Mule deer fill 316 North Dakota records, and the map belongs to the west, with Billings and McKenzie counties holding two thirds of the total and Theodore Roosevelt National Park alone accounting for 149. West of the Missouri River the species is a fixture of the badlands and open uplands, and east of it reports thin out quickly.
A deer of the breaks
Mule deer carry the field marks of open western country, outsized ears, a black-tipped rope of a tail, and a stiff-legged bounding gait that lets them clear broken ground at speed. They browse more than they graze, working draws and coulees for sage, forbs, and shrub growth rather than holding to open grass. That mix of cover and broken terrain is exactly what the Little Missouri National Grassland and the badlands provide, and shaded draws and ridge tops at dawn and dusk are where they spend the daylight hours.
Fawns in summer, the rut in fall
Records run in every month, but the year has a shape. Reports peak in June and July, when does bring spotted fawns out into the open and the herds are visible on green summer range. By November bucks are in hard rut, necks swollen, trailing does through the coulees, and winter finds the deer yarded on wind-swept south-facing slopes where they can reach browse through the snow.
Status in North Dakota
NatureServe has not assigned the mule deer a state rank in North Dakota, listing it as SNR, Unranked. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
