Texas Deer

[gizmo1]

I would like to encourage ya'll to come down and give our deer a run for their money. We have a long season and big bag limits. Our whitetail herd alone is in the millions and we have a ton of muleys in the panhandle and west Texas. Our archery season runs Oct 1 to Oct 31 and rifle season starts the first week of November and lasts until mid January. We have two youth only seasons, the last weekend of October and another in mid January before the spike/antlerless season begins.The mule deer season runs archery only, and yes crossbows are legal,-Oct 1 through Oct 31rst with rifle running 3 weeks. The last two weeks of November and first week of December. State wide bag limit is 5 whitetail and 1 mule deer buck. They give you a muley doe tag but I am not sure why. It is illegal to shoot one except for 1 county in far west Texas which is all private land. Our bag limits are governed by county restrictions. So depending on what county you hunt determines how many deer/bucks you can shoot in that county. Where I hunt around the Memphis area it has a five whitetail limit and Hall county has a 1 buck limit. You can go east or west though and shoot another buck in neighboring counties. You can only shoot 3 bucks (whitetail) statewide and one mule deer buck. In south Texas we have two and three buck counties. We also have millions of acres of public land. I have four places that consist of 10's of thousands of acres between 45 min and an hour. We have big deer as well. Our panhandle deer are not the stereo typical small bodied deer of south Texas. Our bucks will be in body size in comparison with Kansas deer. Our whitetail rut in the panhandle begins around the 18th of November with the muley rut kicking in after mule deer season ends typically. Down south their rut often doesn't begin until December. We have some pretty good pronghorn hunting as well. We also are over run with feral hogs and exotics. I am not just talking about high fence laces either. There are tons of free range Auodad running around. We do have high fence places as well that have just about every animal from every part of the world you can think of. Most are run very well and can be very challenging. I have done it and had a great time as well as had some of the hardest hunts I have ever had on large high fence places. Some of these are the size of state parks and much larger. If you choose the high fence route do your homework and check references. Like I said if done well it can be ver very challenging. Good luck and God bless

[highcountryarchery]

thanks for posting this i wanna hunt texas and was wondering how things worked down there

[maintguy47]

If u want to know the facts about Tx public hunting go to the Tx web site and hit the public hunting land maps. Subtract the waterfoul and the lakes(areas under water) and the dove areas and the draw only areas you will add up less than 250,000 acres of public whitetial hunting. Make sure that you read very carefully each set of rules for what ever area you plan to hunt. There are very different rules for every area, what weapon,what time of day, do you have to sign in or out, do you have to check your game. If you are a bowhunter and expect not to here any guns forget about it. They allow small gamehunters threw bow season in all bow hunting areas. Shotguns. Anywhere you go ,and no matter what your hunting with, you have to have your orange on BEFORE YOU GET OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE. Do not take it off until you get back INSIDE your vehicle or you will be fined. Tx has great whitetail hunting if you have a lease or don't mind paying dearly for a guided ranch hunt. I know I live here. Good luck and come on down.

[waspocrew]

Thanks for the info... Texas whitetail hunting has always been on my wish list.

[gizmo1]

Keep in mind that the TPWD website DOES NOT list all public hunting land. There is well over 250000 acres of public hunting areas that aren't listed. For example the Canadian River basin, North Fork of the Prairie Dog river, Lake Merideth, Lake Grapevine (archery only),tons of BLM land (4000 acres of which is 10 min from my house also archery only) just to name a few. The hunter orange requirement is only on certain lands and only during reg rifle season. Of the above few mentioned areas, Lake Merideth is the only that has a hunter orange requirement. I live in the panhandle and the North Fork of the Prairie Dog river( Estilene Tx) is around 20 miles of river basin public hunting land in itself. There is whitetail, mule deer, turkey, Auodad sheep, feral hogs, and tons of dove, quail, etc... The thing is you just have to do your homework in looking for a place to hunt. The local game warden's office can give you the lowdown on everything in the area you plan to hunt. The TPWD website ONLY lists the land enrolled in the public land use program. This is nowhere close to all of the public land available. But yes each area may have specific rules to it like anywhere else.

[maintguy47]

I guess you want the whole dang country hunting Estilene. Some thangs you just ain't supposed to talk about in public . Might as well tell em the speedlimit sign says 50 and you dang well better be doing 49. There are some hoggggss in the area and I ain't talking about pigs. I sprouted my baby teeth back in the 60's in the Red River bason with 15# Fred Bear recurve . Thats what caused the great rabbit population decline in the late sixtys in that area. I wasn't trying to start nothing.I was just pointing out what you did, if your gonna hunt Tx do your home work carefully for the area you plan to hunt. If you want pm your number and I'll buy ya cup of coffee next time I'm in Childress seeing hows theres no coffeeshop in Estilene.

[gizmo1]

Lol no offense taken. It's not like its a secret though. Its one of the better known areas up here. I havent given any of my secrets. Kinda like the old saying, I could tell ya but then I'd have to kill ya. Lol Your not kiddin though a fella better slow his roll through Estilene.

[bh107]

I've looked into coming down that way to hunt, and I'm considering it for next year. I have a few customers in Texas and have been offered help a few times. One recently offered to let me hunt on his private ranch in west Texas somewhere, and I think I'll definitely take him up on that.