Tens of thousands of online applicants will vie for this year’s public hunt permits.
Success in 2014 with inaugural all-online system carries over
This past week, Texas’ popular public hunting draw permit program began its second year as a wholly online operation, and hunters appear to have solidly embraced the new digital system through which they vie for some of more than 7,000 permits issued for a variety of hunting opportunities on 95 properties across the state.
In the first five days following the July 1 launch of the 2015-16 public hunting draw-permit program, prospective hunters electronically submitted more than 12,000 applications in this year’s 35 hunt categories. That’s about 750 more applications than were submitted during the same period this past year, said Kelly Edmiston, public hunt program manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
“It’s been pretty awesome,” Edmiston said of the public’s response to the online program. “We’re already ahead of last year, and that was a record year.”
This past year, the online public hunting draw permit program saw almost 100,000 applications submitted for the 7,400 available permits. That was almost double the 52,000 applications submitted during the 2013-14 season, when the draw-permit program operated through the traditional paper-based/ mail-in process TPWD had used for decades.
The agency’s Public Hunt Draw Program offers hunters the chance to apply for permits for low-cost, high-quality, multi-day hunting opportunities for deer, turkey, feral hogs, pronghorn, alligator, bighorn sheep and other big-game animals at state parks, wildlife management areas, and some private tracts where landowners have agreed to allow limited, closely managed public hunting. The hunts are supervised by TPWD staff and designed to achieve the agency’s wildlife management goals.
Saves time, money
The online site — tpwd. texas.gov/huntwild/hunt/ — is a one-stop location for everything associated with TPWD’s public hunting draw-permit program. Users can find a list of available hunts in each of 35 categories, number of permits to be issued for each hunt, application deadlines, fees for application, fees should they draw a permit, maps of hunt areas, rules governing the hunts, and other information.
Through the electronic portal, participants create a personal account, complete and submit applications, and pay application fees. Unlike with the retired paper-based/mailin applications, incomplete or otherwise invalid electronic applications can’t be submitted — the system will not accept them.
“This really saves time and frustration,” Edmiston said of the foolproof application system.
Applicants are immediately notified via email that their applications have been accepted. If a person’s application is selected on the date of the drawing for a particular hunt category, they are immediately notified via email. Payment for permits is made electronically, and successful applicants can either print out a copy of the permit or download an image of the permit into their smartphone or other portable device and show that image when they arrive for the hunt.
“It’s a lot more efficient and easier than the old system.” Edmiston said. And a lot less expensive. “We’re saving tens of thousands of dollars — the public’s money — with the electronic system,” Edmiston said.
Because everything is online, TPWD no longer has to print and mail 55,000 or more 90-page booklets listing hunts, maps and rules and including paper application forms to those who applied for hunts during the past year. The agency also doesn’t have to invest hours of staff time sorting, certifying and inputting applications into the agency computer system, mailing notifications to those selected for permits, waiting for those hunters to send back their hunt payment, then mailing back the permit.
All told, the switch to an electronic system is saving the public hunting program, funded through licenses and other hunter-related fees, about $100,000 a year.
“Going to an electronic system was a more efficient business practice,” Edmiston said.
The hunters who used the electronic system during its inaugural year appear to agree. Using the database of applicants, TPWD earlier this year sent an email survey to 21,000 applicants to gauge what users thought of the new system.
“Eighty-one percent of those who responded to the survey said they were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with the new program,” Edmiston said. “Ten percent didn’t have an opinion one way or the other, and only 9 percent said they were dissatisfied.”
The biggest reason for dissatisfaction?
“They didn’t get drawn for a permit,” Edmiston said.
Eighty-three percent of survey respondents cited “usability, ease and convenience” as the top benefits of the online system. Fewer restrictions
The survey also indicated a major change in the program’s rules from previous years was also welcomed by hunters participating in the public hunt permit-draw program.
In past years, hunters were restricted to applying for only one drawing within a hunt category, meaning, for example, they could apply for only one of dozens of deer hunts in the hunt category where hunters were allowed to use firearms and take either a buck or antlerless deer. Rules were changed this past year to allow hunters to apply for as many drawings within a hunt category as they want.
The survey indicated 63 percent of respondents took advantage of that opportunity and applied multiple times within a hunt category, Edmiston said. And that ability to apply multiple times within a hunt category appears to have been a major reason the number of applications during the 2014-15 hunting seasons almost doubled from the previous year.
One thing that didn’t change from previous years was the hunts that drew the most applications. This past year, 4,836 applications were made for the drawing for 12 permits to hunt pronghorn on the Rita Blanca National Grassland in the Panhandle.
“That always is the top or near the top in number of applications,” Edmiston said. “It’s the only public land pronghorn hunt in Texas, and it’s just $3 to apply with no hunt fee.”
Deer hunts on state wildlife management areas in South Texas, especially the Chaparral WMA, also draw more than 4,000 applications for the 40 or so permits issued each hunting season.
“The whitetail hunts on some of our WMAs and the mule deer hunts in West Texas always are at the top in terms of applications,” Edmiston said. “They are just incredible opportunities for high-quality hunts at very affordable prices. If you draw a permit for an either-sex deer hunt on the ‘Chap,’ you have a four-day hunt for $130 on a place that holds some tremendous deer.” Fewer deer permits
This year, the permit draw program will issue “probably a little more than 7,000” permits, Edmiston said. The number is slightly down from a year ago largely because of canceling planned deer hunts on a couple of TPWD wildlife management areas in East Texas.
Because of loss of whitetails, especially fawns, to severe flooding this spring and summer, TPWD decided not to allow deer hunts on the agency’s Richland Creek and Big Lake Bottom wildlife management areas.
The first deadlines for applications for this year’s permit drawings in the 35 hunt categories offered through the public hunting program are less than a month away. Deadline for alligator hunt applications is Aug. 3, with pronghorn and archery-only deer hunt deadlines Aug. 25.