Missouri’s Texas deermice live in the Ozarks, and the state’s modest stack of records shows it. Reports come almost entirely from four southwestern counties: Barry, Taney, McDonald, and Shannon, the rough, wooded country around Mark Twain National Forest and the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. This is the northeastern edge of the species’ range, an Ozark outpost well north of its core in Texas and Oklahoma.
The 27 Missouri records spread thinly across the calendar, with October producing the most. A count that small can’t say where the mouse is genuinely most numerous; it marks where someone set traps or turned over a log and reported what they found.
Even so, NatureServe considers the species apparently secure in Missouri, an S4 ranking. Rocky glades, oak-hickory slopes, and cedar thickets in the southwest corner give it room, and places like Elephant Rocks State Park sit right in that country.
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