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Migration Routes of Mule Deer in the San Francisco Peaks Herd in Arizona

Metadata Updated: November 27, 2025

The San Francisco Peaks mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) herd makes one of Arizona’s most extraordinary annual migrations between Flagstaff, AZ and the Grand Canyon. The migration begins on summer range in GMU 7, where an estimated 5,300 mule deer reside. Their summer habitat contains alpine, subalpine, and ponderosa pine forests mixed with open grasslands and meadows. Beginning in October, a portion of the herd migrates north to GMU 9 to winter range along the South Rim containing pinyon-juniper, ponderosa pines, sagebrush, and cliffrose habitat. Through funding from Secretarial Order 3362, the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) began a GPS collar study beginning in June of 2019. A total of 46 mule deer have been tracked through those efforts, greatly increasing our understanding of deer movements among this herd. The research study will be completed in 2023. In contrast to the Volume I report (Kauffman et al. 2020), the San Francisco Peaks mule deer herd in this Volume contains an additional 20 mule deer, 52 migrations, and 12 winter sequences. The primary challenges to mule deer in this migration corridor are related to navigating highways. These deer must traverse two major roads, U.S. Highway 180 and State Route 64, which experience high traffic volumes and are a source of mortality for this migrating mule deer herd. These data provide the location of migration routes for Mule Deer from the San Francisco Peaks Herd in Arizona. They were developed using 58 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 24 adult mule deer comprising GPS locations collected every 2-3 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.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-620e4ad9d34e6c7e83baa378
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 e22ea298-8638-4005-811c-c018bfe79b08
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 80539296e25e084cde97a716d59168887edd474547623a196682a009a84ab443
Source Schema Version 1.1

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