Wyoming Migration Initiative

Migration tracking week 8 🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌 Deer 665 migrated across a busy highway in Jackson Hole and over Teton Pass — but she’s not done yet! She traveled 34 miles for the week, bringing her total spring migration distance to 189 miles. As of June 4th she had not settled in to summer range or given birth to her twin fawns. Hats off to Janice Pierce and Collene Brady who correctly guessed Deer 665 would migrate more than 30 miles to Teton Pass in week eight.

The week began at a stopover in Little Granite Creek, a tributary of Hoback River. She left there in the middle of the night in the early hours of May 28. She migrated ten miles that day on a route past Cache Peak. Her path went through the headwaters of Horse Creek, the stream that flows into the Snake River just north of Hoback Junction.

Deer 665 then reached Game Creek, where she stopped over for May 29. On May 30 she moved five more miles to Leeks Canyon, the drainage immediately south of Snow King ski area.

After resting up and foraging for half a day, Deer 665 descended that canyon and reached US 191. This is the most treacherous highway crossing of her entire migration, with some 10,000 vehicles that pass each day.

Just after 10:30 pm on May 30 she descended a steep hill, jumped the fence along the highway, and bounded across the five lanes of traffic and a bike path. Jumping another fence, she reached safety in the hayfields along Flat Creek.

This open area of private land between Jackson High School and the Rafter J Ranch subdivision is stewarded by multiple landowners. The hayfields provide the connection Deer 665 uses to reach the Snake River and the Teton Range.

In the space of 30 minutes Deer 665 crossed the fields and passed through a gap between buildings measuring 800 feet wide. She avoided a sand trap at a golf course, then wound her way through the cottonwood trees to her crossing of the Snake River.

She swam the Snake River just before midnight on May 30. By 1 AM on May 31 she had reached the piney slopes of Teton Range and the Bridger-Teton National Forest. As the sun rose on May 31, she rested for a few hours on a hill between Cottonwood Creek and Taylor Creek.

Her pattern for the next few days was to move a few miles, then rest a few hours. She slowly worked her way up into the headwaters of Trail Creek.

At 8 AM on June 3rd she passed within 1,500 feet of the Teton Pass parking lot. Within the hour, she had jumped across the Teton Pass Highway, and walked about a mile downhill past a switchback. Just beyond the site of the June 2024 landslide she crossed the highway again to the south side.

And that’s where Deer 665 closed out week eight of her migration on June 4, 2026. She’s just a few miles short of the Idaho border.

Deer 665 could stay here at Teton Pass and give birth to her fawns, or she could migrate further into Idaho. In 2022 she went all the way to Kelly Canyon Ski Area near Ririe, Idaho.

Where do you think Deer 665 will go in week nine? Comment Idaho or Teton Pass to let us know your guess and we’ll update you next week!

The data for this map is thanks to collaboration between our team at the University of Wyoming and biologists with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, Monteith Shop, Bureau of Land Management - Wyoming, and USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units.

Cartography by our Wild Migrations atlas partners at the Department of Geography, University of Oregon InfoGraphics lab, especially Clare Otcasek and Joanna Merson, and WMI’s Ian Freeman.