Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting In defense of Texas hunting leases

What? You don't like gin?

We used to day hunt around thousands of acres of peanut fields. The deer mainly ate the greens/tops. When we gutted them all you could smell was peanuts. Months later there was a slight smell of peanut when cooking. You couldn't taste it but the venison tasted about as good as any I've eaten. Captdavid

You don't really see a whole lot of high fence unless you are in south Texas. Owners high fence to improve the deer herd. They fly it twice a year, game biologists decide the correct amount of bucks and does to shoot. They take X number 5/12 year old trophies, X numer cull bucks, and X number does. Managed lands have a longer season also. They bring in better quality bucks also. The better and bigger the deer, the more the lease is worth.

Some ranches run guided operations, guide sits in stand, gives you green light to shoot. If you want to kill a whopper, this is the surest way.

I have always been on low fence places. Started out in Ozona, 200 a year in the 70's. 1000.00 bucks a gun for 25 years in Coleman, I'm paying 2000.00 now in Burnet. It is just what it is. Little free hunting here. I guess you can't be a cheap and hunt here. Nice guys on all the leases for the most part.

I love how folks think that everyone should hunt exactly like they do instead of adapting to local conditions.

Texas is a big state and hunting varies from region to region. I see a lot of guys from the Northeast talk about the only real hunting is tracking, while guys from the west will say its spot and stalk. I grew up hunting the big thicket in east texas. a lot of places there visibility was limited to 10 to 20 yards due to underbrush, osage orange thickets and briar patches. Spot and stalk or tracking wasn't much use there, We mostly used dogs to drive the deer out of the thickets until that was banned in the mid 1980s. Now I use feeders there, with more clearings and other habitat improvements but our success rate is still pretty low,

I've hunted over feeders in the hill country as well as spot and stalk there, which to be honest is probably a million times easier due to higher deer densities.

The hardest deer I've ever hunted was a late season doe hunt on a high fence place that wanted to clear a bunch of them out. Talk about spooky deer after being constantly pressured for 4 months

This thread has a very narrow view of what Texas has to offer. It's expensive but it's not just high fence exotics and shooting deer over corn feeders.

There are thriving herds free range Black Buck and Axis in the Hill Country. Mule Deer in the West. Aoudad Sheep in the Davis Mountains. Nilgai in the South. Small pockets of Oryx, Elk and Sika. You can go down to South Texas, pay $1250 and shoot a Nilgai cow and have 200 lbs of some of the best game meat around and the hunt won't be over a feeder.

I've no problem with folks shooting livestock if that's what they enjoy. I would hate however for that to become the norm.

I shot a young one once that had to be eating pine needles. For a 1.5 year old spike it was the worst meat I'd ever had. Threw it all out.

livestock because of feeding or because of fence? Some will never get it.

And fences don't keep all in or out. I used to watch a doe come jump in and out of an 8 foot fence every day I was turkey hunting... Got to be that I'd go watch that trail just to see it, then go chasing turkeys...

It might be BS, but I've heard that if a deer was alive, and jumping a low fence, and it's replaced by a high one, they sometimes jump it. While I've never seen them try, I have seen deer that have hung a foot in a high fence attempting to jump it and died. Captdavid

The biggest problem with hunting Texas IMO isn't high fences , it's merely the fact that there isn't any public land. How much land one has available to them to hunt is dictated by how much money they have and therefore how much land they have at their disposal. Some guys can't afford to hunt or own more than 100 acres, while some can afford to hunt 2500-5000 acres. The biggest negative affect on me hunting here is the confinement issue. I like opportunities, and the freedom to stretch my legs , see new territory and always wonder what's over that next ridge. You simply can't do that here. You have what you have (based on how much you've paid) and you'll get really good at identifying your surroundings from your box blind. The private land issue really is the hiccup IMO. This year I hunted on military land , 150,000 acres and even though I had to jump through a hundred hoops and a few hiccups I was able to really hunt. I hiked several miles on many different days scouting and looking for the right things that would make spotting a buck possible and then enacted my game plan. Shot my buck while sitting on the ground with my back against an oak tree and no feeders or BS just hunting. It was a nice change of pace from spending $4000 and putting 2000 miles on my truck in a hunting season and staring out a box blind window for 30 mornings and evenings! Too bad there aren't more opportunities in this state like what I experienced this season.

I can hunt the same way, on the ground, no feeder where we lease. In fact 1/3 of our deer if not half are taken that way.

Evidently there is public land in TX contrary to your statement, because you hunted it.

There is even more of that around. Biggest whitetail buck I've ever seen that I had a legal chance to shoot, was on public in East TX in national forest.....


There is not much public compared to private or to other states granted, but those who say tehre is none, have simply not doen their homework...

I don't see why any one has to defend any type of hunting if that is the way locals do it and it is legal.

My only comment is that these game farms have proven to be the big source of CWD etc.,in the wild after a few of the animals got loose,with the exception of lung worm in wild sheep coming from large flocks of domestic sheep.

Texas boys love to defend it. And then they spout out the whole public land defense that there really is public land available even though it's value is not worth even mentioning.

Where did the CWD that inflicts western states come from?

There were several game farms in northern states, WY,MT,ID with elk and deer that got lose. USDA put mandatory no shipping rule in place for those that were found infected.It's been awhile,so I don't have the particulars anymore.

i didn't see it in any posts, but there's the
issue of safety. most all of the ranches and
properties i've hunted wouldn't allow folks to
walk around and hunt because of the issue of
the need for safety. there are usually other
guests and livestock and outbuildings and
dwellings that figure into making a safe shot when
hunting. where i hunt now, it's not big enough
to walk around, and the only safe shot is to the
west and at a roughly 45 degree angle. shooting
any other direction and out of that field of fire
would be potentially unsafe. i've had brush cut
around me on public land from folks making
"sound shots" and "hail mary" shots despite wearing
an orange vest and hat. (required here on public land)
i'm sure that happens in other places too. i know
it does in arkansas and louisiana for sure.

CSU.

How is hunting over a feeder different from hunting over a mast crop?

Is that a serious question?

You must be hunting on either a very much overcrowded lease, or a very small one. One of my main arguments for the lease system is that once you pay your money, you never see another hunter besides those in your small group, or the landowner, or ranch foreman. Being able to lift your binocs to your face withouot seeing orange hats and vests everywhere is very comforting, to me anyway.

Can't be, according to campfire fact, that is signature Pa and definitely does not occur anywhere below the Mason Dixon line.