Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There. This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your window box and garden to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores, and wilderness.

On the show, we'll explore our relationship with nature through stories, interviews, essays, and even some fiction.

We'll travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and

heartbreak, passion and adversity biologist, and he felt the best way to understand the animals he going to hear from a man who spent the past eight years living with a herd of deer.

He's a biologist, and he felt the best way to understand the animals he was studying was to essentially become one of them.

This is the story of how he did that. It's a story of love, of curiosity, and ultimately of sadness.

And it's a story about what happens when the line between fact and feeling becomes blurred.

Joe Hutto lives on a modest ranch in central Wyoming.

The rolling hills around the house are covered with sagebrush,

and fruit trees are scattered about the yard. Just beyond are the majestic Wind River Mountains.

As I drove up the long dirt driveway, I immediately knew I was in the right place. There were deer

everywhere. Not the type of deer you might have seen growing up in, say, Pennsylvania. The deer here

were mule deer, which are common in the Rockies. They're kind of like the jackrabbits of deer.

Picture a brawnier version of Bambi, with donkey-like ears and a round white butt. When I arrived

at the ranch, Joe was out in the front yard. He was 60-something, dressed in blue jeans and a simple Western shirt,

and his kind-looking face was weathered from years spent outdoors.

A young deer was standing next to him, and as I walked over, Joe reached out and touched her.

Rather than darting away, like you've seen deer do a million times,

she let him pat her on the side of the neck, didn't even flinch.

She's just like a big pet?

Yeah, except they're not pets.

After I followed Joe inside, another deer climbed the steps onto the porch and peered in at us through the glass door.

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