“There are not a great many sheep in the Park now, anywhere; they have died off from sickness—­the scab.  This is a fact known to everyone living in the neighborhood of the Park.  I have killed only one that had the disease badly, but I used to see them every day, and pay no attention to them.  I did not hunt for them, for I did not want them in that condition.  I remember that once a man came out to Gardiner who did not know that the sheep were sick.  He saw some when he was hunting, and rushed up in great excitement and killed three of them.  They seemed to be weak and were pretty nearly dead with scab before he saw them.  Sometimes they become so weak from this disease that they lie down and die.

“I first noticed sheep with the scab around the canyon by the Yellowstone.  I never saw any troubled with this disease around Meeteetsee or Stinking Water.  I have been there in winter, and hunted them as late as November, and Col.  Pickett used to kill some still later.  I never heard him speak of the scab.”

In spring and early summer, when the young sheep are small, the eagles are constantly on the watch for them, and unquestionably capture many lambs.  I have been told by my friend, Mr. J.B.  Monroe, who has several times captured lambs alive, that when they heard the rope whistling as he threw it toward them, they would run directly toward him, seeming to fear some enemy from above.  He believes that they took the sound of the rope flying through the air for the sound of the eagle’s wings.

While, of course, the mountain lions cannot overtake the sheep in fair chase, they lie in wait for them among the rocks, killing many, because the sheep range on ground suitable for the lions to stalk them on; that is to say, among the rocks on steep mountain sides, or at the edges of canyons.

A conversation had with Mr. Hofer a year or two since is so interesting that I offer no apology for giving the gist of it here.  It has to do with the enemies of the sheep, especially the mountain lion, and with some of the sheep’s ways.  In substance, Mr. Hofer said: 

“One day about the first of January I was in my cabin looking through the window, and up through the Cinnabar Basin, over the snow-covered mountains.  As I was looking, I saw a dark patch disappear in the snow and then rise out of it again.  The snow was deep and fluffy.  The animal that I was watching would disappear in the snow with a plunge, and then would come up with a jump.  It made several wonderful flights.  It was so far off I could not tell what it was, and when I looked at it through the glasses I saw that it was a big ram breaking a trail.  I was watching him closely and at first did not notice that others were with him.  Soon, however, I discovered that there were four or five other sheep following him.