Some eight or ten years ago it was by no means difficult, for one who
knew where to go and how to hunt, to get excellent shooting in
northwestern Wyoming. Large game was then moderately abundant, with the
exception of buffalo. The latter had just been exterminated, but,
bleaching in the sun, the ghastly evidences of man's sordid and selfish
policy lay exposed at every step.
Indian troubles of a very formidable character did a great deal toward
keeping the game intact in this portion of the country by keeping the
white man out, and while other parts of Wyoming grew, and towns sprang
up with rapid growth to become in an incredibly short time cities,
involving in destruction, as the past sad history shows, the wild
animals in their vicinity, this Northwestern portion remained unsettled,
and acted as an asylum to receive within its rocky mountain-ranges and
vast sheltering forests the scattering bands of elk and deer fleeing
from annihilation and the encroaching haunts of men. As soon as it was
safe then, and in some instances unquestionably before, cattlemen, not
inaptly styled pioneers of civilization, began to drift down along the
valley of the Big Horn, and, like the patriarchs of old, "brought their
flocks with them," settling here and there, wherever they could find
advantageous sites for their ranches.
[Illustration: On the Heights.