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

Not sure why there was a need for "in defense of"?


JG,

really impressive deer!

Here's another low fence old fellow. Low fence, La Salle County, Texas.

Deer on the left:



But once he ran the other buck off, he was huffing and puffing and let it all hang out.




The hardest thing about hunting in Texas is finding a place to hunt. There are lots of opportunities other than high fence places if one makes a bit of effort to ask around and look.

The habitat below is no high fence, by far my favorite placed I have ever hunted. When the Eagle Ford shale boom hit, the hunting was shut down as a condition of the oil lease. Really miss this place and the family that lived there. Magical place, wonderful people and great times. The wait for a spot to open up to hunt there was years. There are many incredible hunting opportunities on leases, but the best ones may only have a spot open up every few years or longer. Out of staters usually will never even hear of these properties. They are nowhere to be found on the internet. There are B&C eligible deer deliberately not reported to prevent poaching and/or to prevent the lease prices going up.



Same ranch, low fence, all native deer. Nothing done other than keeping folks off of the trigger until they reach 7.5 years old, except for the culls. Very representative of the property's typical deer resulting from basic management concepts.

Another deer from La Salle County, low fence. This was the evening before opening morning. Took this photo with the last minutes of light. Never saw him again.




Here was another low fence lease - a one section winter wheat field. 1 mile x 1 mile. Again, no high fence. This was on a 20,000+ acre ranch. They leased this field to my wife and I since we could shoot farther than their other hunters and they wanted Axis and does removed.



We would get up at 4 a.m. and hike out to a grass strip in the middle and set up ground cloths. When the sun came up, we would be in the middle of 200 - 300 deer, waiting to pick off Axis which they wanted removed.



Here was less than 60 seconds of shooting, and why shooting skills can matter. Number 1 was 150 yards, 2 was 250 and 3 was 472, no blinds, no feeder - other than a square mile of wheat.



Most of my deer hunting is purely management, does, culls, and management deer. I've had the opportunity to see some incredible deer, and enjoyed just watching them. Sometimes it is harder to find a cull than it is a big deer on a well managed property.


Here is a cull from a smaller property, just under 500 acres, where I helped set up a management plan.



After three years, now they are seeing some nice 10's and even one typical 6x6. The deer just needed the chance to grow older.

This is my front porch, no fence, but working over the landscaping.

Nice

You are right, except here, most deer never make it to 5, or even 4, and are still considered trophies. Every once in a while an old deer is killed, but it is not the norm. Things are slowly changing, but very slow. A decent set of antlers has maybe one season to pass his genes, and for several years spikes were off limits, even if they were several years old. I watched one, that the spikes got so big they looked like a big main beam. I know that I saw him for 4 years before He disappeared. Finally a rule change so that those under 16 could kill any deer, and He was gone. I don't know if He was killed or not. We have another problem gene that is slowly going away, but you do still see, where one side is normal and the other is abnormal. I have killed lots of these over the years and wish there was a way to know their mothers. Shooting inferior bucks never hurts the herd, and may help. I do it to fill my buck tags, and feel like I am helping. We don't have enough deer so that I want to kill does, even though that is a hard sell to the neighbors. They have bought into the G&F idea that the whole zone needs does removed. Some places does, but not here. miles

If a guy wants to shoot livestock posing as deer, then admit it and don't worry about it.

But we can be assured a LOT more Texans come to hunt Colorado and hunt than Coloradoans hunt Texas.........

And yes, when the majority of habitat is private it presents challenges for hunters and wildlife managers.

Casey

Casey, actually private land gives you a lot better chance at management.

Public folks just don't seem to care and shoot the first legal one they see. That makes it tougher to manage.

I've no clue what the meaning is of more TX go to CO, than CO come to TX or how that relates to TX hunting really.

Off topic, you do have a great state. Unfortunately for you its been infiltrated by a bunch of liberals. Always felt that was a shame. But it is what it is.

What the hell good is a self made trophy ? If you have to make your own by intentionally protecting it, feeding it, making sure it gets to breed, etc. until it's just right for harvest it ain't worth a shyt and has NO TROPHY VALUE at all. Might as well just be shooting a prized, hand raised, holstein bull. Fuggin' people have completely bastardized hunting to the point you don't even recognize the difference between a wild animal who has survived the gauntlet of natures perils completely on it's own and some bogus hand made/raised/managed livestock trophy. Your "managed" trophies are akin to the "participation trophies" handed out to the losers in the special olympics. Damn buncha mad scientists out there fuggin' with nature just to produce the biggest antlers possible. Did God or mother nature decree that the biggest antlered bucks were the fittest to survive disease, famine, predation, freezing temperatures and automobiles ? What nonsense. Those huge antlered bucks are only the fittest in your antler crazed imaginations. And a buck, any buck passes on the same damn genes at 1.5 years of age as he does at 8.5. If you sick f*cks could figure a way to cross a whitetail with a prehistoric caribou I'm sure you'd do it and consider the resulting mutant the greatest trophy of all time. Sickening.

Blackheart, you're always the voice of reason. Much appreciated.

jeffbird.....great pics. I bet that axis doe meat is mucho bueno!

Hey, just left you a phone message. Wanting advice about texas mule deer.

If you fence in wildlife, feed it, and manage the herd for genetics......it's livestock.

If that is legal in Texas, and what you enjoy, then have at it. I'm just thankful that most every other state is a "fence out" proposition.

As I said, I'd hate to see that become the norm.

We generally don't see eye-to-eye on much but there's a lot I agree with in the above.

There is more than a ring of truth in the statement.

There are for damn sure some folks that dont' have a clue whats being discussed....

Jesus.

In "some states" YOU MUST lug a shotgun, muzzleloader or handgun only for even less than two weeks......

That's one of the many things you don't know about WT's. Most of what I've read and seen deer live their lives in one square mile. They may run several miles during the rut but they return to their home territory when it's over. I saw one evening in South Texas and the next morning saw him 5 miles away. But he was chasing does. Hasbeen

Yep. I dont generally agree with 'shart either...

Like many things in life, someones short term pleasure becomes more important than anything else and any way to justify that outcome is pawned off as a good thing.

Man can help wild animals for sure when ma nature is at its worst. Catastrophe happens. Its some mens need to interject 365 days a year that makes me a bit jaded and the reasons for that interjection arent too difficult to understand....

Sure, when they're fed/fenced no weather etc etc and have plenty of doe to f*ck.

What you've seen in your lifetime in South Texas don't mean much.

I too have no desire to play God with God's creatures.

Scott,

One way to understand hunting seasons (at least here), is that there's the legitimate season for 3 months called archery season and the illegitimate seasons, called the gun seasons.
The legitimate season involves a true love of the animal. It coincides with a TV show with the wife, a DNR ass sniff to forego any regulatory violations and a seasonal goatee.

The longest illegitimate season is three weeks in late december/january. That's about as long as anyone can be trusted with a firearm...and they cant even be shotguns then.

I'm glad we have a long season!!