The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-03-16

CAPTURING WILD ANIMALS
MOST DIFFICULT TO TAKE THEM
 ALTVE.
Securing Specimens for Geological Gardems-Takins Mountain Sheep and Musk Oxen.

Gardems-TalSing Mountain Sheep an' Musk Oxen.
 Thirty mountaineers, hunters and
 woodsmen are now at work in the wild
 est parts of the continent bent on cap-
 turing alive specimens of big game an
 imals for the coming exhibition in Chi
 cago of the products of the water and 1 the woods.
 Jack Monroe and bis partner start
 ed out a week ago from their home on
 the Blackfoot Indian reservation in
 northern Montana and are now well
 over the line of the British possessions i in the highest, part of the mountain
 country. They have gone to capture, if possible, some mountain sheep and | mountain goats, which are among the
 rarest of American animals Of the | two mountain goat is the hardest to ap- l proach, and there is only one way to catch either of them. They must be followed by dogs and driven into some l gulley where the snow Is soft and deep, so that they will sink through and be
 unable to extricate themselves. Both
 goats and sheep live high up on the icy peaks where men and dogs have the hardest kind of work to climb, and they
 go on the jump where a man must
 crawl at full length. The sheep is ex- tremely timid and equally wary, and will get away to an inaccessible height if it is given half a chance. The goat, on the other hand, is afraid of nothing alive It rarely runs and thinks noth- ing of cutting a couple of dogs to
 pieces with it's short, sharp horns. The
 traditional gentleman who sought the
 needle in the haystack had an easy task
 compared with that which Jack" Mon
 roe has undertaken.
 Hunters who have been out at Sum-
 init station, which is on the roof of the
 continent at the crest of the Montana
 Rockies, will remember the experience
 which "Slim of Summit" the famous
 guide and hunter, had with a mountain
 goat which he undertook to capture alive. A short distance from Summit station Is a high and wide mountain
 plateau. Almost at Its center rises an
 irregularly shaped peak. Across the
 plateau runs a track much used by mountain goats in crossing from one set of mountain heights to another.
 Sometimes when they are hard pressed
 by dogs the goats will climb the peak in the center of the plateau for tempo rary refuge. Slim" took advantage of his knowledge of these facts and went out one day with his rope to try to lasso one of the wild goats. He hid himself in the most Inaccessible part of the center peak and waited events Presently a big billy" goat came bounding up the rocks. Slim got his rope" in readiness and at the proper time threw it. The moose settled down over the goats neck, and Slim gave a yell of triumph. As for the goat, 1t looked up at its captor for a moment with look of injured surprise on it's solemn face. Then 1t gave leap down into an apparently bottomless abyss, taking the rope with it, and leaving Slim clinging with hands and feet to the slippery edge of the ravine. Some where out in the Rockies there Is SUD- posed to be still a big mountain goat with sixty feet of good rope trailing from its neck.
 Catching deer and antelope is easier work. They are always caught when young, and the problem is simply to find them. A man who has never seen how close a young fawn will lie to the ground and how hard it is to tell it from the gray and brown rocks and sage brush which surround 1t would never believe the tales the old plains @oJ1 might step on a young antelope before he would see 1t, and the oldest guides and hunters use dogs to help them To- cate their game. It is the same in- stinct which leads the young of all wild animals to efface themselves by hiding until they are able to depend for pro- tection either upon their speed or their Often deer will leave their young lying stretched out flat against | the ground while they go miles away | for water or food.
 The man who goes out to catch young deer or antelope takes with him some good dogs, field glass and pack horse carrying large panniers, as the most essential parts of his outfit. He climbs a bluff, and from it's summit ool5s down over the neighboring low and If he sees through his glass some 1eer which look as though they might nave young with them he starts down he trail after them Shortly the grown leer vanish across the horizon line, and hen the dogs track down the lawns in heir hiding places. All that remains Or the hunter to do is to pick up the trembling little creatures and put them n one of the baskets on his pack horse. t is no great trick to pick up half a lozen lawns in this way in the course if short trip.
 One of the hardest of animals to atch alive is the beaver. When aught in trap in the ordinary way he beaver is usually drowned or at east badly injured when found. There eems to be only one way to capture hem alive and uninjured. The fa- aous guide, Billy Hofer, is one of the ew men who have eyed tried it suc- essfully. Out in the Yellowstone park ountry, but outside the government eservatlon Billy" located colony of eaver. They had damned considera- le creek and their family houses stuck :. D above the waters of big pond be- ind it. Hofer and his party started , ut to drain the pond. They cut a big ash in the dam and went to sleep, ex- ecting to find the pond dry in the :. lorning. On the contrary, they found hen they got up that the beavers had ,