Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah

Metadata Updated: October 29, 2025

The Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah is home to around 5,200 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Ongoing research by the Utah DWR has continued to shape our understanding of their annual migration. In contrast to the Volume 1 report (Kauffman et al. 2020), the Paunsaugunt Herd in this Volume includes the addition of 25 individual mule deer, 127 migrations, and 161 winter range sequences. Beginning in early October the mule deer migrate south an average of 36 mi (58 km) to winter range along the Utah-Arizona border. Approximately 20–30 percent of the Paunsaugunt Plateau herd reside in northern Arizona during the winter, sharing winter range also used by deer from Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau herd. Beginning around mid-April, the deer return north to their summer range on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The most significant challenge for these deer is U.S. Highway 89 which bisects this migration corridor and winter range, where deer-vehicle collisions have historically been a problem. In 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation and partners placed 12.5 mi (20.1 km) of wildlife exclusion fence between existing and new crossing structures to reduce deer-vehicle collisions and provide connectivity for deer and other wildlife across the highway. These mitigation measures have been a tremendous success, facilitating more than 78,600 successful mule deer crossings and a 77 percent crossing success rate (Cramer and Hamlin, 2019). These data provide the location of migration routes for Mule Deer from the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 244 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 77 adult mule deer comprising GPS locations collected every 2 hours.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 29, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date October 29, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-620e4b45d34e6c7e83baa3ba
Data Last Modified 2022-04-07T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id e29e353a-e941-485a-9887-c961772340cc
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -113.0764, 36.7996, -111.8986, 37.9271
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 2d1a3011073d0bddfbe387bd23c84bbfbc7d2baf7eb92f1682279103149dc375
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -113.0764, 36.7996, -113.0764, 37.9271, -111.8986, 37.9271, -111.8986, 36.7996, -113.0764, 36.7996}

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.