Another aspect of this.......are you sure this was owned land by rancher? A lot of them pass of BLM land as part of thier property.....hence leased graizing takes place .....I hunted on a guy over by Parachute about 20 years ago that pulled this. As it turned out, acreage I hunted was actually govt land that I could have accessed on my own....was a drop camp! My fault for taking the guy for face value.
Dan

Are you sure you were in Wilderness, or were you in BLM. Big difference. I doubt that there were grazing on Wilderness grounds, but happens all the time on BLM ground.

We were in the flat tops area. I just checked out the map and the cattle were definitely in the wilderness area (N Fork Derby Creek drainage), the sheep were not. Sheep were on the Little Flat Tops which is outside the wilderness areas.

I was pretty surprised to see livestock in the wilderness area/alpine & sub-alpine areas.