Toward noon the band set off for a steep cliff, where each day they took their siesta. The two old rams led the way. After making pictures of them silhouetted against the sky, I circled the cliff and hid at the end of a ledge. I counted on getting a good photograph when the old leaders surmounted the crag and marched forward at the head of their single-file column. To deceive them, I built a dummy at the spot where they turned aside upon the ledge. Coat and cap and camera case went into the sketchy figure, and after it had been propped in place to block the downward retreat, I hurried around the point and hid in some bushes behind a granite slab, first setting my camera, well camouflaged with stones, atop the rock, and focusing it toward the point where the sheep would pass in review. Minutes passed. Not a sheep rounded the point! More waiting. I sallied forth to reconnoiter. The sheep were feeding peacefully in the valley below. They had knocked down the dummy, trampled over it, and retreated along the ledge the way they had come!
The joke was on me, but it had been a glorious day for all that. I retrieved the remains of my down-trodden dummy and started home. I halted midway down to the valley to study some queer records in the sand. Surely a crazy man had made them! What would a stranger have thought if he had happened upon that grotesque trail? But a stranger had been there. On the heels of my crazy trail were the tracks of a mountain lion. He had been stalking me!
From my experience with these sheep I made some naïve deductions and wrote them in my notebook. From it, lying open before me now, I transcribe these boyish but none the less accurate observations:
"Mountain sheep have all-seeing eyes—therefore, one keeps in the open at all times and never attempts stalking them under cover. If you do, you are acting suspiciously, and they will treat you in the same manner."
"They will not permit you to approach from above them. They are lofty minded; so keep your place beneath them."
"If sheep are in the open, and on level ground, they will not permit a near approach."
"Keep in the open, below them, permit them to retreat to the rocks. If these rocks give way to sheer cliffs the sheep will feel at home. They will then permit you to approach quite near."
"Sheep are tremendously curious. Take advantage of this fact and offer them something in the way of entertainment. If you want to get on with sheep, make a fool of yourself."
As spring advanced, the ewes left the flock and sought safety among the cliffs where they raised their young in partial concealment. While their lambs were yet mere infants, a week old or so, they hid them among the rocks. Instinctively the youngsters lay low, remaining immovable until their mothers returned from feeding near by, to claim them. Eagles hovered high overhead, waiting to drop like plummets upon the helpless babies. These great birds accounted for many a bleating little lamb's passing. Lions, likewise, visited the heights and took toll of mothers as well as of offspring; even bobcats pounced upon them. Sometimes coyotes or wolves surprised partly grown sheep, that had brashly ventured too far from sheltering rocks.
While returning home one day I stumbled upon a very young sheep. The youngster lay low, like a wounded duck. Several times I walked within a few feet of him, coming closer each time until at length he sprang up and fled in terror. He took refuge by climbing an almost perpendicular cliff wall. Camera in hand, I followed as best I could. Fifty feet up, he came to a point where even his nimble feet could find no adequate footing. His retreat ended. He scrambled to a little jutting point not much larger than a hand's breadth, and took refuge there with all four feet bunched together.