Because the cattlemen were unwilling to share the open range with the sheepherders, due to concerns about overgrazing, they formed paramilitary organizations with the goal of eliminating the flocks of sheep and anyone who attempted to stop them.

Some cowboys even asserted that sheep stunk very badly and left behind smelly fields that cattle would not use.

By the early 1880s, sheepherding was becoming more and more popular in Oregon, but the cattlemen and the newcomers seemed to coexist mostly peacefully until 1895, when the first Sheepshooters group was formed in Grant County.

Also, "if any association member was captured by the law [police] and brought to trial, he was duty-bound to lie on the witness stand about his involvement with the group.

"[3][4][5] Usually the sheepshooters would launch a surprise attack on a camp, capture the herders, and then shoot or club all of the sheep.

According to William R. Racy, a rancher interviewed by author Richard Negri, he met an old sheepherder who was the victor of one of the gunfights, though the story has not been confirmed.

So you see, even in the rough days of the cattle wars you can't kill a man and brush it off like a soar throat.

[6]The conflict didn't reach its height until after the turn of the century and most of the violence occurred in the High Desert, between the Cascades and the Blue Mountains.

This meant that sheepherders, who had used the area unmolested for years, were now suddenly forced to go elsewhere to raise their animals.

John Creed Conn was neither a cattleman or a sheepherder, but a storekeeper from the town of Silver Lake.

Though investigators concluded that the death was a suicide, Conn's body was found outside of town, seven weeks later, with two bullet holes in the chest, wounds that the doctor who performed the autopsy said could only have been caused by another person.

[3][5][7][8][9][10] The war ended in the latter half of 1906, when the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve was created by the Department of Agriculture and when the United States government began establishing grazing allotments.