ANNUAL MIGRATIONS OF THE DEER OF THE 
SIERRA NEVADA. 
BY L. BELDING. 
Asmall proportion of the deer of central California live constantly 
in the chapparal belt and foothills of the Sierras, but the most of them 
ascend the mountains as spring advances, and a part of them, like 
our mountain quail, go over and beyond the summit and’spend the 
summer on the east slope, where they remain until food becomes 
scarce or cool weather warns them that it is time to return to the 
milder climate on the west side. Sometimes heavy early snow- 
storms find them still on the east side of the mountains, as was the 
case about Lake Tahoe, October 7, 1889. On this occasion they 
started for California as soon as the storm was over, leaving ground 
that was covered with only about six inches of snow, to make an as- 
cent of 2000 feet or more through snow that was much deeper. 
There is no doubt that some individuals have their favorite summer 
resorts, where they were, perhaps, born, and probably all have them 
and are thoroughly acquainted with the routes leading from their 
winter ranges to their summer homes, though some of these routes 
are not less than a hundred miles long. I know of a doe having 
lived in and near certain thickets at Big Trees during six or seven 
successive summers, each summer giving birth to fawns, and [| think 
the offspring, like the mother, clung tenaciously to the same locality, 
but I cannot say positively concerning the progeny. There could be 
no mistake as to the doe, as she was crippled. She was known to 
many persons as the club-footed doe. Mr. Harvey Blood of Alpine 
County told me a young fawn was caught at the Dardanelles, near 
the Summit, about 8000 feet above sea-level, given the ear mark of 
the sheep-owner upon whose range it was caught, and then released, 
and that it was killed the following summer within two hundred yards 
of the spot where it was branded. The great depth of the snow at 
this height in the mountains would prevent this fawn from living there 
more than about a third of the year; the remainder of the year it 
necessarily being at least fifty or sixty miles down the west side of the 
Sierras. Perhaps it made the vertical migration alone, as the juven- 
iles migrate later than the adults, usually in pairs, but often singly. 
Cattle and sheep which are pastured in summer in the high Sierras 
also make voluntary vertical migrations from their winter feeding 
