Cave Creek Spring 2018 Trip: Mammals

The white-tailed deer that come to Cave Creek Ranch are incredibly tame. There's a fenced-off area outside the registration desk -- the fence is low and the deer hop over it with no effort, and I suspect it's mostly there to keep people from driving through the area. I never tried to get a deer to eat from my hand, but I suspect it could be done with a little patience. They're white-tailed deer, very small compared to the mule deer I'm used to in California and northern New Mexico.

There are other interesting critters besides deer. Remarkably few squirrels: we saw a couple of chipmunks, one fox squirrel and one rock squirrel. Javalina come to eat in the bird-feeding area behind the ranch, and a coatimundi came by one afternoon. Supposedly they sometimes see ringtails, but not while we were there, alas.

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