To a man who loves the hill-tops, where the winds blow keen and pure over the red gold of sun-dried grass and the deep blue of snow-fed tarns, there is no game in America to compare with the bighorn of the Rocky Mountains. Other beasts may hide away in the dense timber of Oregon, Washington Territory, and Vancouver Island; other beasts may sneak out only at dusk and dawn, but the gallant bighorn still lives out in the open, trusting for safety to the grey-faced ewes who watch over him, or to his own marvellously keen sight and scent. In spite of this, the man who kills a 16-in. ram generally deserves his good luck, for there is no beast better able to take care of himself than an old bighorn, nor any more difficult to stalk. Where he lives the wind seems never still, and never constant in any given direction; at night it strains at the hunter’s tent-rope and makes his fire roar and blaze like a mad thing, and in the morning it curls round the hill-tops and heralds the stalker’s coming from every quarter. It is the fashion in books of sport to describe the haunts of Ovis montana as being ‘the highest, raggedest, and most forbidding mountain ranges.’ Nothing could be further from the truth than this, if the statement is intended to be general. Sheep are undoubtedly sometimes found in difficult and even dangerous places, but to describe sheep shooting as anything like ibex or chamois hunting is pure folly. The first sheep it was ever my good fortune to see was in the Bad Lands, on an eminence not 200 ft. above the level of the Northern Pacific Railway line, and the last I shot in 1892 was not 1,000 ft. above the level of the Frazer. As a rule, sheep in early autumn keep to the bald knolls above the timber-line (where patches of snow still linger), seeking refuge when disturbed in the abrupt rock faces with which the hills abound. When the snow comes they retire to the edge of the timber, sheltering among the juniper bushes and stunted balsams from the early winter storms. Later on, when the deep snows have covered all their upland pastures, the sheep come down to the benches immediately above the river, retiring at midday to the canyons which lead to the first ridges. On the Frazer river in late November and early December all the sheep of the district are down by the river; indeed, one ram which I shot in 1892 was first sighted feeding in the middle of a small band of cattle on the flat. But winter is not the time for sheep hunting, nor the flats above the river the proper places to hunt them in. To enjoy sheep shooting to perfection a man should leave the Pacific coast in September, pass through the belt of water meadows and pine forests, where the pink fireweed contrasts vividly with the grey stems of the pines and the soft green of the ferns, and through the country of sage brush and rolling yellow bluffs. From this point his road will lie steadily upwards, over the rolling prairie, through belts of green timber where the deer swarm in winter, and then by thread-like trails over side-hills and stone-slides along the course of some tributary of the Frazer, until at last a great yellow cone, patched here and there with snow, rises clear above the timber-line in front of him. This is sheep-land, the land of the roaring wind (Skulloptin), but it will take him a good long day to reach it, and both he and his horses will be dead tired by the time they stop to camp. At first a sheer rock wall rises from the river; on the top of the rock is a bench of golden grass, and then again there is a sharp ascent and another bench of grass. Finally the ladder of benches is lost in the forest, which goes climbing away uphill in resolute fashion until towards nightfall the hunter reaches the land of stone-slides and burnt timber, and passing through that comes out upon the edge of the sheep downs, where the stream becomes no more than a succession of small pools amongst the moss, and the only trees still left are dwarfed, stunted, and twisted into all manner of forms by the violence of the mountain winds. If the sun has left the landscape when the hunter first sees it, the effect is weird and cheerless. The great brown wastes above, the soft silent mosses underfoot, the trees huddled together in little groups as if for mutual support, the hanging fringes of blackened beard moss, all help to accentuate the bleakness of the land over which the mountain wind sobs or shrieks. But in the morning all changes as if at a magician’s word. The skies are cloudless, the sunlight dances on snowfield and streamlet, and even the grey stems of the trees are beautiful when contrasted with the ruddy orange of the Indian pinks at their feet—better than all, the hunter’s lungs are filled with air which acts on him like champagne, and on the skyline, as likely as not, he sees the great white sterns of half a dozen sheep feeding quietly on their way back to their sleeping ground. By ten o’clock at latest those sheep will lie down, and then where they lie down they will stay, motionless as the grey rocks they lie amongst, until nearly four o’clock, their eyes apparently open the whole time and fixed steadily upon the nearest skyline. Generally, sheep will choose a little sheltered meadow at the foot of a small glacier, lying down in the very middle of it, each old ram with his head turned in a different direction, and each with his eyes fixed on a different skyline. When sheep have chosen such a position as this, the only thing to be done is to lie and watch them until they move away to some more accessible country. Many a time have I lain like this waiting until first one old ram and then another rose, stretched himself, and then lay down again for another forty winks. It is very exasperating, but when at last the whole band gets upon its legs and feeds slowly over a ridge from behind which it is possible to stalk them, verily you have your reward.
