
again, feeding on the marmot, but declined to 
sit for his photograph. Old Napoleon had a 
nightmare last night, rousing the camp with 
yells that the Chilcotins were scalping him. Pos¬ 
sibly his sub-conscious self had wandered back 
through the trails of his youth which, if the 
stories are to be believed, had led him past the 
scene of more than one bloody dispute. 
There is a bleak wind this morning, and the 
sky is heavily overcast. All away on horseback 
early, to hunt the country lying east of the green 
g acier lake we inspected yesterday. The wind 
blew fiercely, and we all hugged our horses 
closely, hardly glancing up at all, but just as 
we passed across a high ridge over into a valley 
heading up toward the snowfields, I saw a mile 
away a dark object moving about, which I took 
to be a grizzly bear, and reined back sharply, 
whispering to Jack. “Shillops,” said he, sliding 
off his horse to the ground, Napoleon and I fol¬ 
lowing suit; then crawling along, leading the 
horses back over the ridge, we got out of sight 
without attracting the attention of the ram, who 
was finishing his breakfast before going up to 
lie down. 
A hard run of a mile on foot brought Jack 
and me into the shelter of a tiny ridge 100 yards 
from where the ram was feeding, and I had al¬ 
ready begun to wonder whether he would not 
be too old and tough to eat when Jack cast his 
eyes aloft, and there stood the ram, about 500 
yards distant up the snowfield, watching us. I 
sat down to take a shot at him, using the set 
trigger, but was so nearly winded with the hard 
run that it was impossible to shoot accurately. 
Upon receiving my salute the ram stood not upon 
the order of his going, but pushed on his high 
speed instantly, and without even changing gears 
started right up all the steep snow fields and 
glaciers we could see along the backbone of the 
range, a tiny black spot getting smaller and 
smaller until he disappeared into the north. 
Leaving Napoleon in the valley, Jack and I 
climbed over this spur of the range and hunted 
