As their white coats indicate, the Dall sheep are the northernmost of their kind in America. Their home lies mainly in Alaska, where they were formerly abundant in many mountain ranges, from those bordering the Arctic coast south through the interior to the cliffs on Kenai Peninsula, but are now scarce or gone from some mountains. To the eastward they are numerous across the border in much of Yukon territory, nearly to the Mackenzie River. Their haunts lie amid a wilderness of peaks and ridges, marked in summer with scattered glaciers and banks of perpetual snow and in winter exposed to all the rigors of a severe Arctic climate. They are extraordinarily numerous in some districts, as among the outlying ranges about the base of Mount McKinley. In their high, bleak homes these sheep have little to fear from natural enemies, although the great Canada lynx, the wolf, the wolverine, and the golden eagle, as overlords of the range, take occasional toll from their numbers. Their one devastating enemy is man, with his modern high-power rifle. Even so long ago as the summer of 1881, I saw hundreds of their skins among the Eskimos at Point Barrow, taken that spring with the use of Winchester rifles among the mountains lying inland from the Arctic coast. Of late years the advent of miners and the establishment of mining camps and towns have greatly increased the demand for meat, and this has resulted in the killing of thousands of these sheep. Large numbers of these splendid animals have also been killed to serve as winter dog food. The advent of thousands of men engaged in the construction of the government railroad which, when completed, will pass through the Mount McKinley region, makes imminent the danger of extermination that threatens the mountain sheep, as well as the moose and caribou, in a great area of the finest big-game country left under our control. [Illustration: STONE’S, FANNIN’S, AND DALL’S MOUNTAIN SHEEP] Properly conserved, the game animals of Alaska will continue indefinitely as one of its richest resources, but heedless wastefulness may destroy them forever. All sportsmen and other lovers of wild life should interest themselves in an effort to safeguard the future of Alaskan game animals before it is too late; for, under the severe climatic conditions prevailing, the restocking of exhausted game fields in that region will be extremely difficult, if not practically impossible. [Illustration: PRONG-HORN ANTELOPE] [Illustration: ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT] =ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT= (=Oreamnos montanus= and its subspecies) The numerous wild goats of the Himalayas and other mountains of Asia are represented in America solely by the Rocky Mountain goat. This is one of the most characteristic, but least graceful in form and action, of our big-game animals. It is distinguished by a long ungainly head, ornamented with small black horns; a heavy body, humped at the shoulders like a buffalo, and a coat of long shaggy white hair.