{"id":14816,"date":"2013-04-29T05:14:01","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T11:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=14816"},"modified":"2013-04-29T05:26:06","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T11:26:06","slug":"west-desert-mule-deer-behaviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/29\/west-desert-mule-deer-behaviors\/","title":{"rendered":"West Desert Mule Deer Behaviors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week we spent a few days camping\u00a0and exploring\u00a0Utah’s west desert.\u00a0 A herd of Mule Deer composed of over a dozen animals hung around the general vicinity of our campsite for most of the time we were there.\u00a0 They still had most of their\u00a0winter coat so they were scruffy and sun-bleached but they displayed a couple of interesting behaviors that I was able to photograph.\u00a0 These are not great images but I simply can’t resist photographing behaviors, from birds or mammals or whatever…<\/p>\n

This area at the base of one of the desert “island mountain ranges” of northwest Utah is littered with old fences in disrepair\u00a0that must be negotiated by the deer so they have to jump fences often and they’re very\u00a0good at it.\u00a0 The jumps are graceful and they seem to hang in the\u00a0air as they float over the\u00a0fence.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

Usually the jumps begin from a standing start.\u00a0 The deer seem\u00a0to study the obstacle for a moment and then effortlessly pop over the fence.\u00a0 These first three images are one deer, one jump.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

Here it looks like the hind feet might not clear the highest wire.\u00a0 Occasionally that happens and it’s not unheard of to find a dead dear hanging down from the upper wire\u00a0with its hind legs entangled in the top two strands.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

But they seem to have an excellent sense of where their hind feet are and the deer tucks them up at just the right moment to clear the wire.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

Exactly an hour later as we were nearing our campsite (a remote area of dispersed campsites often used by hunters in the\u00a0 fall) we noticed the same herd near my camping trailer so we stopped to watch them for a few minutes.\u00a0\u00a0 At first they were relaxed and browsing contentedly but soon one of the deer approached my pickup and exhibited some interesting behavior which was obviously directed at us in my pickup.\u00a0\u00a0Her walking gait was exaggerated and slightly jerky.\u00a0 She would hold\u00a0alternate feet in the\u00a0air, then put them down and do the same with the other two feet as she slowly walked toward us.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

Here she is still approaching my pickup as she holds the other two feet up.\u00a0 Her motion usually didn’t completely stop during the process but it slowed significantly as her alternate feet reached their highest position.<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

But as she turned to the side she did hold this position for a very short time…<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

and then once again she\u00a0switched to the alternate feet (here you can see one of the several old fire pits in the area in front of her).<\/p>\n

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\"mule<\/a><\/p>\n

But then she apparently decided that we were not a significant threat and returned to the herd (I believe she’s the second animal from the left in this photo).\u00a0 This shot was taken at 180mm and cropped very little so you can see that we were quite close to the herd.<\/p>\n

I suspect that this was some sort of warning or threat display but I’m relatively unfamiliar with Mule Deer behaviors so I don’t know for sure.\u00a0 If any of you have any insight\u00a0into this behavior\u00a0I’d appreciate hearing about it.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Last week we spent a few days camping and exploring Utah’s west desert. A herd of Mule Deer composed of over a dozen animals hung around the general vicinity of our campsite for most of the time we were there. They still had most of their winter coat so they were scruffy and sun-bleached but they displayed a couple of interesting behaviors that I was able to photograph.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,1410],"tags":[50,1416,1411,1413,1359,1414,311,1415,533,1412],"class_list":["post-14816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-mule-deer-mammals","tag-behavior","tag-gait","tag-herd","tag-jumping","tag-mule-deer","tag-threat","tag-utah-2","tag-warning","tag-west-desert","tag-winter-coat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3QY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}