American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club

by Unknown

Stone's sheep, which was described by Dr. Allen in 1897, came from the head of the Stickine River, and two years after its description Dr. J.A. Allen quotes Mr. A.J. Stone, the collector, as saying: "I traced the Ovis stonei, or black sheep, throughout the mountainous country of the headwaters of the Stickine, and south to the headwaters of the Nass, but could find no reliable information of their occurrence further south in this longitude. They are found throughout the Cassiar Mountains, which extend north to 61 degrees north latitude and west to 134 degrees west longitude. How much further west they may be found I have been unable to determine. Nor could I ascertain whether their range extends from the Cassiar Mountains into the Rocky Mountains to the north of Francis and Liard River. But the best information obtained led me to believe that it does not. They are found in the Rocky Mountains to the south as far as the headwaters of the Nelson and Peace rivers in latitude 56 degrees, but I proved conclusively that in the main range of the Rocky Mountains very few of them are found north of the Liard River. Where this river sweeps south through the Rocky Mountains to Hell's Gate, a few of these animals are founds as far north as Beaver River, a tributary of the Liard. None, however, are found north of this, and I am thoroughly convinced that this is the only place where these animals may be found north of the Liard River.

"I find that in the Cassiar Mountains and in the Rocky Mountains they everywhere range above timber line, as they do in the mountains of Stickine, the Cheonees, and the Etsezas.

"Directly to the north of the Beaver River, and north of the Liard River below the confluence of the Beaver, we first meet with Ovis dalli."

A Stony Indian once told me that in his country—the main range of the Rocky Mountains—there were two sorts of sheep, one small, dark in color, and with slender horns, which are seldom broken, and another sort larger and pale in color, with heavy, thick horns that are often broken at the point. He went on to say that these small black sheep are all found north of Bow River, Alberta, and that on the south side of Bow River the big sheep only occur. The country referred to all lies on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The hunting ground of the Stonies runs as far north as Peace River, and it is hardly to be doubted that they know Stone's sheep. The Brewster Bros., of Banff, Alberta, inform me that Stone's sheep is found on the head of Peace River.

A dozen or fifteen years ago one of the greatest sheep ranges that was at all accessible was in the mountains at the head of the Ashnola River, in British Columbia, and on the head of the Methow, which rises in the same mountains and flows south into Washington. This is a country very rough and without roads, only to be traversed with a pack train.

Mr. Lew Wilmot writes me that there are still quite a number of sheep ranging from Mt. Chapacca, up through the Ashnola, and on the headwaters of the Methow. Indeed, it is thought by some that sheep are more numerous there now than they were a few years ago. In Dyche's "Campfires of a Naturalist" a record is given of sheep in the Palmer Lake region, at the east base of the Cascade range in Washington.

The Rev. John McDougall, of Morley, Alberta, wrote me in 1899, in answer to inquiries as to the mountain sheep inhabiting the country ranged over by the Stony Indians, "that it is the opinion of these Indians that the sheep which frequent the mountains from Montana northward as far as our Indians hunt, are all of one kind, but that in localities they differ in size, and somewhat in color.

"They say that from the 49th parallel to the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River, sheep are larger than those in the Selkirks and coast ranges; and also that as they go north of the Saskatchewan the sheep become smaller. As to color, they say that the more southerly and western sheep are the lighter; and that as you pass north the sheep are darker in color. These Stonies report mountain sheep as still to be found in all of the mountain country they roam in. Their hunting ground is about 400 miles long by 150 broad, and is principally confined to the Rocky Mountain range."

In an effort to establish something of the range of the mountain sheep, during the very last years of the nineteenth century, I communicated with a large number of gentlemen who were either resident in, or travelers through, portions of the West now or formerly occupied by the mountain sheep, and the results of these inquiries I give below:

Prof. L.V. Pirsson, of Yale University, who has spent a number of years in studying the geology of various portions of the northern Rocky Mountains, wrote me with considerable fullness in 1896 concerning the game situation in some of the front ranges of the Rockies, where sheep were formerly very abundant. In the Crazy Mountains he says he saw no sheep, and that while it was possible they might be there, they must certainly be rare. In 1880 there were many sheep there. In the Castle Mountains none were seen, nor reported, nor any traces seen. The same is true of the Little Belt, Highwood, and Judith Mountains. He understood that sheep were still present in the bad lands; immediately about the mountains and east of them the country was too well settled for any game to live. Earlier, however, in the summer of 1890, passing through the Snowy Mountains, which lie north of the National Park, sheep were seen on two occasions; a band of ten ewes and lambs on Sheep Mountain, and a band of seven rams on the head of the stream known as the Buffalo Fork of the Lamar River. In 1893 an old ram was killed on Black Butte, at the extreme eastern end of the Judith Mountains, near Cone Butte, and it is quite possible that this animal had strayed out of the bad lands on the lower Musselshell, or on the Missouri. Even at that time there were said to be no sheep on the Little Rockies, Bearpaws, or Sweetgrass Hills.