Mule Deer

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Physical Description - The Mule deer is a  dark brown gray, dark and light ash-gray to brown and even reddish in color. The rump patch may be white or yellow, while the throat patch is white. The white tails of most mule deer end in a tuft of black hairs, or less commonly in a thin tuft of white hairs. On some mule deer, a dark dorsal line runs from the back, down the top of the tail, to the black tail tip. This mark is more conspicuous in males.

Habitat - The Mule deer prefers to live in temperate mountain and desert forests, grasslands and chaparral.

Habits - The Mule deer confines their daily movements to discrete home ranges. Most use the same winter and summer home ranges in consecutive years. They migrate from higher elevations (summer ranges) to lower winter ranges when  temperatures fall, and when severe snowstorms, and snow depths reduce mobility and  the food supply. Deep snows ultimately limit useable range to a fraction of the total. Mule deer in the arid southwest may migrate in response to rainfall patterns.

Tracks - The mule deer has a distinct "bound" in which all four feet come down together as if on springs. The tracks will vary from a rough "V-shape" while running to a straight line with slower speeds. The track varies according to the surrounding landscape. In soft, woodland areas the print is more pointed and on harder ground where the hoof may be worn, the track may appear with a blunter tip. The hoof print may be described as two paisley shapes facing one another with smaller "dots" of the dew claws at the wider end of these paisleys.

Diet

Deer are browsers rather than grazers and feed on a variety of vegetation including green plants, nuts and corn, and trees and twigs.