sheep paid for most of the ranches in Idaho and Nevada, only when the place was paid for did the ranches start going more to cows, for several reasons, mostly wool. Mutton is not a meat of choice for no one!!!! At the end of WWII wool lost out to new fabrics, polyester etc. and the sheep have lost out. Now for facts. One of my Grandmothers favorite stories is the one where they were herding sheep on the divide between Idaho and Montana, Gibbonsville pass to be specific, she over dosed the sour dough and she saw it crawling out of a pannier on a mule behind her. Of course she never said a word but could not wait for camp so she could clean up the mess before anyone (GRAMPS) saw it. I spent many nights as a kid tending Grandpas sheep because something was eating them and he believed it was packs of dogs that our friendly bretheren from town chose to dump out in our neighborhood. He would have us spend the night with the sheep locked in a corral, armed with pellet guns and sometimes a 22. All you need to do is scare them and I don't want you armed with anything that could actually kill something, you might kill one of my ewes. Well after a few nights with NO sleep at all, my brothers and I figured out that this was bigger than us, gee we were 8, 9 and 10 and every night the sheep would go nuts until we got out of our sleeping bags with our RED RYDERS and saved them. Gramps called in a Government trapper after awhile and guess what? he caught a 400 pound bear the first day. Next year, sheep started disappearing again and he wanted us to take care of it for him again. We being so much wiser and more knowledgeable about the world, we went looking for tracks before we said yes. What we found was a bear large enough to pick up a full grown ewe in his mouth and kill it, pack it across a slough on a 12 inch log and bury it when it was done eating. We being the smarter ones of the clan chose not to protect his sheep with our BB guns that time.
Anyway you all started the sheep thing and I will tell you this, IF there were sheep herders of this ilk in central Idaho, they would not have made it home with their flock :wink: