Bighorn

“ In wet weather, no man can climb any of them, and at such times they are greasy, muddy, sliding grounds. Oftentimes when a Bighorn is seen on a hill-top, the hunter has to ramble about for three or four miles before he can approach within gunshot of the game, and if the Bighorn ever sees his enemy, pursuit is useless. The tops of some of these hills, and in some cases whole hills about thirty feet high, are composed of a conglomerated mass of stones, sand, and clay, with earth of various sorts, fused together, and having a brick-like appearance. ”

“ The largest of the canon animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of him like the wind through a quivering mountain pine. ”

“ It seems a pity, as, whether you hunt him among the mists and storms of an Alaskan autumn, or watch for him by a hill at the edge of some dark canyon, until even the bird chiquetta stops her noisy little song, and the outlines of all objects become indistinct and moving, Ursus horribilis is better worth hunting than any other beast, except perhaps the bighorn, in all America. ”

“ To the south rose the white peaks of our saddle, above which extended the two mighty crests of the Bighorn. The bluish cold colour of these enormous snow domes contrasted with the warm reddish tint of the mountains and the sunlit landscape below them, and the icy peaks dazzled our eyes when we looked up at them. Before us in the west stretched out a scene which I cannot find words to describe faithfully. To the right and left on the sides of the snowy mountains which formed a semicircle we saw a sea of hills and rocks in the most eccentric shape ”

“ In some places there are piles of earth from eight to ten feet high, or even more, the tops of which form platforms of a hard and shelly rocky substance, where the Bighorn is often seen looking on the hunter far below, and standing immovable, as if a statue. No one can imagine how they reach these places, and that too with their young, even when the latter are quite small. ”

“ The bighorn is a fearless and skilful mountaineer, and will climb or descend precipices by bounding from ledge to ledge where the most reckless hunter dares not follow. Its ability to find a sure footing on even smoothly glaciated rocks is due to the peculiar structure of the feet, which have a rubber-like pad beneath the sharp-pointed and sharp-edged hoofs. ”

“ For nearly a mile Thor and Muskwa followed the Bighorn Highway before its winding course brought them at last to the very top of the range. They were fully three-quarters of a mile above the creek-bottom, and so narrow in places was the crest of the mountain along which the sheep-trail led that they could look down into both valleys. ”

“ The bighorn generally lives in small or large companies, on the declivities and tops of the mountains, but in the evening, and at night, comes down to the lower ground, where there is more food; and, even in the daytime, is often seen towards the foot of the mountains. They are shot with a rifle, and good marksmen do not find it difficult to kill them, because, standing in elevated positions, they afford him a good aim. ”

“ The mountains where he makes his home are so high that the tops of many of them are in the clouds and covered with snow even in summer. Above the line where trees can no longer grow Bighorn spends his summers, coming down to the lower hills only when the snow becomes so deep that he cannot paw down through it to get food. ”

“ In America there is also but one species of wild sheep, though it has also a variety. This is the Bighorn of the Rocky Mountains, lately much spoken of by prairie travellers and fur-hunters. It is not known in tropical North America, nor does its range extend to the Andes of the south; but it is found to the west, in the mountains of California, in a variety called the Californian sheep. The bighorn is extremely like the Asiatic argali, and was for a long time regarded as identical with the latter ”

“ They sent President Jefferson specimens of the new animals they found—the antelope, prairie dog, prairie badger, magpie, bighorn, and a grizzly-hide or so. They got their four bighorn heads at the Mandans, none very large, though ‘two feet long and four inches diameter’ seemed big to them. And I shouldn’t wonder if those horns could have been pulled off the pith after they got good and dry. The horns of the bighorn will dry out and lose at least ten per cent of their measurement, in a few years’ hanging on a wall. ”

“ In its habits it resembles the goat, frequenting the rudest precipices; cropping the herbage from their edges; and, like the chamois, bounding lightly and securely among dizzy heights, where the hunter dares not venture. It is difficult, therefore, to get within shot of it. Ben Jones the hunter, however, in one of the passes of the Black Hills, succeeded in bringing down a bighorn from the verge of a precipice, the flesh of which was pronounced by the gourmands of the camp to have the flavor of excellent mutton. ”

“ Only those who have stood in a duck blind watching a flock of mallard swing down toward the decoys, only those who have lain pressed to the slide rock and seen the mountain sheep, the incomparable Bighorn, in a long file against the snow, or those who have beheld the waters break and explode as the steelhead strikes can comprehend this wilderness ecstasy at all. The smells on the winds, the little hushed noises in the thickets, the startled waverings of shadows all added their influence; and the bloodlust came upon the beasts of prey. ”

“ At this critical juncture, when famine stared them in the face, M’Lellan casting up his eyes, beheld an ahsahta, or bighorn, sheltering itself under a shelving rock on the side of the hill above them. Being in a more active plight than any of his comrades, and an excellent marksman, he set off to get within shot of the animal. ”

“ The black-tailed deer would bound up the ravines on their approach, and the bighorn would gaze fearlessly down upon them from some impending precipice, or skip playfully from rock to rock. These animals are only to be met with in mountainous regions. ”

“ If any one supposes that animals do not have to learn the geographical nature of a hunting ground before they are really adept in it, it is wholly plain that he has never followed the tracks of a pack of strange wolves in a new land. By knowing all the trails, the bighorn were able to avoid the traps that Broken Fang so laboriously set. More than once, after a weary half-day's wait, he would find to his chagrin that the sure-footed sheep had been watching him—chuckling no doubt among themselves—from a nearby promontory. ”

