Russell was able to observe mountain sheep in their native habitat while hiking in the high country above his cabin at Glacier National Park, and he must have witnessed the animal’s astonishing ability, even at a dead run, to descend the steepest slope as if it were a level surface. William Hornaday, a well-known naturalist and author in Russell’s day, described the mountain sheep as “a fine, sturdy animal, keen-eyed, bold, active, and strong,” adding that “whether its home is in the highest crags of the saw-tooth ranges, the boldest rimrock of the mountain plateaus, or the most rugged ’bad-lands,’ it is always found amid the scenery that is grandest and most inspiring.” By the time Hornaday wrote these words in 1903, the sheep had been so widely hunted that their range had diminished to a few isolated pockets of mountainous terrain, and their numbers were in danger of dropping below reproductive levels. Russell modeled the mountain sheep in wax and plaster on many occasions. This diminutive bronze depicts a full-grown ram, bearing the massive curved horns that are unique to its species, descending a rocky slope. This was one of “two small figures in bronze” sent from the Roman Bronze Works foundry to the Macbeth Galleries in New York in November 1910. The foundry ledgers record three casts having been made at a cost of $10 apiece. The copyright for a sculpture of a mountain sheep “on a sloping rocky trail” was registered on July 21, 1911, but not renewed. The bronze was illustrated in the magazine World’s Work that same month, and one may assume the three casts were sold, for Nancy Russell seems not to have possessed a copy. Instead, she owned the second version of the subject, altered and enlarged by her husband in the early 1920s (see the entry for Mountain Sheep, 1961.93).