The mule deer is one of Colorado’s most frequently recorded large mammals. Open occurrence databases hold 16,241 records for it, most of them iNaturalist photos, gathered from nearly every corner of Colorado.
A browser of the foothills and mesas
Mule deer thrive in the broken country between grassland and forest: shrubby foothills, pinyon-juniper mesas, montane woodland, and the sage flats of the Western Slope, where they browse leaves, twigs, and buds rather than graze open turf. That flexibility puts them almost everywhere, from the heavily settled Front Range counties of Larimer, El Paso, Boulder, and Jefferson to the canyon country around Mesa Verde. Watch for the oversized, mule-like ears that give the animal its name, the black-tipped tail, and the odd pogo-stick bound, called stotting, that lifts all four feet off the ground at once.
Following the deer uphill and down
Sightings build through spring and summer as observers head into the high country, but the deer are on the move for a different reason. Many Colorado mule deer migrate with the seasons, climbing to summer range in the mountains and dropping back to lower foothill and shrubland range as the snow deepens. Those low-elevation winter ranges are the herd’s bottleneck, the ground that carries deer through the leanest months.
Status in Colorado
NatureServe ranks the mule deer S4, apparently secure. It stays widespread and familiar statewide, though the loss of winter range and foothill development are the pressures wildlife managers track most closely.
Full species profile
