The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

John Muir held the opinion that the legend of horn-landing sheep was born of the wild descent of frightened sheep down rocks so steep that they seemed perpendicular but were not, and the sheep, after touching here and there in the wild pitch sometimes landed in a heap at the bottom,--quite against their will. To me this has always seemed a reasonable explanation. The big-horn sheep has one mental trait that its host of ardent admirers little suspect. It does not like pinnacle rocks, nor narrow ledges across perpendicular cliffs, nor dangerous climbing. It does not "leap from crag to crag," either up, down or across. Go where you will in sheep hunting, nine times out of ten you will find your game on perfectly safe ground, from which there is very little danger of falling. In spirit and purpose the big-horns are great pioneers and explorers. They always want to see what is on the other side of the range. They will sight a range of far distant desert mountains, and to see what is there will travel by night across ten or twenty miles of level desert to find out. It was in the Pinacate Mountains of northwestern Mexico, on the eastern shore of the head of the Gulf of California, that we made our most interesting observations on wild big-horn sheep. On those black and blasted peaks and plains of lava, where nature was working hard to replant with desert vegetation a vast volcanic area, we found herds of short-haired, undersized big-horn sheep, struggling to hold their own against terrific heat, short food and long thirst. It is a burning shame that since our discovery of those sheep hunters of a dozen different kinds have almost exterminated them.