Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1886 — Mountain Sam s Dogs. [ARTICLE]

Mountain Sam s Dogs.

An old trapper and hunter known as “Mountain Bam” is doing a land office business killing huge mountain sheep for their heads and horns. These he ships to New York to fill the orders which he is constantly receiving, and there they are mounted. Sain’s best customers are wealthy Englishmen. For many years “ Mountain Bam” has buried himself in the most remote recesses of the Big Horn Mountains. Sam rounds up the wild sheep with dogs. A His pack numbers twenty-five head, and they are a pure cross of bloodhound and bull-dog. Mountain born and bred, these noble animals add to the nat.uxal strength and sagacity of their blood-strains a marvelous endurance and activity. No snow-depth, no roughness of trail, no steepness of precipice, no loftiness of peak, no remoteness of locality, can stop the mountain dog when on the track of the mountain sheep. The pack works in an organized way when the trail of a band of sheep is struck. The dogs break into little bunches and wide and careful circuits are made. The closely pressed sheep are hurried toward a common center, and they will soon be bunched, with twenty-five stanch dogs, cresfs erect and tails wagging, moving about them in an endless and eager oircle. The pack has been known to bunch 250 head of sheep, and to hold their watch and guard for over six hours awaiting the coming of their master, who has been kept back by the difficulties lying in his path. It sometimes occurs that the dogs bring the game together on a spot that is utterly inaccessible to human feet. Then the hunter gives the dogs notice of the fact by a peculiarly shrill and piercing shout. The pack at once dash into the midst of the sheep, seize and slay the largest, and by dint of rolling, tumbling, and falling from crag to crag, from declivity to declivity, bring the carcasses within reach of tlieir master. —Denver Tribune.