Mammals of the Mexican Boundary of the United States Volume 56, PT. 1; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Species of Mammals Occurring in That Region with a General Summary of the Natural History, and a List of Trees (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...in that region the bighorn is doomed to extinction at an early period. For this reason it is considered worth while to enter into as detailed an account of its present or recent distribution as the meager observations contained in my notebooks will admit. I have beun told of the killing of mountain sheep in the mountains of southwestern Texas by several persons, among them Lieut. Charles H. (irierson, who, in 1878, killed three adult males in a canyon of the Guadalupe Mountains, at an altitude of 8.000 to ,000_ feet, the highest elevation of the region being about 10,000 feet. Only these three were seen, in a pocket of a rocky canyon, whence there were, but two outlets, one by which the hunter approached, and another which the distracted game passed by in their efforts to escape. When first seen all three leaped upon a high bowlder and gazed down at the hunter. One was shot, and the others in rapid succession when they stopped, out of curiosity, to look at the hunter. To judge by our own experiences, this tameness or stupidity is characteristic, and only the inaccessible nature of its retreats has enabled the remnant of the species to exist up to the present time. In New Mexico, tho bighorn is still fotmcl in numerous localities, and its Mexican appellation is perpetuated in the names of several places It was found by our surveying party as far east as Monument No. 15, near which, on the northern border of the State of Chihuahua, two were seen by Senor Luis R. Servin, the accomplished photographer of the Mexican party, in June, 1892. He awakened from a siesta at midday to see the bighorns watching him intently from a hillside only a few yards distant. Edward Rector and Jack Doyle had killed many bighorns on the Hachita Grande Mountain, in Grant County, New ...