The mule deer is a dark gray-brown in color. It has a white tail with a black tip that it carries in the drooped position. It locates water with its keen sense of smell and uses its large feet to claw water out of the ground from as much as two feet deep. Instead of running, the mule deer jumps stiff-legged with all four feet hitting the ground at once. It can leap distances up to eight yards and reach speeds up to forty-five miles per hour. This style of leaping is called stotting. <br><br>The mule deer's large ears are able to move constantly and independently from each other. The antlers, which begin growth in spring and are shed in December, branch to form two equal forks.<br><br>
Mule deer live for about ten years in the wild but have been known to live up to twenty-five years in captivity.
History:
As befits Arizona’s principal game animal, deer received some protection as early as 1887 when a four-month season of October 1 through January 31 was established by the territorial legislature. Buck-only hunting was instituted in 1893, and the season was gradually reduced until 1913 when the new state legislature authorized a two-month season and a two-buck bag limit. Even this was deemed excessive by the state’s sportsmen, and a public initiative in 1916 reduced the limit to one buck deer to be taken during the month of October.
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Despite a serious overpopulation of deer on the North Kaibab in the 1920s, deer numbers appeared to decline in the rest of the state. In 1929, the mule deer season was closed south of the Gila River, and even as recently as 1946, fewer than 5,000 mule deer (more than 80 percent of all deer killed) were harvested in Arizona. Then, for reasons that are still unclear, deer populations began to increase. As the populations rose, doe and “any-deer” hunts were authorized. In 1961, an all-time high of 91,120 deer hunters took 35,897 deer. More than 86 percent of these were mule deer and nearly 10,000 were antlerless animals. Archery deer hunting was also now beginning to provide a significant hunting opportunity.
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A series of years of poor fawn survival followed. By 1970 fewer than 16,000 deer were taken, and hunt success had fallen to 16 percent. With the institution of permit-only deer hunting the following year, hunter numbers dropped from more than 97,000 to fewer than 68,000. Only about 9,500 mule deer were reported harvested.
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Deer permit numbers gradually increased after 1972, leveling off at around 70,000 per year between 1976 and 1982, when hunters took more than 12,000 mule deer, approximately 75 percent of the total deer harvest. Then, a series of wet winters resulted in an increase in fawn survival rates, and hunter numbers and the numbers of deer bagged increased accordingly until 1986, when nearly 86,000 hunters took 25,566 deer, of which 77 percent were mule deer.
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Since then, another series of droughts has occurred, and deer hunting opportunity is again being curtailed. In 1998, 44,524 hunters reported taking fewer than 10,500 deer. Of the total deer harvested that year only 60 percent were mule deer. Prospects in the near future are even more discouraging, but mule deer are “boom and bust” animals. With the advent of better than average winter rains, mule deer populations will once again improve. The only question is when.
Life Span:
Size:
The mule deer is generally four to six-and-a-half feet in length and three to three-and-a-half feet high at the shoulder.
Weight:
M-200-225lbs.; F-110-125lbs.
Food:
Deer feed on grasses and forbs in the spring and summer, however, they are primarily browsers. They eat such items as twigs, bark, buds, leaves, and nuts. Important plants in a mule deer's diet include mountain-mahogany, buckbrush, cliffrose, sagebrush, buckthorn, juniper, and oak. Most feeding is done at dawn and dusk, although human activity may cause a shift to more feeding at night. <br><br>Mule deer have a multi-part stomach, which aids in the digestion of the plant matter they consume. Mule deer browse on fresh green leaves, twigs, grasses, herbs, weeds, blackberries, raspberries, vines, grapes, mistletoe, mushrooms, ferns, and cactus fruit.<br><br>
Weeds, palo verde, aspen, mushrooms, yucca flowers, shrubs, oak, mesquite beans, janusia, cliffrose, sagebrush, juniper, coffeeberry, cacti fruit, and filaree in season
Habitat:
Desert shrub, grasslands, pinon-juniper, pine, aspen-fir, and mountain meadows
<br>It may migrate in response to rainfall.
Range:
30-50 sq. miles<br>90ft-10K ft<br>statewide except extreme southwest corner of state
Reproduction:
2
Population:
Hunting Information:
Oct. 7- Nov 27, 2005<br>
Juniors-only deer season in selected units
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Oct. 28 - Oct 31, 2005<br>
General deer season in selected units
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Nov. 4 - Nov. 13, 2005<br>
General deer season in selected units
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Nov. 4-15, 2005<br>
C.H.A.M.P. deer season at Fort Huachuca Unit 35A Bag Limit: One per year
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