Kansas sits at the northern edge of the Texas deermouse’s range, and the state’s records reflect that. Nearly all of them come from three counties along the Oklahoma line in the southeast: Chautauqua, Cherokee, and Cowley, where rocky, cedar-dotted hillsides still hold the rough, brushy ground this mouse favors. Elk City State Park and the wooded river corridors of eastern Kansas sit squarely in that kind of country.
Reports have arrived in most months, with the heaviest concentration in March and a second rise in November and December. That timing says as much about when mammalogists run trap lines as it does about the mice, so read it as a record of effort rather than a measure of how many mice are out there.
NatureServe ranks the species S2, imperiled, in Kansas even though it’s considered secure across its full range. Small populations at a range edge are exactly the ones state trackers watch, and this Kansas cluster marks one of the northernmost footholds the Texas deermouse has.
Full species profile
