mountain, it was lower down; if he approached the mountain, it
was higher up.

As Hunter, after reaching the valley and taking a look with the glasses,
began to walk away, I knew that the sheep was below me, and I suddenly
came close upon the three, which had taken shelter from the gale behind
a large rock. Very frequently sheep will remain behind with a wounded
companion; especially is this so when it is a large ram. Now,
unfortunately, one of the smaller rams got between me and the big one,
and as I did not want to kill the little fellow the big ram was soon out
of range. But he was too badly wounded to go far over such grounds, and
I soon stalked up near, when I fired, breaking another leg, and then ran
up and finished him off. This ram carried a very pretty head 13-1/2
inches around the butts and 36-1/4 inches along the curve, but
unfortunately the left horn was slightly broken at the tip. It was
undoubtedly an old sheep, as his teeth, worn to the gums, and the ten
rings around his horns indicated.

When a ram's constitution has been undermined by the rutting season, the
horns cease to grow, nor do they begin again until the spring of the
year with its green vegetation brings nourishing food, and this is the
cause of the rings, which, therefore, indicate the number of winters old
a sheep is. This was my head man's theory, and is, I believe, a correct
one, for in the smaller heads which I have examined these rings
coincided with the age of the sheep as told by the teeth. Up to five
years, the age of a sheep can always be determined by the incisor teeth;
a yearling has but two permanent incisors, a two-year-old four, a
three-year-old six, and a four-year-old or over eight teeth, or a full
set.

[Illustration: HEADS OF DALL'S SHEEP
(The horns above are of the Stone's sheep)]

It was unpleasantly cold upon the mountains this day, and as no other
sheep could be seen, we returned to camp by five o'clock. This was the
easiest day's shooting that I had had.

As we sat by the camp-fire that evening, four sheep were seen on the
hills above us, two of which I recognized as the small rams that had
been with the one I had just killed. We felt quite certain that these
were the bunch of five rams which we had seen when we were packing out
from our first hill camp. In fact, this was the only good band of rams
which I saw during the entire hunt. If these were the same sheep, the
two newcomers carried good heads, for, as previ