BIGHHORN is the name by which this interesting animal is chiefly known to western people, it being found in greater or less abundance from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. It also occurs in New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California, but it has not been discovered in any numbers south of the United States. It is more numerous in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the Coast Range, but it is by no means confined to the mountains, being also numerous along the Mauvaises Terres or the "Bad Lands" of the White River, the Little Missouri, Yellow stone, and Upper Missouri, in whose desolate and arid wastes it apparently delights. The Bighorn, in fact, finds in every rough country sufficient for its requirements, and it demands only that there shall be steep and difficult heights to which it may retreat when pursued. Every species of sheep would prefer a hilly habitat, but the Bighorn could scarcely exist on a level plain.

Somebody has said that Mountain Sheep would be aptly described as having the head of a sheep with the body of a deer. In size, however, it exceeds the largest deer, and a fullgrown specimen will weigh from 300 to 350 pounds. Sir John Richardson gives the following measurements of an old male: Length to end of tail, 6 feet; height at shoulder, 3 feet 5 inches; length of tail, 2 inches; length of horn along the curve, 2 feet 10 inches; circumference of horn at the base, 1 foot 1 inch; distance from top of one horn to top of its fellow, 2 feet 3 inches. The coat is soft to the touch, the hair resembling that of the Caribou Deer, and, in some degree, that of the Antelope. it is short, fine, and flexible in its first growth in the autumn, but becomes longer as the season advances, until in winter the hair is so thick and close set that it stands erect. As the winter advances the dark tips of the hair are rubbed off so that by spring the old males are quite white. Under the hair a fine wool covers the skin.

The movements of the Bighorn are quite graceful, and the agility and lightness with which it scales steep bluffs, runs along the narrowest edge on the face of a precipice, or leaps from rock to rock in its descent from some mountain-top, are excelled by no other animal. These Sheep feed early in the morning, and retire during the middle of the day to points high up on the bluffs or mountains where they rest until sundown, when they return to their feeding grounds. Except during the month of December the old rams are found in small bands by themselves, the females and young associating together in companies of from five to twenty. In a country where they have not been disturbed by man they are occasionally seen in much larger herds.

No animal is more shy and wary than the Bighorn, and it therefore requires in its successful pursuit the greatest patience and deliberation, as, if it receives the slightest hint of the enemy's presence, it immediately disappears. Many a hunter of experience has never killed a Mountain Sheep, as these vigilant mountain climbers are usually able to elude their enemies.

The instinct of self-preservation is remarkably developed in the Mountain Sheep, and only animals of equal agility and superior cunning can secure them. In their mountain fastnesses they are comparatively free from the pursuit of man; the things they have most to fear are the avalanche and glaciers. The elements of danger, however, only serve to render its pursuit more attractive to the ardent sportsman, and when in a country where it abounds, deer, antelope, and even elk are likely to be neglected for the Mountain Sheep. The flesh, too, is most delicious, and is regarded as much superior to any wild meat which the west affords. Hallock says that he knows of no more delicate dish than is afforded by a yearling ewe in good order seasoned with that wonderful sauce furnished by the free, open-air life of the plains and mountains. "The glory of fat cow pales, and even elk and black-tailed deer meat hide their diminished heads before the rare toothsomeness of a juicy saddle or the dripping ribs of a young and tender Bighorn."