Arkansas holds 103 records of the Texas deermouse, and more than half come from a single county: Stone, deep in the Ozarks, with 53. The named sites cluster there too, with Sylamore Wildlife Management Area, the Leatherwood Wilderness, and the Buffalo National River all sitting in the same rugged north-central high country. Despite the name, this is no Texas stray in Arkansas terms. The Ozark and Ouachita highlands are core range for the species.
Rocky hillsides, not river bottoms
The county list reads like a map of Arkansas’s rough country: Stone, Franklin, Sebastian, Washington, Polk, Baxter, Logan, Crawford, Searcy, and Boone, all highlands, and nothing from the flat Delta. That match is the biology. The Texas deermouse favors rocky, brushy slopes, cedar-dotted hillsides, and cliff bases, and Arkansas holds that ground in exactly the counties where the records pile up. Petit Jean State Park adds a record from the Arkansas River Valley’s most prominent outlier ridge.
A March crest, and a secure standing
Reports crest in March with 35 records, with smaller rises in June and July, October, and December, a calendar shaped by trapping seasons more than by the mice, since deermice stay active all year. NatureServe ranks the species S5 in Arkansas, secure, the strongest grade it gives. In the middle of its range, in a state full of the rocky ground it wants, this mouse is on solid footing.
Full species profile
