Mr. Ira Dodge, of Cora, Wyo., in response to inquiries as to the sheep in his section of the country, says:  “Mountain sheep are, like most other game, where you find them; but their feeding grounds are mainly high table-lands, at the foot of, or near, high rocky peaks or ranges.  These table-lands occur at or near timber line, varying one or two thousand feet either way.  In this latitude timber line occurs at about 11,500 feet.  In all the ranges in this locality, namely, the Wind River, Gros Ventre, and Uintah, water is found in abundance, and, as a rule, there is plenty of timber.  I think I have more often found sheep in the timber, or below timber line, than at higher altitudes, although sometimes I have located the finest rams far above the last scrubby pine.

“The largest bunch of sheep that I have seen was in the fall of 1893.  I estimated the band at 75 to 100.  In that bunch there were no rams, and they remained in sight for quite a long time; so that I had a good opportunity to estimate them.

“I do not profess to know where the majority of these sheep winter, but, undoubtedly, a great number winter on the table-lands before mentioned, where a rich growth of grass furnishes an abundance of feed.  At this altitude the wind blows so hard and continuously, and the snow is so light and dry, that there would be no time during the whole winter when the snow would lie on the ground long enough to starve sheep to death.  Several small bunches of sheep winter on the Big Gros Ventre River.  These, I think, are the same sheep that are found in summer time on the Gros Ventre range.  I have occasionally killed sheep that were scabby, but I have no positive knowledge that this disease has killed any number of sheep.  In the fall of 1894 I discovered eleven large ram skulls in one place, and since that time found four more near by.  My first impression was that the eleven were killed by a snowslide, as they were at the foot of one of those places where snowslides occur, but finding the other four within a mile, and in a place where a snowslide could not have killed them, it rather dispelled my first theory.  As mountain sheep can travel over snow drifts nearly as well as a caribou, I do not believe that they were stranded in a snowstorm and perished, and no hunter would have killed so great a number and left such magnificent heads.  The scab theory is about the only solution left.  The sheep are not hunted very much here, and I believe their greatest enemy is the mountain lion.

“There is one isolated bunch of mountain sheep on the Colorado Desert, situated in Fremont and Sweetwater counties, Wyo., which seems to be holding its own against many range riders, meat and specimen hunters, as well as coyotes.  They are very light in color, much more so than their cousins found higher up in the mountains, and locally they are called ibex, or white goats.  The country they live in is very similar to the bad lands of Dakota, and I dare say that their long life on the plains has created in them a distinct sub-species of the bighorn.”