Sheep have a wonderfully keen vision, and it is absolutely useless to try to get to them if they once see you, unless you happen to be above them and on their favorite runway; then they huddle together and try to break back past you. The only safe rule is to travel high and keep working up above their feeding-grounds. In the spring of the year they are much easier to kill than in the fall, for then the heavy winter snows have driven them out of the mountains, and they come low down after the fresh green grass. The rams are then in bands, having laid aside the hostility that later in the year seems to possess each and every one of them.
I was much interested once in watching a band of eight rams, all of them old fellows. They would feed early in the morning and then betake themselves to a large rock which stood on a grassy slope, where they would play for hours. One of them would jump on the rock and challenge the others to butt him off. Two or three would then jump up, and their horns would come together with a clash that I could hear from my position, which was fully a quarter of a mile away. On one occasion I saw them suddenly stop their play and each ram became fixed; there the little band stood as though carved out of stone. They remained that way for quite half an hour without a movement. I could not detect with the glasses the slightest motion, when, presently, three strange rams made their appearance. Here was the explanation that I was looking for. They had seen them long before I had. The three visitors were not very well received, but were compelled to beat an ignominious and hasty retreat up the mountain side.
As summer draws near, and the winter snow begins to disappear, bands of elk may be seen migrating toward their favorite ranges. The bulls are now together in bands of greater or less extent. Their horns are well grown out, but are soft and in the velvet. The cows and calves stick closely to the thick timber. As the season advances and the flies become troublesome, the bulls will get up as high as they can climb and seem to delight in standing on the brink of some mountain precipice. I have often wondered, in seeing them standing thus, whether they were insensible of the magnificent scenery that surrounded them.
Reader, what would you have given to have seen, as I have, a band of two hundred and fifty bull-elk collected together on a beautiful piece of green grassy turf at an elevation of nine thousand feet? Here was a sight to make a man's nerves tingle. This was the largest band of bulls, by actual count, that I have ever seen, though my cousin and partner once saw in the fall of the year, including bulls, cows, and calves, fifteen hundred. This was on the memorable occasion when the only elk ever killed by any of my men gave up his life, and we have all concluded that this particular elk was frightened to death; for though three men shot at him and each was confident he hit him, they always asserted afterward that no bullet-mark could be found on him.
Generally, in August, in each band of bulls there will be found one or two barren cows. About the end of August, after the bulls have rubbed the velvet off their antlers, they will come back to the vicinity of the bands of cows. I have seen bulls as late as September 4 peaceably feeding or resting among the bands of cows. Usually, in a band of fifty cows, there would be three or four males, including, possibly, one or two spike-bulls.[A] I have seen these spike-bulls in the velvet as late as September 4, though by that time the older bulls had mostly rubbed the velvet off. A little later, about September 7, the bulls begin to challenge each other,—in hunting parlance, "to whistle." This, on a clear, frosty night, is sometimes extremely melodious, and it is one of the most impossible sounds to imitate. Hunting elk, if I may be pardoned for saying it, I do not consider very exciting sport to a man thoroughly versed in the woods. They are far too noble an animal to kill unnecessarily, and if one hunts them in September, when they are whistling, it is a very easy matter, guided by the sound, to stalk them successfully.
[A] A spike-bull is a young elk carrying his first or dag antlers. These are single-tined, though in rare instances they are bifurcated.
Studying the Strangers.
From Scribner's Magazine.