The historic public hunting grounds of western Wyoming. (Michael Parente/)
I glass the frigid canyon before me, looking for mule deer on a late October afternoon. I’m hoping to spot an old buck traveling from his high National Forest summer basin to wintering grounds somewhere out there. This is western Wyoming, and “out there” means the general direction pointed out by a local rancher who has spent 68 years watching these deer. The migrating herds would be headed for Bureau of Land Management lands to the south, where spring green-up (hopefully) arrives in time to ward off the ghosts of winter starvation each year.
It took 26 failed applications before my name was finally pulled from the state’s lottery and I was awarded this rare deer permit. But that’s a short amount of time compared to the 12,000 years these hardy deer have traversed this route.
Buck after buck files down from the basin as I wait. Most of them are young, and each has been taught by its mother to follow this route to the winter range, then retrace the 100-mile course every spring.
Migration is a big risk to these deer, and that risk is amplified by rapidly occurring man-made disruptions to their landscape. When winter habitat is impaired, the rewards for migrating—food and cover—shrink. But still, mule deer have made this gamble for millennia, and they have mostly won.
Eventually, I spot an old buck making his fifth migration. The crack of my rifle, stifled by the wind, marks it as his last. As I kneel beside the deer, my feelings of gratitude temporarily relieve the pain in my hands, frozen in the subzero windchill.
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