Odocoileus hemionus californicus (Caton)
Mule Deer
Mule deer are common in chaparral areas on both slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains. The animals or their tracks have been observed from the coastal sagebrush flats up to about 9200 feet on Mount San Antonio, and on the desert slope down to the lower limit of the juniper belt.
Deer are plentiful in the upper chaparral belt, and large bands are often noted there in spring. These bands may form in the up-mountain migration and reoccupation of areas which were covered by winter snows. A band of fourteen was observed on March 17, 1951, one mile east of the mouth of Cattle Canyon, and bands of about half a dozen individuals each were often noted in March, 1951, at the base of Icehouse Canyon. Cronemiller and Bartholomew (1950) gave a good account of the mule deer in the chaparral belt of the San Gabriel Mountains.
On Blue Ridge in the fall of 1951, deer were plentiful, usually being observed near patches of snowbrush and sage. They were seldom found in the coniferous forests. On November 6, 1951, while tending a line of snap traps before sunup, I startled a deer from its bed at one edge of a several-acre patch of snowbrush. In synchrony with the noise made by this deer's rising five other deer in various parts of the brush patch leaped up and made off. When bedded down in these extensive brush tracts deer are probably safe from an undetected approach, for a noiseless approach through the brush is impossible.
Two deer skulls from the San Gabriels were examined: that of an adult male from Evey Canyon, and that of an adult female from the mouth of Palmer Canyon. Using as a basis for comparison the cranial measurements for the subspecies californicus and fuliginatus given by Cowan (1933:326), these skulls were subspecies californicus. In none of the cranial characteristics considered did they tend toward the southern race fuliginatus. A young adult male, however, which was killed by a car near Cajon Pass on October 2, 1951, showed pelage characteristics of fuliginatus. Its fresh winter pelage was dark, and had the distinct black mid-dorsal line and the broad dorsal line on the tail mentioned by Cowan (ibid.) as distinguishing marks of the race fuliginatus. Its cranial measurements were not taken. Judging from this limited material the deer in the central part of the range, that is to say, in the San Antonio Canyon region, are of the race californicus, while fuliginatus may penetrate the extreme eastern end of the range.
Deer hair and bones were often found in coyote feces from the sagebrush belt. Some of these records may represent deer eaten as carrion. On February 6, 1952, tracks across a sandy channel in San Antonio Wash demonstrated that a deer had been closely pursued by a coyote. The deer had leaped from a cutbank onto the sand, had whirled around in several sharp turns, and had run into the adjacent brush. The tracks of a running coyote followed every twist of the deer's trail. The trail was followed into the brush where it was lost. Two bobcats trapped near Graham Canyon on the desert slope had hair and bones of deer in their stomachs.
Specimens examined, 2: Los Angeles County: Evey Canyon, 2100 ft., 1 (PC); Palmer Canyon, 1900 ft., 1 (PC).
Family BOVIDAE
Ovis canadensis nelsoni Merriam