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Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the Red Desert Population in Wyoming

Mule deer within the Red Desert population, part of the larger Sublette herd, make the longest ungulate migration ever recorded in the lower 48 states (fig. 33). Here, mule deer travel an average one-way distance of 150 mi (241 km) from the Red Desert in the south to the Gros Ventre Range and Teton Range in the north. This migration originates in the desert sagebrush basins of the Red Desert area of southwest Wyoming where deer winter. In spring, an estimated 500 deer travel 50 mi (84 km) north across the desert to the west side of the Wind River Range. From there they merge with 4,000 to 5,000 other deer that winter in the foothills of the Wind River Range and then travel a narrow corridor along the base of the Wind River Range for 60 mi (97 km) before crossing the upper Green River Basin. Deer must navigate several bottlenecks, one as narrow as 50 m (164 ft) wide, at the outlets of Fremont, Willow, and Boulder Lakes. In the final leg of the journey, they travel another 30–50 mi (48–80 km) to individual summer ranges in the Gros Ventre Range. These data provide the location of migration routes for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Red Desert herd in Wyoming. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 392 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 148 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 2011-01-01
Ending Date of Data 2019-01-01
Data Contact
Hall Sawyer
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 Red Desert Population in Wyoming: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O2YM6I.
Metadata Contact
Hall Sawyer
Metadata Date 2020-11-09
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License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2025-02-06T05:07:52.107Z