Touching the Wild: Living with the Mule Deer of Deadman Gulch

Plot Summary

From PBS - Joe Hutto's remarkable ability to interact with wild creatures was previously portrayed in the award-winning Nature film, My Life as a Turkey. His new wild family is made up of mule deer living high in the mountains near his home in Wyoming, and the extraordinary story of how he became one of them pushes once again at the boundaries of how we perceive wild animals. A chance encounter with a young buck and a shared look of understanding grows into a study of these animals that takes up seven years of Hutto's life. Ordinarily, mule deer would flee in panic at the sight of any human but he finds himself drawn to them and willingly dedicates himself to earning their trust by spending time with the herd every day for over two years. Incredibly, these keenly intelligent animals eventually accept this stranger as one of their own. Their acceptance allows him to enter deer society, to cross a species divide. Walking among them, he is even groomed by them, and can lie with a pregnant doe talking to her unborn fawns. The joy Hutto feels as he comes to know each individual is nothing short of infectious, but this human predator also learns to see the world from the point of view of prey, an experience that will ultimately rock him to his very core.