The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is planning to capture and collar mule deer in the Absaroka and Bighorn Mountains as part of the new statewide Mule Deer Monitoring Project. Animals will be netted from a helicopter by a professional wildlife capture crew, fitted with a GPS collar at the capture site and released. 
 
Over 200 deer will be captured from the Upper Shoshone River Herd Unit on winter ranges in the North Fork and South Fork of the Shoshone River drainages west of Cody. Captures for this location are tentatively planned for later this month. In addition, 210 mule deer will be captured on the east and west slopes of the northern Bighorn Mountains mid-January. 
 
Mule deer populations have been declining throughout the west, and Game and Fish is striving to learn more about their day-to-day lives and what impacts their success using data as the main driver. The Mule Deer Monitoring Project is a five-year, state-of-the-art study that seeks to collect much more information, monitor herds and analyze outputs in new ways to enhance the conservation of the state’s most iconic ungulate.  The Upper Shoshone and North Bighorn Herd units are two of five herds across the state the project will focus on.