Nebraska’s mule deer record belongs to the Panhandle. Of 533 records, Dawes County alone supplies 228, with Scotts Bluff and Sioux counties close behind, a map of Pine Ridge escarpments, badlands breaks, and Sandhills fringe rather than the farmed east.
The deer of rough country
Everything about a mule deer suits broken, open terrain, the mule-like ears, the rope-thin black-tipped tail, and the stiff-legged bounding gait that carries it over bad ground where a white-tailed deer would rather run flat. It browses shrubs, forbs, and new growth more than it grazes, and it beds where terrain breaks the wind. Scotts Bluff National Monument, Cedar Canyon Wildlife Management Area, Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area, and the ponderosa country of Nebraska National Forest and Soldier Creek Wilderness hold exactly that landscape.
November’s rut
Mule deer stay in Nebraska year-round, and the record builds steadily from spring through fall before cresting in November, when the rut puts bucks on their feet in daylight and deer of both sexes move between bedding cover and feed. Come winter they yard up on south-facing slopes and wind-swept ridges, riding out the cold on browse and stored fat.
Status in Nebraska
NatureServe ranks the mule deer S5, Secure, in Nebraska, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
