20 • RANGE MAGAZINE • FALL 2015

L iving in a sheep camp will give youa more realistic view on wildlifemanagement than a doctorate at

Bunny Hugger U. You no more than get themules unloaded and the tent pitched andthe neighbors will show up. No, not some-one to borrow a cup of sugar. I meanvarmints. Your kitchen boxes may be theattractant or the grain sack. It doesn’t mat-ter; within hours of arrival, animals all upand down the food chain will look at you asa source of food.

As soon as the rats and flies show up,snakes will be close at hand to catch themice. Skunks will be checking you out. Coy-otes, lions, bobcats, ravens, camp robbers…the list goes on. You within hours will havecreated an interdependent ecosystem.

Yes, they were there first. Whether theearth will stop rotating when you pack upand leave is up for debate. Nonetheless, theeffect on the area, if you are a fatalist fernfairy, will never be the same. All these crea-

tures will take the path of least resistance fortheir own survival. You have just become thenew source of easy living. If they are not dis-patched, within a short period of time theywill multiply and overwhelm the system andultimately cause some of the food chain tocollapse. Starvation will once again rule andthe survivors will move on or die.

Step back in time to when the first whitepeople began to enter the Great Basin insearch of furs, minerals, or merely a way toget to the gold fields of California. You need-ed fuel for your transportation. Whether youwere on the shoe-leather express or livinglarge with a horse and Yolanda the burro,there was no sign of a Piggly Wiggly downthe street and two blocks on the right. Feedand water for your animals was essential.Without feed and water, you had just a fewdays before fricassee of burro, then horse,then moccasin, then starvation.

Picking a place to survive took a little bitof foresight. As soon as you secured feed andwater for your transportation, and a sourceof food for yourself, you then would need toguard these resources from the neighbors.

Sheep Camp RealismBuild it and they will come.

Words by Hank Vogler. Photos by Michael Edminster.

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Just like in the Kevin Costner movie “Field ofDreams,” build it and they will come. Onceagain the lowest on the food chain will befirst. You can start with the ant and workyour way up to the mountain lion; it’s all thesame. No animal can survive if it expendsmore energy in procuring a food source thanthe energy needed to reproduce and surviveas a species. With this interdependence,something is going to live and something isgoing to die. The survivor will be the onethat wisely uses the resource.

Man with his opposable thumb and hislarge brain has survived for years by the useof tools. As this Great Basin pioneer willsoon realize, to protect his feed source forhis animals he will need to expend energyin the form of building a fence to protectfeed and water. This might include spread-ing water on dry ground to expand his refu-eling station for his mode of transportation.As his meadow expands, so does the envy ofthe neighbors.

In this area, maybeone jackrabbit couldsurvive in a squaremile. With waterexpanding this mead-ow, 15 rabbits may beable to inhabit this“altered ecosystem.” Adeer might smell thegrass. A grouse of someflavor might be attract-ed to the ever-expand-ing pie. These animalsdependent on plantswill soon be followedby animals that will consume other animalsfor their survival. This includes coyotes, bob-cats, mountain lions, weasels, skunks, rats,lawyers, politicians, and environmental ter-rorists, aka fern fairies. The animal with thebig brain will reason that he can tolerate acertain amount of this use as he now has anew feed source to prevent his belly buttonfrom banging into his backbone.

The earlier inhabitants had limitedweapons and as hunter-gatherers merelywandered off when a food source got scarce.This new European influence made for morepermanent settlement. Expanding the feed

source and nur-turing the landwere bred intothese newupstarts. For thisnew upstart’s ownsurvival he will realize that limiting preda-tion on his new friends, the herbivores, hecan feed and clothe himself and with wiseresource management continue to expandhis riparian area and the number of animalsthat he has become interdependent on forhis own survival.

Now, this is where the rubber meets the

road, or in this case, this iswhere the male bovine fecalmatter hits the fan: It’s notequally fair to all the animals!This smelly stuff sounds a lotlike the Communist Mani-festo, where everything isequal. It all works real well onpaper but in the real worldit’s not quite that way. Evenas flawed and unfair as freeenterprise is, it is still the bestthing going. If you wantmore of something, allowsomeone to make a profitand he will increase thatproduct. As long as you cantake advantage of the fruitsof someone else’s labor andget away with it, there arethose who will. You wantmore sage hen? Plant alfalfa,

shoot ravens andcrows, and catchcoyotes, badgers,foxes and bobcats.If you want moreparasites, give thembudgets that forev-er expand anddon’t have anyform of measuringsuccess, i.e., moresage grouse or deeror anything tangi-

ble. Wafting philosophicallyabout nature’s balance andthe purity of thought comefrom people with full belliesand the desire to live off thefruits of others’ labor bymaking them feel guilty forworking hard and becomingsuccessful.

Hang and Rattle! Hank ■

These sheep are not Vogler’s, who ranches ineastern Nevada. They are part of the JohnFalkner Ranch in south-central Idaho. Pho-tographer Michael Edminster spent six yearsas a gringo sheepherder. He carried a camera,brought his family, and recorded it well.

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Silvario at Lake Creek Camp in Idaho. ➤Guard dogs help keep the sheep safe from numerous predators. ➤Motherless “bummer” lambs are fed by hand. ➤There is alwaysa black sheep in a band, perhaps one black to 100 whites, so theherder can guess if his flock is all there. OPPOSITE: Day-old lamb. ➤Herder moves the band to new feed ground, with the help ofherding border collies and big, white, protective guard dogs.

No animal can survive if it expends more energy in procuring a food source than the energy needed to reproduce and survive as a species.

With this interdependence, something is going to live and something is going to die.The survivor will be the one that wisely uses the resource.

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