California Mule Deer Salt Springs Winter Range

The Salt Springs herd winters in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada predominantly on private property from Tylers Corner south to Sheep Ranch. The summer range is in high-elevation terrain near Lower Bear River Reservoir and Salt Springs Reservoir. The winter range consists of mainly oak woodland habitat and the summer range includes primarily mixed conifer opening up to high alpine granite near the crest of the Sierra Nevada. The population size is unknown due to limited data. This GPS collaring project was designed as part of a region-wide effort to obtain abundance estimates for deer using fecal DNA and home range analyses, with pinpointing migration routes and identifying winter ranges a secondary priority. Therefore, other winter range and migration corridor routes probably exist apart from what the limited sample size revealed. Future work will help pinpoint the boundaries of this herd, particularly important for comparison to the Railroad Flat herd, which overlaps on the winter range with the Salt Springs herd (though uses a unique summer range). These mapping layers show the location of the winter ranges for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Salt Springs population in California. They were developed from 8 sequences collected from a sample size of 6 animals comprising GPS locations collected every 1-13 hours.