Of Wyoming, Mr. Wm. Wells writes:  “I have only been up here in northwestern Wyoming for a year, but from what I have seen, sheep are holding their own fairly well, and may be increasing in places.  In 1897, Mr. H.D.  Shelden, of Detroit, Mich., and myself were hunting sheep just west of the headwaters of Hobacks River.  There was a sort of knife-edge ridge running about fifteen miles north and south, the summit of which was about 2,000 feet above a bench or table-land.  The ridge was well watered, and in some places the timber ran nearly up to the top of the ridge.  On this ridge there were about 100 sheep, divided into three bands.  Each band seemed to make its home in a cup-like hollow on the east side of the ridge, about 500 feet below the crest, but the members of the different bands seemed to visit back and forth, as the numbers were not always the same.

“We could take our horses up into either one of the three hollows, and some of the sheep were so tame that we have several times been within fifty yards in plain sight, and had the sheep pay very little attention to us.  In one instance two ewes and lambs went on ahead of us at a walk for several hundred yards, often stopping to look back; and in another a sheep, after looking at us, two horses and two dogs, across a canyon 200 yards wide, pawed a bed in the slide rock and lay down.  In another case I drove about thirty head of ewes and lambs to within thirty-five yards of Mr. Shelden, and when he rose up in plain sight, they stood and looked at him.  When he saw that there was no ram there, he yelled at them, upon which they ran off about 400 yards, and then stood and looked at us.

“I do not think that these sheep had been hunted, until this time, for several years.  As nearly as I could tell, they ranged winter and summer on nearly the same ground.  At the top of the range, facing the east, were overhanging ledges of rock, and under these the dung was two feet or more deep.

“Either during the winter or early spring the sheep had been down in the timber on the east side of the ridge, as I found the remains of several, in the winter coat, that had been killed by cougars.”

Mr. D.C.  Nowlin, of Jackson, Wyo., was good enough to write me in 1898, concerning the sheep in the general neighborhood of Jackson’s Hole; that is to say, in the ranges immediately south of the National Park, a section not far from that just described.  He says:  “In certain ranges near here sheep are comparatively plentiful, and are killed every hunting season.

“Occasionally a scabby ram is killed.  I killed one here which showed very plainly the ravages of scab, especially around the ears, and on the neck and shoulders.  Evidently the disease is identical with that so common among domestic sheep, and I have heard more than one creditable account of mountain sheep mingling temporarily with domestic flocks and thus contracting the scab.  I am confident that the same parasite which is found upon scabby domestic sheep is responsible for the disease which affects the bighorn.  It is not difficult to account for the transmission of the disease, as western sheep-men roam with their flocks at will, from the peach belt to timber line, regardless alike of the legal or inherent rights of man or beast.  Partly through isolation, and partly through moral suasion by our people, no domestic sheep have invaded Jackson’s Hole.”