California Mule Deer Blue Canyon Stopovers

The Blue Canyon mule deer herd winters in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada south of Interstate 80. The winter range includes dense conifer and oak woodland that is shared with a resident portion of the herd on a mix of public and private lands. In the spring, the Blue Canyon herd migrates from their winter range eastward along two main paths both north and south of the Forest Hill Divide to higher elevation terrain near Soda Springs and the crest of the Sierra Nevada in the Granite Chief Wilderness. The summer range includes primarily mixed conifer opening up to high alpine granite near the crest of the Sierra Nevada. The population size is not well known due to limited surveys, but is considered stable to declining, affected primarily by dense overstory and habitat loss. This GPS collaring project was designed as part of a region-wide effort to obtain abundance estimates for deer using fecal DNA and home range analyses, with pinpointing migration routes and identifying winter ranges a secondary priority. Due to the small sample of GPS-tagged mule deer, additional migration routes and winter range areas probably exist beyond the extent of our model output.
These mapping layers show the location of the migration stopovers for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Blue Canyon population in California. They were developed from 9 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 3 animals comprising GPS locations collected every 1-12 hours.