Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

Presently he relaxed and showed a friendly interest. I then advanced and formally introduced myself, accompanying my movements with rapid comment and chatter. I asked him if he was glad to be alive, asked his opinion concerning the weather, the condition of his flock, and finally, told him that game preserves was one of my hobbies, and in such refuges I trusted he had a deep interest. All this, while within a few yards of him and in a most friendly tone; still he remained almost coldly curious.

At last I begged the rare privilege of taking his picture, and as he was not in a place for good picture-taking, I proceeded to drive him to a spot closer to my cabin. To my astonishment he was willingly driven! He went along as though he had often been driven and as though going to a place of which he was fond!

Among scattered pines and willows by my brook I circled him and took a number of photographs. At last I walked up to my bighorn friend, rubbed his back and felt his horns. He was not frightened but appeared to enjoy these attentions, and to seem proud of my association. But, my big speechless fellow, I had the most from your call!

Twice afterward, once in the winter and once mid-summer, he called and came up to me, and with dignified confidence licked salt from my hand.

In both the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains there are numerous flocks of bighorn or wild mountain sheep which have a resident stamping ground above the timberline, at an altitude of 12,000 feet. They appear not to migrate, although they go often into the lowlands; in spring for the earliest green stuff, in summer for salt or for a change, and during the winter when conditions commend or command such a move. With the coming of a storm or if there is an attack on them, they at once climb high among the crags, up close to where the eagles soar.

The heights thus is the home of wild sheep. The young are born in bare places among the crags and the snowfields. All stand the storms up close to the sky. They are warmly wrapped; their long, coarse outer coat of hair is almost waterproof and defies the cold.

One of my trips as Snow Observer carried me across the wild Continental Divide while the sky was clearing after a heavy snowfall. In climbing to the summit I passed close to three herds of deer that were stranded in deep snow. But the high wind had swept the treeless summit, and in places the snow had been deeply excavated. In other places it had been thrown into massive drifts. On the summit plateau at an altitude of 12,000 feet I rounded a crag and came close upon a flock of mountain sheep in the moorland from which the wind had swept most of the snow. The sheep were bunched, scattered, and a few were lying down. Here in the heights the sheep had already forgotten the storm, while the elk and the deer far down in the wooded slopes were deeply troubled by the snow. With this open place on the mountain top, these hardy dwellers of the summit could long be indifferent to deep snow or to its deliberate melting.

They bunched in the farthest corner of their wind-cleared place and eyed me curiously while I went by. I back-tracked their wallowed trail to the nook in which they had endured the three-day storm. This place was nearly a mile distant, but over most of the way to the snowless pasture the sheep had travelled on the very edge of the plateau, from which wind and gravity had cleared most of the snow. They had stood through the storm bunched closely against a leeward plateau wall several yards below the summit. The snow had eddied down and buried them deeply. It had required a long and severe struggle to get out of this snow and back through it to the summit, as their footmarks and body impressions plainly showed.

This storm was a general one and deeply covered several states. It was followed by two weeks of cold. For several hundred miles along this and other ranges the deer and the elk had a starving time, while the numerous flocks of sheep on summits escaped serious affliction.

Evidently mountain sheep know their range and understand how to fight the game of self-preservation in the mountain snows. The fact that sheep spend their winters on the mountain summits would indicate that they find a lower death rate and more comfort here than they could find in the lowlands.