As illustrative of the nature of the country in which sheep west of the Rockies are killed, I have seen a well-known British Columbian rancher ride up to a band of ewes in the highlands of the Ashnola country, galloping after them until within range, then dismounting and killing two out of the band. This was in early autumn, and in what I consider the easiest country I have ever seen; in winter, of course, when the snows are heavy on the mountains, the sheep come right down on to the flat, by the edge of the Frazer river. Indeed, in the winter (end of November 1890) I found a fair-sized ram feeding amongst a band of cattle, and killed him before he had put a hundred yards between himself and them. Another recent statement to which I must take exception is that ‘a man who can find a band of ten or fifteen (sheep) after a week’s riding and climbing is a fortunate man.’ Sheep extend from the Missouri to Alaska, and whatever their numbers may be east of the Rockies, they are certainly plentiful enough west of that range. In Cassiar they are very numerous, and along the banks of the Frazer I have in one season (1889) seen one band of seventy, one of sixty, and on another occasion, late in the fall, a friend of mine and myself came upon an immense band feeding in little bunches of fifteen and twenty, aggregating, I should think, at least 150. I did not and could not count them, but should imagine my estimate was absurdly within the limit. M. D. and I took them at first sight for strayed cattle from a neighbouring ranch. Later on we met a portion of this band going uphill, and watched them file past us, within twenty yards of us, each beast coming up on to a little mound immediately below our ambush, pausing for a moment to look downhill, and then making place for the next. In this procession the barren ewes led, the ewes and lambs came next, and the rams brought up the rear, with the biggest ram, for whom we were waiting, last of all. But though the Frazer River country contains plenty of sheep, neither this country nor Alaska seems to produce such fine heads as are found east of the Rockies. A 16-inch head (honest measurement) is an exceptionally good head for British Columbia. Let those who doubt this statement tape their trophies and judge for themselves. East of the Rockies larger heads are not uncommon; the largest of which I have any accurate information having been bought at Morley by my friend Mr. Arnold Pike. This head measured 17.25 ins. round the base of the horn, being, therefore, considerably bigger than the fine heads exhibited by Messrs. F. Cooper and H. Seton Karr in the American Exhibition. The record sheep head, according to Ward’s excellent book, is 41 ins. in length and 17¼ in circumference.
Of course, there are stories of heads which measure far more than this—of giant heads with two twists to the horns; but they are never seen, although, like most sportsmen, I have myself once seen a head, which I did not secure, that will haunt me until my shooting days are done.
Mr. Arnold Pike’s great ram
There is a tiny sheep district very far up in the mountains at the head of one of the Frazer’s tributaries to which my Indian guide alone knew the trail. He had blazed it three years before, and burnt some timber whilst he was up there, in order that another year the sweet grasses which would spring in the brulé might attract plenty of deer to this his private hunting ground. From the bald top of Siyah, as I prefer to call this ground, we could see the great hills round the Frazer rolling down fold upon fold into their river-beds, their sides red-brown in the sunlight, a rich dark purple in the shadows. We were lying on the very highest ground, spying into a hollow below us in which a solitary sheep was feeding. ‘Yoharlequin,’ muttered the Siwash, ‘it is a ewe.’ Just as he spoke we both crouched close to the ground, though we were safe enough even from a bighorn’s marvellously all-seeing eyes, for at that moment five more sheep walked slowly into sight. There was no doubt as to the new-comers. We were looking upon the finest bit of sheep ground I had ever seen, and the five were worthy of it. There was one enormous ram, two which would have satisfied any man, a fourth such as I had often killed before, and a small fellow.
Everything seemed to favour us at first. The little glacier at the head of the dark gulch had sent a snow-stream tearing through the hollow, and this had cut a deep course up which we could sneak unseen. I suppose the water must have been bitterly cold, but we crawled through it for ten minutes without so much as noticing that when we had to come down to our knees the icy current ran into our trousers pockets, and though the wind blew off the glacier it was welcome, because for once it was right in our teeth. In the middle of the gulch was a big mound, and 240 yards from this (I measured the distance afterwards) stood the glorious three. Unless we could have burrowed, no man could have crept closer unseen, so that from this point I had to fire. But why tell the story, and what is the good of trying to instruct others when I so often break every rule myself? Three things I did on that day which I ought not to have done, and I paid the penalty for my folly. First, I took my Indian with me on the stalk, and, of course, at the critical moment he flurried me with his accursed ‘Shoot, shoot!’ He knew what the ram was like upon which I was trying slowly to draw a bead. Then I took two rifles with me upon that trip, and shot sometimes with one, sometimes with another. The result was that I shot badly with both, and knew nothing of either of them. Lastly, when I had missed or only wounded the big ram, I lost my head, and instead of waiting until the beasts should pause for a moment to look back, I fired three fluky shots at them ‘on the run.’ Not until the big beasts were behind a piece of rolling ground did I realise what a fool I had made of myself, and then, as we wanted meat badly, I took a quiet steady shot at the little ram which had hung behind, and killed him neatly at a good 400 yards—a shot which under ordinary circumstances I should never dream of attempting.
After waiting for awhile we followed the wounded beast, hoping that as we had given him time he would lie down and afford us a chance of another stalk. But, as the Indian said, ‘there was no lie down in that ram.’ He could only go very slowly (at a walk), but he could keep going, and over the ground to which he took us we could do no more.
We tried everything that we could think of to circumvent him, but it was no good. When the dusk was falling I got my last view of his great white quarters, lurching slowly over yet another ridge. He was evidently bound for a far country, and had no intention of stopping until he reached it; I was limping almost as badly as he was, and was far more ‘done.’ I had left a nasty piece of rock and ice behind me to recross on my way to camp, I had not a notion how far I had come, where my Indian was, or which was the nearest way to my camp, so with a heart full of bitterness I turned back, vowing to track him on the morrow and stay with him as long as he stayed in British Columbia.
But then I knew only that he was a very big ram. When I stood beside the beast which the Indian and myself had taken for a two-year-old at most, and taped his horns at 14½ ins., I had a better idea what the beast must have been like beside which this fair ram had seemed a pigmy. Of course, that night enough snow fell to hide the tracks of a mammoth! I try sometimes to console myself with the reflection that after all he was probably only a 16- or, at most, 17-in. ram, but it won’t do. I know better. From blood-stains upon the rocks (my Indian had my glass) I am pretty sure that I shot through the withers the first time, and probably hit him very far back with one of the others.