Low-cost, high-quality hunting a click away
Texas offers some of the highest-quality and most diverse hunting opportunities in the nation — more turkey, feral hogs and white-tailed deer than any state; mule deer and pronghorn in the Panhandle and TransPecos; javelina; alligators; and exotics such as nilgai antelope, aoudad sheep and axis deer.
Add to that, world-class wingshooting options — the largest wintering population of waterfowl in the Central Flyway, more mourning and white-winged doves than any other state and what unquestionably is the country’s premier bobwhite and scaled quail habitat and populations.
Texas, though, also is a place where 97 percent of the land on which that game lives is privately owned, with hunting privileges almost wholly limited to family and friends or sold to the highest bidder. Simply scoring access to the state’s rich hunting potential at a cost they can afford proves the most elusive quarry challenging a majority of Texas’ millionplus licensed hunters.
But thousands of Texas hunters annually bag high-quality, low-cost hunts through the state’s public hunting program. The “drawn hunts” portion of that long-running program offers hunters a chance to apply for drawings for permits that gives them access, usually for multiple consecutive days, to state-owned and managed lands and some private tracts for hunting specific game. Those hunts can and do rival anything found on even the best-managed private lands.
The 2017-18 “drawn hunts” portion of the Texas public hunting program kicked off last week, opening its wholly online operation that this year offers almost 9,500 permits for hunts in 50 categories. Application fees for most of the drawings are $3 or $10 per person, although a handful of drawings have no application fee. Most successful applicants pay a hunt fee of $80 to $130, depending on the hunt category and length of hunt, but several hunt categories do not charge a fee for successful applicants. More permits available
The 9,470 permits offered in the 2017-18 “drawn hunt” program is an increase from the 8,978 permits issued last year, said Justin Dreibelbis, director of public hunting programs for the wildlife division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the agency responsible for the state’s public hunting program.
Most of those hunts will be held on TPWD wildlife management areas and state parks, and coordinated by TPWD staff on the sites. But not all of them. Much of the increase in the number of permits up for grabs this season comes from the addition of a permit drawing for 600 whitetail deer hunts — 300 hunts in which firearms are allowed to be used and 300 where only archery equipment is allowed — on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, Dreibelbis said.
The incorporation of the Aransas NWR deer hunts into the TPWD-run public hunting program expands a cooperative effort between the TPWD and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency overseeing the national wildlife refuge system. That cooperative program began in the 2016-17 season when TPWD started handling the digital lottery for permits to hunt deer and exotic big game such as nilgai antelope on three federal refuges — Laguna Atascosa and Lower Rio Grande Valley in South Texas and Balcones Canyonlands in Central Texas. Under the agreement, TPWD handles the permit application and selection, and USFWS staff oversee the hunts.
With the addition of deer-rich Aransas NWR to the public hunt program, TPWD will issue almost 2,200 permits for deer hunts on the four federal refuges for the 2017-18 season. As with all of the hunts, the refuge hunts are designed to reduce deer numbers to carrying capacity of the habitat.
“The hunts are a management tool as well as providing a highquality public hunting opportunity,” Dreibelbis said.
The 2017-18 public hunting program also will handle applications for about 2,500 permits that allow hunters on U.S. Forest Service lands in East Texas to take antlerless deer.
White-tailed deer are, by far, the biggest player in the annual public hunt permit drawing. This year’s program includes almost 2,000 permits for hunts allowing hunters using firearms to take a buck or antlerless whitetail on TPWD-controlled lands, Dreibelbis said. Including hunts on national wildlife refuges, the agency will issue about 1,400 permits for archery-only deer hunts.
The program also offers scores of other hunts, including alligator, mule deer, turkey, javelina, pronghorn and feral hogs, on state parks and TPWD wildlife management areas, as well as deer and pronghorn hunts on a handful of private lands. The program’s 50 categories include “youth only” hunts for alligator, whitetail, javelina, feral hog and exotics such as aoudad. Private-lands dove hunts a hit
This year’s drawn-hunts program will continue offering a private-lands dove hunt category added last year that proved extremely successful, Dreibelbis said. The hunts, aimed at providing high-quality wingshooting for doves, the most popular game bird in Texas, will be run by professional outfitters and will take place on private lands controlled by the outfitters. Five outfitters are participating this year, all in some of the premier dove-hunting areas of Texas.
Two are in the Uvalde area, one near Pleasanton south of San Antonio; one is in Young County, northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth and, new this year, one is near Wharton, southwest of Houston.
Applications for the 140 permits being offered for the privatelands dove hunts are $10 per person, with as many as four people per application. Successful applicants will pay no other fees for the hunts, which if purchased on the open market typically cost $100-150 per person.
“We had a lot of positive feedback from the hunters and the outfitters this past season, so we’re continuing it,” Dreibelbis said of the private-lands dove hunts. “This year, we’ve added a new area — Wharton — that will give Houston-area hunters a closer option.”
Steady expansion of the number and variety of high-quality, low-cost hunts offered, recent changes in how applications are submitted and modification of some of the rules governing applications have resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of participants in the program over the past four years.
In 2014, the “drawn hunt” portion of TPWD’s public hunting program switched from a paper-based system in which all applications, notifications of selection and payment of fees were done by regular mail to a wholly online system.
The switch, which required all applications and fee payment to be done online, saved the agency more than $100,000 a year in printing and mail costs and significantly increased the program’s efficiency, Dreibelbis said.
The move, combined with a 2015 change that dropped a previous rule that allowed a hunter to apply for only one hunt in a specific hunt category, saw the number of permit applications almost double in two years.
Last year, the third in which the wholly online system has been used, saw 139,398 applications for “draw hunt” permits. This year, that number is almost certain to hit 150,000 or almost three times the 52,000 applications seen in 2013, the last year of the paper-based system.
The “draw hunt” program is open to Texas residents and nonresidents, with both charged the same application and hunt fees, but relatively few non-residents take advantage of the program.
Last year, non-residents accounted for only 6 percent of applications, Dreibelbis said. Win-win situation all around
Money generated by application fees and hunt fees goes directly into the state’s Game, Fish and Water Safety Fund, a dedicated account that state law mandates be used only to fund TPWD wildlife and fisheries conservation work, and to enforcing the state’s water safety law.
“The goal of the program is to provide high-quality, low-cost hunting opportunities that fit with our duty to manage and conserve the state’s natural resources,” Dreibelbis said. “We’re always looking for ways to improve the public hunting program to meet those goals, and I believe we’re doing that.
“The feedback we’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive.”
More information on TPWD’s public hunting program, including an online catalog of available hunts, application deadlines, success rates and number of applicants for each of last year’s hunts and instructions on applying for drawings is available on the agency’s website