Tony Mong is a wildlife biologist with Wyoming Game and Fish, but he also describes himself as a wildlife biographer.
In recent years, he’s been sharing mule deers’ stories by chronicling their migration journey.
He’s captured video collar and other visual data that tells more about a day in the life of the mule deer and the challenges they face navigating rugged terrain and development in the Cody area, which is their winter range.
He spoke with Wyoming Public Radio’s Olivia Weitz. They started their conversation with Mong describing the journey some mule deer in the Cody area are now making as they head to their summer habitat in Yellowstone.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tony Mong: These mule deer travel across some of the most rugged, difficult terrain there is in the lower 48, some of the most remote places there are in the lower 48. That's all coupled on top of 75 to 80 miles.
If we think about a mule deer that leaves winter range, a lot of times we just imagine a deer taking a walk, right? Moving from one place to another, going from winter range to summer range. But in that time, the female mule deer are very heavy with a fawn. They take off on their journey and they start climbing these peaks and losing elevation, so they've got this elevation gain and loss of about 25,000 feet.
And then on top of that, some of the rivers that they're crossing during this time in late May and early June are at their most swollen that they're gonna be from the snow melt from the mountains.
They're swimming across these rivers, heavy with fawns, tired from climbing and losing elevation. Then on top of that, there’s predators out there that are looking to fill their bellies and also feed their families as well.
Olivia Weitz: You've been gathering some video data looking at the day in the life of the mule deer along this journey, seeing kind of what they're seeing through their eyes. What can we really see in these videos that you've been gathering?
TM: We also have a lot of trail camera videos that are really interesting as far as what we're seeing out on the migration trails.
You would think just taking pictures in the middle of the woods, you wouldn't get much. But what's really awesome is that we're seeing these animals move on the migration routes, crossing logs and log jams and things that they've gotta navigate there.
We're seeing how difficult it is, because on a lot of our cameras their mouths are wide open and their tongues are sticking out, and they're breathing as hard as they can.
We've also even captured these moments where you see a mule deer and behind the mule deer you see some type of large carnivore that is in the same area and you see that interaction.
We've seen them on cameras traveling with elk. We've seen them traveling with other mule deer.
Some of the places that they go to have their fawns are amazing. We had one of our does that had a video collar on that migrated up and just outside of Yellowstone National Park. She had found a cave in which to have a fawn. Many of us would pay thousands of dollars to get to this place because it's just fantastic. You see forever. You see the mountains. But we got to actually see and experience kind of a little part of that life of having a fawn.
In one video, we saw her breathing start to pick up, and then in the next video we actually saw her licking the brand new fawn, which is an amazing thing.
OW: Are there any other obstacles? I'm just thinking about physical obstacles. I know there's a lot more development, houses, roads, et cetera in and around Yellowstone.
TM: The way I like to think about that is taking the mindset of a fawn that leaves the vastness of Yellowstone National Park or Grand Teton National Park, and you make it to winter range, and then you start to come in contact with some of the things that we need to have as humans.
Some of those things are fences to help keep livestock in and contained. Some of those things are houses where we live. You start to get into these situations where you're having to interact with things that you've never experienced and you're learning how to navigate that as you go. As they come into winter range, that's where we've seen some human development and some human influences on the land. That's another piece of the puzzle that you've gotta navigate.
OW: Mule deer in Wyoming have been declining, but the Upper Shoshone herd that we've been talking about, the one that goes from the Cody area into Yellowstone and back, they're doing okay. But it sounds like there's some indicators where that may not be the case in future years. What are you seeing as potential challenges for them going forward?
TM: We are fortunate that we have seen our mule deer herd here with the Upper Shoshone, those numbers actually increase over the last seven to eight years.
What we've seen in this herd is an increase in Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) rates from about zero to 5% in 2017, to over 20% this last year. Some of that we're trying to understand why that is occurring.
What we've seen in the Cody winter range is that development has caused some of the fields to become more packed with mule deer because there's fewer and fewer large open spaces.
What we see is that higher densities of those mule deer in those fields could be contributing to those higher chronic wasting disease rates.
If we continue development and shrinking those open areas, we could see those mule deer being pushed into smaller and smaller areas in those portions of the winter range.
OW: How can some of this data that you've been gathering help guide some of the future management decisions around mule deer in the Cody area?
TM: We are very fortunate here. I would say of any place in the state, we've got the information, the data we need to make smart decisions moving forward, especially when it comes to where development could have the least or most amount of impact on mule deer. We've seen from recent research that mule deer, there is a threshold with which mule deer go away from or move away from that development.
We know areas where mule deer are using right now. And we know what that looks like. And if we overlay that with some of the future planning, we can make some wise decisions. We can make smart decisions on how we develop.
One of the things that draws people to this area are wildlife and wild places. And that's really what I think is a huge draw for folks here in the Cody area is a closeness to the wilderness, to the wildness of what mule deer really represent.
I think that if given the information and the data, sitting down and trying to plan in a way that allows for both to occur. We can do that here and I think we can be a proving ground for that for other places, not only in Wyoming, but across the West.
