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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.