California

Mule Deer Meatballs

At the most basic, meatball recipes combine ground or chopped meats, functional ingredients and flavoring components. Bread crumbs, crackers, or a cooked grain are for body and prevent the toughness that happens when muscle fibers shrink as they cook. Eggs, sometimes bread soaked in milk, water or a broth bind all of the ingredients for simplifying the forming and cooking process. Those are all functional ingredient options that build the basic structure that can be simple or complex, depending on which regional result you want to create.  Adding specific flavoring components from seasonings, spices or aromatics is what really defines your dish and makes it embrace the style you have intended for it.  Onions, garlic, lemon grass, citrus and fresh herbs can transform any combination of your functional ingredients and send it to the far reaches of the earth. 

OP ED on Proposition 127

The Mule Deer Foundation thanks Colorado voters for rejecting Proposition 127, which would have banned the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats throughout the state. Colorado voters affirmed a strong belief in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and asserted their desire for Colorado’s wildlife to be managed by wildlife professionals, rather than through citizens initiatives. 

Three shooting positions for Western Hunting. 

When heading out for your first western hunt, there are a million things to prepare for. We often focus on the gear we need, what type of tent, what kind of pack, and the list goes on and on. Part of the prep phase is picking your rifle and heading to the range to get practice in. We often do this from a fixed, stable position. These stable positions will be nearly impossible during a western hunt due to terrain and the speed at which opportunities often happen. With that in mind, here are three positions you should practice shooting with and why: 

Forest Service and MDF Join Forces on Habitat Projects and Wildfire Crisis work!

Following a keystone agreement on September 2023, the Tonto National Forest and the Mule Deer Foundation committed to restoring 1000 acres of landscape through lop and scatter-type projects

Mule Deer Carpaccio

Carpaccio is one of my favorite dishes of all time. It’s an Italian dish of beef tenderloin sliced paper thin with a deli slicer and served raw. I’ve never seen a recipe of carpaccio done with mule deer and seeing as how it’s my favorite meat, there is no way it could be bad. My adaptation to this recipe can be done in any home. If you can’t get it deli slicer thin with a knife don’t worry, you can pound it after and it comes out great.

Best Boots in Mule Deer Country

During hunting season at the Mule Deer Foundation, the staff becomes obsessed with gear. The office is bubbling with debates over any type of gear, from brands of water filters to wall tents. When applicable, we try to publish these debates for the reader to consider when making purchasing decisions during hunting season. 

Today, we are discussing which boot is best. This debate has multiple facets, from cost to break-in period to overall comfort and, finally, regionality. We recognize that there is probably no one boot that’s best for all scenarios, but we’ve done our best to decipher which is the closest.

MDF Employee Spotlight

In the MDF Employee Spotlight Segment the Mule Deer Foundation would like to call attention…

Bass Pro Grant Update for Great Plains

In 2024 MDF launched its Private Lands Conservation Program in the Great Plains. The Mule Deer Foundations mission focuses on sharing the conservation of these deer species through innovative land and wildlife management practices, partnerships with various stakeholders, and public education

MDF Awarded $250,000 from Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s for Great Plains

The Bass Pro shops, and Cabela’s outdoor fund grant was generous enough to award the Mule Deer Foundation $250,000 that we can leverage with an additional $1.4 million in funds from other partners and internal sources. By combining these funds, we are implementing more than 27 projects on working lands and ranches across the Great Plains states resulting in improvements to over 55,000 acres of wildlife habitat.

“MDF Begins Historic Habitat Improvement Project in Gasoline Alley”

Following the fatal “Frog Fire” in the Modoc National Forest of California in 2015 in which a woodland firefighter was trapped and killed in the line of duty, the U.S. Forest Service and Mule Deer Foundation are beginning a habitat improvement project addressing 11,000 acres of fire fuels reduction and Mule Deer habitat improvement.

USDA Signs Memo on Conserving Mule Deer Migration routes!

The Mule Deer Foundation applauds the signing of this Secretarial Memo to ensure that the full suite of USDA programs and resources are coordinated to sustain mule deer and other big game populations that migrate

Communal living group and MDF Habitat Work in California

Weather, wildlife, wildfires… These are all considerations the Mule Deer Foundation staff biologists taken consideration when planning timelines for projects. We know not all projects will run smoothly and that often times there will be delays, due to factors we cannot control. However, on a recent project close to completion in the Plumas National Forest our resident Mule Deer Foundation biologist was surprised to have work interrupted by…