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Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the Owl Creek/Meeteetse Herd in Wyoming

Mule deer within the Owl Creek/Meeteetse herd make a number of medium- to long-distance migrations west into the Shoshone National Forest. These migrations originate on the sagebrush grasslands just southwest and west of Meeteetse, Wyoming, where this population winters. In spring, an estimated 4,100 deer leave these foothills and travel into the rugged Absaroka mountain range. These journeys, across challenging natural terrain, range an average of 27 miles and include navigating fast moving rivers, such as the Greybull River, and over high mountains passes like Bear Creek and East Fork Pass—the highest at 12,230 feet in elevation. The longest migration is 70 miles to the Dunoir Valley northwest of Dubois. Although the private lands that comprise winter range and low-eleveation route segments are at risk of residential development, once deer cross onto the National Forest they encounter few human-created obstacles in this remote wilderness environment. These data provide the location of migration routes for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Owl Creek/Meeteetse herd in Wyoming. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 86 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 32 animals comprising GPS locations collected every 2-8 hours.

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Author(s) Matthew J Kauffman orcid, Holly Copeland, Eric Cole, Matt Cuzzocreo, Sarah Dewey, Julien Fattebert, Jeff Gagnon, Emily Gelzer, Tabitha A Graves orcid, Kent Hersey, Rusty Kaiser, James Meacham, Jerod A. Merkle, Arthur Middleton, Tristan Nunez, Brendan Oates, Daniel Olson, Lucas Olson, Hall Sawyer, Cody Schroeder, Scott Sprague, Alethea Steingisser, Mark Thonhoff
Publication Date 2020-11-09
Beginning Date of Data 2016-01-01
Ending Date of Data 2019-01-01
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DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O2YM6I
Citation Kauffman, M.J., Copeland, H., Cole, E., Cuzzocreo, M., Dewey, S., Fattebert, J., Gagnon, J., Gelzer, E., Graves, T.A., Hersey, K., Kaiser, R., Meacham, J., Merkle, J.A., Middleton, A., Nunez, T., Oates, B., Olson, D., Olson, L., Sawyer, H., Schroeder, C., Sprague, S., Steingisser, A., and Thonhoff, M., 2020, Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the Owl Creek/Meeteetse Herd in Wyoming: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O2YM6I.
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Metadata Date 2020-11-09
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Loading https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20205101


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License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
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Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2021-11-19T04:42:53.907Z