Buy your license early or prepare for lines
The 2016-17 Texas fishing, hunting or combination fishing/hunting licenses folded and resting in the wallets or purses of about 2.5 million Texans expire Aug. 31. The day after that — Friday, Sept. 1 — as many as 300,000 Texans will go afield for the opening of dove season in most of the state. That will be immediately followed by the threeday Labor Day holiday weekend, the final long weekend of summer and traditionally one of the biggest fishing weekends of the year.
All of those dove hunters and anglers (except those who buy year-from-date-of-purchase licenses) will need a new license and appropriate permits and stamps before they head afield or cast a line. And a huge portion of them won’t snap to that fact until the last minute.
This almost certainly will make for some long lines and short tempers in many of the 1,700 or so retail businesses, 28 Texas Parks and Wildlife Department field offices and 50 or so state parks hooked up to TPWD’s computerized license system as hundreds of thousands of Texans queue up to “get legal” for the new license year. It always does, especially when the start of the new license year falls square at the start of the Labor Day weekend.
There are easy, or at least minimally bothersome, ways to avoid this mad crush.
Early sales
Texas several years ago wised up to the problems associated with folks rushing to purchase licenses around Sept. 1. TPWD, the state agency with responsibility for issuing the licenses and associated stamps and permits as well as enforcing license requirements, began offering the next year’s licenses for purchase beginning Aug. 15, a little more than two weeks before they are required.
As an extra incentive to encourage early purchase, the agency makes those licenses purchased before Sept. 1 effective on the date of purchase.
That Aug. 15 start date for sales of 2017-18 annual fishing and hunting licenses is Tuesday. So hunters and anglers have a couple of weeks to buy their licenses before the annual Labor Day weekend rush that can have folks standing in line at those black point-ofsale devices that print out what, over the past few years, has been as many as 250 licenses a minute — 14,000 an hour — during peak sales periods.
And those peak sales periods are invariably centered on the days either side of Sept. 1.
TPWD usually issues about a million licenses during the first 30 days of the new license year, or about 30 percent of its annual license sales.
The huge majority of those licenses, special-use stamp/endorsements and annual public hunting permits are purchased through those point-ofsale devices at the more than 1,700 retail businesses offering licenses across Texas.
But an increasing number of Texas fishing and hunting license sales are being accomplished online or over the phone.
Texas’ online licensing portal — txfgsales.com — is available 24/7. Licenses can be purchased by phone Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., at 800-895-4248. Those using the online or phone-in options are charged an additional $5 administrative fee. But many anglers and hunters gladly pony up the extra fee for the convenience.
While that administrative fee goes to pay the state contractor operating the online and phone-in operation, the money hunter and anglers spend on their licences, stamps and permits — more than $90 million annually — goes directly into a dedicated account that can be used only to fund TPWD’s wildlife and fisheries programs.
That money, along with federal reimbursements of excise tax collected on sales of hunting and fishing and boating-related equipment, wholly fund the Texas wildlife and fisheries programs. Not a cent of general state tax revenue is spent on fish stocking, fisheries research, wildlife management and research, leasing land for public hunting, boating access on lakes, river and bays, habitat restoration and enhancement and all the other programs that benefit the states hunters, anglers and, especially, the state’s fish and wildlife resources.
Who spends that money on licenses?
Thanks to Texas’ centralized, computer-run licensing system, it’s possible to gain some pretty interesting insights into who is buying Texas hunting and fishing licenses.
By the numbers
Some nuggets from TPWD’s license database:
• The majority of Texas hunting ad fishing licenses are purchased by men. No surprise, there. But increasing numbers of women are joining the ranks of hunters and anglers. The percentage of women hunting/fishing license buyers has risen steadily over the past five years, and this past license year accounted for 18.24 percent of all licenses.
• About three out of four Texas residents (75.64 percent) who bought a 2016-17 hunting or fishing license live in what is classified as an urban area. Residents of rural areas of the state purchased a quarter (24.36 percent) of the 2.4 million licenses sold. About 85 percent of Texans live in urban areas, with 15 percent of the state’s population living in rural areas.
• Of Texas’ 254 counties, Harris County, holds the largest number of Texans who bought a 2016-17 hunting or fishing license. Harris County residents purchased 244,242 hunting/fishing licenses this past year, accounting for almost 11 percent of the statewide total. No other county came close.
Bexar County (San Antonio) was a distant second with residents buying 5.64 percent of licenses sold to Texans. Tarrant County (Fort Worth) at 4.53 percent and Dallas County with 4.05 percent followed.
• The Houston metropolitan area is home to almost a fifth of the state’s hunting/fishing license holders. Residents of the five-county area (Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Galveston counties) bought 19.1 percent of all hunting/ fishing licenses purchased this past year. And the $10.7 million generated by licenses purchased in Harris County was the highest of any Texas county, ac- counting for 11.35 percent of statewide total.
• Texans, of course, account for almost all purchases of Texas hunting and fishing licenses. But almost nine out of every 100 of those licenses are purchased by non-Texans. During the 2016-17 license year, 8.8 percent of licenses were purchased by non-residents.
Not surprising, the 33,621 licenses purchased by Louisiana residents accounted for the highest number of non-resident hunting/fishing license purchases. Oklahoma (20,007), Arkansas (12,400), Colorado (11,085) and California (9,562) rounded out the top five states whose residents purchased Texas hunting or fishing licenses.
An international affair
• Texas hunting and fishing opportunities draws an international crowd, too. This past year, hunters or anglers from more than 100 countries purchased Texas hunting or fishing licences.
Residents of Mexico topped that list, buying 4,604 licenses, followed by Canada (1,995), United Kingdom (413), China (183) and Germany (142).
Texas even sold one license to a resident of Nepal, evidence, it can be argued, that the state’s high-quality fishing and hunting opportunities are worth traveling halfway around the world to enjoy.
Texans who wait until the last minute to buy their 2017-18 fishing or hunting licenses and find themselves standing in a long line over Labor Day weekend might draw some solace from that point. But probably not. Better to get legal before the rush. That opportunity begins this Tuesday.