Mule Deer Herd Near Miles City

I was recently driving to Miles City on Moon Creek Road and came upon a herd of Mule Deer. Fortunately, I had remembered to bring my camera along – but it was my small camera, not one of my larger ones. Still, it does a pretty good job of capturing images, as can be seen in the Mule Deer photographs shown below. I was glad to have any camera along – when Moon Creek Road is covered with snow and ice, I usually don't bother with a camera – driving is a full time job.

I'll start by saying that we counted 37 Mule Deer in this herd. The most Mule Deer you can see in any one of the photographs is 15, but these darn Mule Deer wouldn't get together properly for a group photo – and, in fact, broke into two herds while we took photographs.

This is actually a photograph of a young Mule Deer jumping over the fence. We thought it was somewhat ironic that this young Mule Deer was jumping over the fence at a location marked with orange as "no hunting." This young one had no difficulty clearing the 4' tall fence.

You can see, if you look closely, 11 Mule Deer in this photograph. This photograph was actually one of the last ones I took in the group. The Mule Deer had crossed Moon Creek Road and were headed to the pines.

These 8 Mule Deer were apparently the herd leaders as the group moved towards the cover of the pines. It was hard for us to tally perfectly, but it appeared there were about 6 adults and the rest of the Mule Deer were youngsters.

Some of the Mule Deer would occasionally stop and just stare at us for a few seconds, and then proceed on their way – as shown in this photograph. Both the older and younger Mule Deer did this.

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