Its range lies in northern British Columbia, especially about the upper Stikine River and its tributaries; thence it extends easterly to Laurier Pass in the Rocky Mountains, north of Peace River, and south perhaps to Babine Lake. Unfortunately it appears to have become extinct in the southern border of its range, so that its real relationship with the Rocky Mountain sheep farther south may never be determined.
The sheep occupying the mountains between the home of typical stonei and that of dalli in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Yukon Territory are characterized by having white heads, with bodies of a varying shade of iron gray, thus showing evident intergradation on a great scale between the white northern sheep and the “black” sheep of the Stikine. These intermediate animals have been called the Fannin, or saddle-backed, sheep (Ovis fannini). Hunters report a considerable mingling of entirely white animals among flocks of these intergrading animals, and occasionally white individuals are seen even in flocks of the typical dark sheep of the Stikine country.
Like the white Alaskan sheep, the Stone sheep exists in great abundance in many parts of its range, especially east of Dease Lake. It usually ranges in flocks, those made up of ewes and young rams often containing a considerable number. The old bucks, except in fall, keep by themselves in smaller bands in separate parts of the range. The Stone sheep lives in one of the most notable big-game fields of the continent. Its home above timberline is shared with the mountain goat and in the lower open slopes with the caribou, while within the adjacent forests wander the moose and two or more species of bear.
Owing to its frequenting remote and sparsely inhabited country, it continues to exist in large numbers; but if its range becomes more accessible, only the most stringent protection can save this splendid animal from the extermination already accomplished on the southern border of its range.
DALL MOUNTAIN SHEEP (Ovis dalli)
The only variation in the pure white coat of the Dall sheep is a mixture of a few black hairs on the rump, sometimes becoming plentiful enough to form a blackish spot on the tail and a light brownish stain over the entire body, due to the slight discoloration at the tips of the hairs from contact with the earth in their bedding-down places. Their horns are usually dull amber yellow and are notable for their slender proportions and the grace of their sweeping coils, which sometimes curve close to the head and again spread in a wide, open spiral.
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.
