Copyright, 1918, by Forest and Stream, Publishing Company. All rights reserved. 
Vo!. LXXXVIII MARCH, 1918 No. 3 
SHEEP OR ELK IN OUR FOREST RESERVES ? 
THEIR NATURAL RANGE THREATENED BY THE ENCROACHMENT OF SHEEP, QUICK 
ACTION ALONE WILL SAVE THE ELK HERD OF YELLOWSTONE PARK FROM EXTINCTION 
By EMERSON HOUGH 
T HERE be some men cannot abide a harmless, neces¬ 
sary cat. Others do not like sheep. I once lived 
on the cow range. I don’t like the facial expression 
of a sheep, I don’t like his moral character, I don’t like 
the color of his hair, I don’t like the way he smells—I 
don’t like him in any way, shape nor manner. And today, 
even in all the hysteria about increasing our food supply, I like 
him less than ever. 
If the old cow man of the open range was something of a 
savage, none the less he was very much of a citizen. The taxes 
paid by the cow men of the West have built towns, have built 
roads and schools and bridges. This cannot generally be said 
of taxes paid by 
sheep men. The 
owners of the great 
wandering bands of 
sheep in the semi- 
arid West do not 
pay any taxes at all. 
Listen to them and 
you would believe 
that the sheep was 
the most harm¬ 
less, useful and 
lovable animal in 
all the w o r 1 d—a 
veritable Mary’s 
little lamb. Multi¬ 
ply Mary’s little 
lamb by tens of 
thousands, and you 
have a pest and a 
plague. 
Cows long since have gone under 
wire—it was fate that they must do so. 
A cow man is willing to admit that now. 
Sheep also belong under wire today on 
a range owned and fenced by their owners, but 
, you cannot get any sheep man on earth to admit 
1 that. Perhaps I may quote from a letter written 
by a very prominent statesman, known through¬ 
out the world, and one who has had wide expe- 
! rience in the West. He says: 
“Wandering sheep do not belong anywhere. You 
I are quite right. Sheep should be cultivated—but 
( only on their own ground; for you have even to 
• see that the sheep do not destroy the ground 
j itself. On public pasture it is almost impossible 
| to prevent the sheep from working even more 
injury than our average human fellow country- 
i man will when left unchecked by law—and 
that is putting the case about as strongly as I know how.” 
Any Western man knows that sheep not only ruin a range, 
but they ruin a soil—they cut it into dust, and often it literally 
blows away. Nothing grows after them. A horse will not fol¬ 
low them. Neither will any game animal. They wipe out not 
only the beauty of a landscape, but also the industrial value of 
a landscape and that absolutely. Perhaps you yourself may 
have seen the desert left behind by bands of sheep. It is a 
thing unspeakable. It does not belong longer in the history of 
our country. Bands of sheep trample out the nests of grouse 
and other birds—one year and all the grouse are gone. They 
will drive the trout out of a stream whose headwaters they pol¬ 
lute. They drive all 
wild game out of a 
country just as they 
drive out domestic 
animals. Deer and 
elk will not follow' 
them. They are a 
nuisance, a curse, a 
blight. 
Where Jo the 
large bands of s'^eep 
range today? Wner- 
ever they can find a 
country that will 
tolerate them. We 
have of late set 
apart many hun¬ 
dreds of thousands 
of acres in forest 
reserves, with the 
alleged intent of 
preserving the forest water sheds and 
regulating the floods. To allay the 
local antagonism to these reserves it 
has been the governmental policy to 
allow both cow men and sheep men to range in these 
reserves, usually on a per capita basis; of course, not 
both cows and sheep on the same range. For a long 
time the sheep man had his eye on the mountain forest 
reserves of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. For a 
short time he has been able to prove to the satisfaction 
of certain state legislatures and certain departments in 
Washington that he is the owner of a sweet and peace¬ 
ful animal which is in itself one of the most useful, 
harmless and lovable of the American fauna. He has 
gotten into many forest reserves here and there, and 
even where that meant the total subversion of the de¬ 
clared policy' of the Forestry Service. In more than 
one forest reserve sheep have ruined the water shed 
