WHERE SHEEP ARE UNPOPULAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8125, 27 April 1906, Page 3

WHERE SHEEP ARE UNPOPULAR.

It is probably diffioult for many a New Zealand farmer to realise that Id one part of the world immensely larger than New Zealand, sheep are detested. Bat west of the Rocky Mountains, what is known as the "range" war between the cattlemen and the sheepmen, has been raging for many years, and is to-day carried on with little less bitterness than ever. The cattlemen, as the first comers, claim that they have the beßt RIGHT TO THE GRAZING on the ranges, and their herds cannot exist where sheep are run, as the latter eat the country bare. "Whatever excuse the settler on some far creek in the upland ranges may find," remarks a recent American writer, "when he sees the SHEEP COMING DOWN over ranges where his cattle have herded, lie prepares for war; for wnere the sheep have travelled his cattle will no longer find provwnder that season." Trouble of a more or less SERIOUS CHARACTER often ensues, for the common cause against sheep gives the cattlemen au opportunity to organise, and it frequently happens that al 1 the young cattlemen of a district will combine some night and raid a sheep man's country, tie up the sheep-herder, an then SHOOT AND STAMPEDE his sheep. Thousands of sheep are said to have been driven over precipices in Colorado and Wyoming, and so a lesser degree the same sort of thing went on in Idaho, and is still practised in Central Oregon, where the "range war" is most persistent. Occasionally A HERDER IS KILLED, sometimes the sheepmen catoh the cattlemen within range of their rifles, and so the war goes on. Two years ago in the high desert country of Oregon fifteen men with clubs raided a flock of three thousand sheep one night, and killed most ot them, and a month or two later, 300 sheep out of another fiook of 22,C70 were SHOT BY NINE MASKED MEN, in the presence of the tied-up sheep-herder. In most of the States now there is what is known as a "deadline." On one side of that invisible, but reaognißed boundary sheep may be herded in safety; if they cross it it is at the risk of the herder's life. The trouble will know no settlement, we are told, until the whole country is under fence. In the meantime, especially in Oregon, both sides carry repeating rifles, ostensibly for shooting coyotes, and the cattlemen, who have been a law unco themselves for so long, still carry matters with a high hand.