Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 246, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1913 — MOUNTAIN SHEEP IN SOUTHWEST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MOUNTAIN SHEEP IN SOUTHWEST

PATIENCE and perseverance are prime essentials in the makeup of every man who goes out for big game, and he who i would successfully hunt the mountain sheep should possess more than the ordinary endowment of these characteristics. Unlike many other animals, these cannot be hunted by rule o’ thumb. Rules for sheep hunting are usually true only in the exceptions, and the only one really worth bearing in mind is to “always expect the unexpected,’’ writes L. R. Freeman in Los Angeles Times. “Prepare to climb if you go for sheep in the Cocopahs, and don’t expect to find any under 5,000 feet - .’’ Thus said experienced friends in Yuma when I first went off down the Colorado for a hunt in the Delta country, and the only sheep I shot this trip was secured at the edge of a plain and at an elevation, or rather a depression, of 100 feet below sea level. “No us looking for sheep at the lower water holes after last night’s cloudburst In the upper mountains,” said the Mexican guides who had l&ken me down to Mt. San Pedro on another occasion, and an hour later — gunless—l was crowded into one of those very water holes by a big ram whose only line of flight chanced to He by a footwide ledge along which I was gingerly picking my way. Below Sea Level. The spot where I shot my “submarine” sheep, as the fine specimen I have alluded to as having been shot below sea level was dubbed, first appeared to me in a mirage. It was a scorching noonday on that sun-baked stretch of white alkali which leads from the edge of the Imperial irrigation country down to the desolate Cocopahs. The sky was a dome of hammered brass, inverted over a floor of gleaming zinc, the plain. The wheels of the camp wagon moved noiselessly over the yielding alkali and no sound broke the stillness save the monotonous creak of the springs and the occ&sional clank of a trace, chain. >

Gradually out of the steel-gray glow of the air that marked the spot where sky and plain merged In a misty blur, a shimmering lake of crystal water began to form, the wavelets of whose farther side lapped against a beach of black sand lying In the right-angled embrasure of a towering yellow cliff, the latter standing out so clear and distinct as to seem almost to float upon the eyeball. The water and cliff had been tantaUzlngly receding before us for perhaps an hour, when down to one side of the lake came walking three full-grown mountain sheep—one ram and two ewes. Right off Into the water they marched, the (littering surface of the lake gradually closing over them without splash or ripple. After an Interval of a minute or two the big back-curving horns of the ram appeared, bobbed along the surface of the lake for a hundred yardß or more as if detached, to be finally followed by the shoulders and body of their owner. A moment later the ewes wobbled into view, and x all three trotted out on the beach and disappeared in a depression at the apex of the great right-angled cliff. Later, returning from two weeks of fruitless climbing In the parched Cocopahs, we chanced upon the same distinctive cliff observed in the mirage, camped at the waterhole deep back In the angle of its overhang, and the following morning Bhot a fine young ram that was coming down at Bun-up for sn early drink. This instance Is the only one I have knowledge of where a mountain sheep has been shot below ■ea level. The phenomenon of the animals appearing to walk through the water was undoubtedly caused by the sot uncommon combination of a true mirage and a lake effect due only to the agitation of the waves of heated ;air. Once Plentiful. Up to a very few years ago—and probably still —sheep were fairly plentiful in the low desert mountains which here and there hem in the Colorado

river above Yuma, and It was there that I once had the unusual experience of being presented with a shot, firing and shooting a sheep which I did not get, ultimately getting a sheep which I did not shoot. # Accompanied only by an Indian I had just picked my way up the side of a steep-walled valley to a tableland, upon which, according to report brought to us the night before, fresh sheep tracks had been recently noted. We reached the mesa at a point where, in shadow ourselves, we could watch a great slash of sunlight cutting through a gap in the eastern ridge and descending like a wedge of gold into the semi-dark-ness of the lower valley. As the tip of the wedge' of light touched a jutting point on the mesa’s outermost rim, it revealaed with startling suddenness a well-grown young ram standing sharply ip relief against the blur of blue mißt tliat filled the valley. I shot as I sat, resting my rifle across my knee and, as the distance was under a hundred yards, could hardly have missed by many inches the shoulder at which I aimed. The young ram toppled forward over thd brink of the cliff and, simultaneously! another animal leaped after him from the shadow, while a number of others scampered back out of sight into ( rogfcy gully which cut the mesa ad that point. V We descended to the bridle trail,; 200 feet below the cliff, to find, lying on the outer edge, not the animal 1 had shot, but a much larger ram with a shattered, but still magnificent, pair of horns. The wounded sheep had evidently struck a projection of the cliff in his descent, this deflecting the body sufficiently to clear the trail and bound on into the valley below. Tha unwounded ram, leaping out from tha brow of the cliff, had fallen straight to the bridle trail and been instantly killed. The body of the wounded sheep was carried away in the Bwift mountain torrent which ran at th( base of the cliff.

TYPICAL MOUNTAIN SHEEP