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).