American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club
History
American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club
Big game hunting -- United States
Of Wyoming, Mr. Wm. Wells writes: "I have only been up here in
northwestern Wyoming for a year, but from what I have seen, sheep are
holding their own fairly well, and may be increasing in places. In 1897,
Mr. H.D. Shelden, of Detroit, Mich., and myself were hunting sheep just
west of the headwaters of Hobacks River. There was a sort of knife-edge
ridge running about fifteen miles north and south, the summit of which
was about 2,000 feet above a bench or table-land. The ridge was well
watered, and in some places the timber ran nearly up to the top of the
ridge. On this ridge there were about 100 sheep, divided into three
bands. Each band seemed to make its home in a cup-like hollow on the
east side of the ridge, about 500 feet below the crest, but the members
of the different bands seemed to visit back and forth, as the numbers
were not always the same.
"We could take our horses up into either one of the three hollows, and
some of the sheep were so tame that we have several times been within
fifty yards in plain sight, and had the sheep pay very little attention
to us. In one instance two ewes and lambs went on ahead of us at a walk
for several hundred yards, often stopping to look back; and in another a
sheep, after looking at us, two horses and two dogs, across a canyon 200
yards wide, pawed a bed in the slide rock and lay down. In another case
I drove about thirty head of ewes and lambs to within thirty-five yards
of Mr. Shelden, and when he rose up in plain sight, they stood and
looked at him. When he saw that there was no ram there, he yelled at
them, upon which they ran off about 400 yards, and then stood and looked
at us.
"I do not think that these sheep had been hunted, until this time, for
several years. As nearly as I could tell, they ranged winter and summer
on nearly the same ground. At the top of the range, facing the east,
were overhanging ledges of rock, and under these the dung was two feet
or more deep.
"Either during the winter or early spring the sheep had been down in the
timber on the east side of the ridge, as I found the remains of several,
in the winter coat, that had been killed by cougars."
Mr. D.C. Nowlin, of Jackson, Wyo., was good enough to write me in 1898,
concerning the sheep in the general neighborhood of Jackson's Hole; that
is to say, in the ranges immediately south of the National Park, a
section not far from that just described. He says: "In certain ranges
near here sheep are comparatively plentiful, and are killed every
hunting season.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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