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A state biologist who maintains a network of remote trail cameras along known ungulate migration routes in the Absaroka Mountains has been detecting a new cervid species that isn’t exactly known for making long-distance seasonal journeys.

It’s the whitetail deer.

Images of whitetail have been collected well into the Washakie Wilderness backcountry, a ways from the nearest trailhead in the South Fork of the Shoshone River drainage. One of the cameras is even trained on an open ridge around 8,000 feet in elevation, where seeing a whitetail is especially perplexing.

“These are on what we would consider true migration routes for mule deer and elk,” said Tony Mong,

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