In Texas the Mule Deer will move to rainfall or crops, so hunting them is a quite a bit different. Their intake needs and nutritional requirements are very different than a whitetail. So you have to hunt them very differently. Guys who have only hunted whitetails will struggle at first trying to hunt the same cover or food sources. If those deer live in an area of crop land then they will move to the preferred crop or crop rotation that year or season. It is not unusual to see the Mule Deer in the Trans Pecos on open pasture rangeland move 5 miles or so in a 2 week period during the deer season. While many might stay in a 2-4 miles square area most of their lives. In the rut or closer to the rut all bets are off as to where deer will be from year to year. If you get average rainfall in the same months for a couple of years the deer will be in those same areas and on the same feeding patterns. WT and MD cover needs and requirements are quite different. We hunt open grassy flats to scattered brushy cover to very tall brush/thick cover. The terrain is flat to rolling with some elevation but only in a smaller part of the ranch. Mainly ridges and shallow breaks. The mule deer do prefer more open cover and can adapt to a variety of covers or elevations. With the desert mule deer it can really depend on rainfall that year and when it occurred. With elevation changes cause or even drainages that collect rainfall runoffs can move deer or change feeding patterns weekly, monthly or seasonally. One hunting season they may be in the brushy flats whereas next year they may be low in the thicker drainages or next year feeding up on the gravelly ridges. How much rainfall and where it ran off or collected to can effect where they are feeding. An early killing frost can then change all of that and you have to go find the food source the deer are feeding on. Water needs are very different for our desert Mule Deer compared to the WT in that region. Desert Mule Deer have adapted to the desert habitat and lack of water in their habitat. Mule Deer does and very young bucks may go to water every 1 to 3 days depending on how dry or green it is during hunting season. Whereas older bucks might go to water every 2 to 5 days. Mature bucks go to water less often than younger bucks. We found this out from running trail cams on water troughs. We would see deer when hunting that we would not get on any trail cams. After 2 or 3 yrs we stopped using cams due those desert mule deer getting a lot of their water from the plants they are eating daily. I personally think predators have a greater effect on watering and feeding habitats of the deer herd we hunt than we think. IMO, I have found most deer bedded or feeding about 3/4 of a mile from a water source. I have watch them feed into to water from one direction and the feed out a different direction. I think they do this due to the concentration fo predators around water.
TPWD has been doing a research study on mule deer and how their habitat and farming practices in the area they are living effect their movement in two different regions of West Texas. They are mapping out home ranges and seasonal movements with telemetry tracking based off of rain or farm crops. It also documenting bucks and how their antler growth is effected by age, habitat and rainfall. Some of the results are effecting how they are going to manage the statewide herd.
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