 In 1910, Banff tour guide Jimmy Simpson saw a reproduction of Rungius’s painting Wary Game, a painting of six Dall rams on a high spur of a wind-swept Yukon mountain ridge, in an issue of "The Bulletin" put out by the New York Zoological Society.Upon seeing the painting, Simpson declared “that fellow knows his animals and he knows his sheep.” Simpson wrote Rungius a letter in which he extended a generous invitation; if Rungius could get to Banff, Simpson would take him out on a sheep hunt at no cost.In 1910, Rungius accepted an offer to visit the Canadian Rockies, and would go on to paint a large number of his paintings there.