“ Bighorn does not have the great curling horns. Instead she is armed with short, sharp-pointed horns, like spikes. Her young are born in the highest, most inaccessible place she can find, and there they have little to fear save one enemy, King Eagle. Only such an enemy, one with wings, can reach them there. Bighorn and Mrs. Bighorn, because of their size, nothing to dread from these great birds, but helpless little lambs are continually in danger of furnishing King Eagle with the dinner he prizes. ”

“ In size the bighorn is between the domestic sheep and the common red-deer of America, but is more strongly built than the latter. It is of a brownish-dun colour, with a somewhat white streak on the hind-quarters. The tail is shorter than that of the deer, and tipped with black. As the age of the animal increases, the coat becomes of a darker tinge. The horns, of the male especially, are of great size, curving backwards about three feet in length, and twenty inches in circumference at the roots. ”

“ The bighorn of the American continent, inclusive of its local races (frequently regarded as distinct species) , is a large sheep, distinguished from the Asiatic argalis, among other features, by the comparative smoothness of the horns, in which the outer front angle is prominent, and the inner one rounded off, and also by the smaller size of the face glands. There is a well-marked whitish patch on the rump, but the amount of white on the under parts and legs shows considerable local variation. ”

“ The movements of the Bighorn are quite graceful, and the agility and lightness with which it scales steep bluffs, runs along the narrowest edge on the face of a precipice, or leaps from rock to rock in its descent from some mountain-top, are excelled by no other animal. These Sheep feed early in the morning, and retire during the middle of the day to points high up on the bluffs or mountains where they rest until sundown, when they return to their feeding grounds. ”

“ They do not flourish when confined even in a large area, and we have reason to fear that one of the obscure inexorable laws of nature is working now to shelve the Antelope with the creatures that have passed away. A small band is yet to be seen wintering on the prairie near Gardiner.
THE RESCUED BIGHORN
At one time the Bighorn abounded along all the rivers where there was rough land as far east as the western edge of the Dakotas, westerly to the Cascades, and in the mountains from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska. ”

“ Perched upon a point of rock, silhouetted against the sky, a bighorn sheep watches the gathering tempest, unmindful of the muttering thunder and the ominous glow of lightning kindling in the sable-winged array. There is something noble about him as he turns his crest upward to bear275 the onslaught of the blast. The purple of the mountains overhanging the lake deepens to black—the blue-black of a clear, night sky—and the snow filling the ravines lies passionless and white as death. ”

“ Only when driven to the lower slopes and hills by storms and snow does Bighorn have cause to fear four-footed enemies. Then Puma the Panther must be watched for, and lower down Howler the Wolf. But Bighorn's greatest enemy, and one he fears most, is the same one so many others have sad cause to fear—the hunter with his terrible gun. The terrible gun can kill where man himself cannot climb, and Bighorn has been persistently hunted for his head and wonderful horns. ”

“ Other beasts may hide away in the dense timber of Oregon, Washington Territory, and Vancouver Island; other beasts may sneak out only at dusk and dawn, but the gallant bighorn still lives out in the open, trusting for safety to the grey-faced ewes who watch over him, or to his own marvellously keen sight and scent. In spite of this, the man who kills a 16-in. ram generally deserves his good luck, for there is no beast better able to take care of himself than an old bighorn, nor any more difficult to stalk. Where he lives the wind seems never still, and never constant in any given direction ”

“ The Bighorn, in fact, finds in every rough country sufficient for its requirements, and it demands only that there shall be steep and difficult heights to which it may retreat when pursued. Every species of sheep would prefer a hilly habitat, but the Bighorn could scarcely exist on a level plain.
Somebody has said that Mountain Sheep would be aptly described as having the head of a sheep with the body of a deer. In size, however, it exceeds the largest deer, and a full-grown specimen will weigh from 300 to 350 pounds. ”

“ Finally the Bighorn stamped twice with all his four feet together, as a sign that he had found no harm in the strangers. They could feel the flock huddling back, and the warmth of the packed fleeces. In the midst of it the two lay down and slept till morning.
"They were alone in the cedar shelter when they woke, but the track of the flock in the fresh-fallen snow led straight over the crest under the Crooked Horn to protected slopes, where there was still some browse and open going. ”

“ My young readers may remember that many similar feats have been witnessed in the Rocky Mountains of America, performed by the “bighorn”—a wild sheep that inhabits these mountains, so closely resembling the Ovis ammon of the Himalayas, as to be regarded by some naturalists as belonging to the same species. The hunters of the American wilderness positively assert that the bighorn fearlessly flings himself from high cliffs, alighting on his horns ”

“ One spring, needing the skins of bighorn to tan into soft leather for clothing, the tribe moved up here to the foot of the Lower Two Medicine Lake, and began hunting. Many men would surround and climb a mountain, driving the bighorn ahead of them, their dogs helping, and at last they would come up to the game, often [Pg 24] several hundred head, on the summit of the mountain. The dogs were then held back, and the hunters, advancing with ready bow and arrows, would shoot and shoot the bighorn at close range and generally kill the most of them. ”

“ But the bighorn, the wild sheep, able to bear the bitterest storms with no signs of stress, cannot cope with the loose shifty snow. Never such a storm goes over the mountains that the Indians do not catch them floundering belly deep among the lower rifts. I have a pair of horns, inconceivably heavy, that were borne as late as a year ago by a very monarch of the flock whom death overtook at the mouth of Oak Creek after a week of wet snow. ”

“ Even small, young animals are very swift, and it is extremely difficult to get one alive. Mr. Mc Kenzie had promised a hunter to give him a horse if he would bring a young bighorn alive; but, up to this time, he had not been able to procure one. The names of bighorn and grosse corne, given to this animal by the English and {231} French, are properly taken from the large thick horns of the ram, which often weigh forty pounds the two, and make the animal's head appear quite small. Many travellers have spoken of this animal; for instance, Brackenridge, who calls it argolia, or argalia ”