The Indians had "about thirty dogs on which they carried their skins, clothing, provisions, etc., on their hunting excursions. They were well armed with bows and arrows pointed with obsidian" (ibid.). Russell also saw other "Mountain Snakes" near the headwaters of the Shoshone River (ibid., p. 64). Speaking of the Dukarika, Hiram Chittenden says (1933, p. 8):
It was a humble branch of the Shoshone family which alone is known to have dwelt in the region of Yellowstone Park. They were called Tuakuarika, or more commonly Sheepeaters. They were found in the park country at the time of its discovery, and had doubtless long been there. The Indians were veritable hermits of the mountains, utterly unfit for warlike contention, and seem to have sought immunity from their dangerous neighbors by dwelling among the inaccessible fastnesses of the mountains.
Chittenden continues:
We-Saw [an Indian who accompanied Capt. Jones in 1873] states that he had neither knowledge nor tradition of any permanent occupants of the Park save the timid Sheepeaters.... He said that his people [Shoshone], the Bannocks, and the Crows, occasionally visited the Yellowstone Lake and River.
Captain W. A. Jones, when on his 1873 expedition to Yellowstone Park, commented that one of the Indians with him, a Sheepeater, knew the route back to Wind River (Jones, 1875, p. 39). Beyond these few citations, the Sheepeaters are almost unmentioned.
In contrast to the previously described Shoshone, the Dukarika traveled mostly on foot, although a very few had horses. They hunted timber buffalo near the mountain lakes and killed elk, deer, and the mountain sheep for which they were named. Antelope were occasionally hunted near Pinedale by those who owned horses. The best hunting grounds were considered to be those near Pinedale and on the west slope of the Wind River Range. Although some Sheepeaters inhabited Yellowstone Park, their main hunting grounds were farther south. The Sheepeaters were by no means the only Indians who made use of the Yellowstone region. Hultkrantz also mentions entry by parties of "Kiowa, Plains Shoshoni, Lemhi Shoshoni, Bannock, Crow, Blackfoot and Nez Percé" (Hultkrantz, 1954, p. 140).
All game was tracked and cornered by dogs and dispatched with the bow and arrow; the buffalo lance was used only by mounted hunters of Plains buffalo. Dogs were also used for packing—both on back and by travois.
In addition to their hunting activities, the Sheepeaters speared trout in the spring and summer. Nets, traps, and weirs were apparently not used. They also made use of the wild vegetables (previously listed) that grow in the mountains.
The Sheepeaters stayed in the mountains during the winter and did not join the valley winter camps of the buffalo hunters. They lived on stored meat and also continued to take elk, rabbits, and deer. Hunting was usually done on snowshoes.
Their camp groups were small, and, although no exact figure could be obtained, they never numbered more than the occupants of a few buffalo-hide tipis. Each such group had its leader who decided the hunting itinerary. The Dukarikas had no over-all political organization; each small camp group was politically and economically autonomous. "Dukarika," then, can be assumed to be a term defining a type of economic adaptation rather than a social unit.