Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Drawn on Powderhorn WMA

As the title states. My son and I were drawn on the Powderhorn WMA. It is in Calhoun County Port O'Connor Texas. East of Corpus Christie.
It seems the main Exotics or Sambar and Axis.
Has anyone hunted or know somebody that has hunted there?
It is a new WMA about 6 years old.

I'm looking forward to it.

Never hunted around there
Fished Port O.C. bunches of times, and the
bay and channel.
The only valid advice I can pass on is
DON'T FORGET THE BUG DOPE!
They will carry you off.
Also, there didn't used to be much of an
assortment of decent accommodations
in the area, so you might want to call well
in advance. Most of what few rooms there
was were taken up by people like me fishing.
Good Luck with whatever you're after

Congratulations on drawing that hunt! I have put in every year since that hunt opened and hope to draw it one day. I have not hunted it but have researched it quite a bit. In addition to Sambar which is what I would love to hunt Axis are plentiful. There are also some very nice whitetail. Check out Texasbowhunter.com on the Public Hunting opportunities forum and Texashunting.com Public hunts forum and search for Powderhorn. You can get some good information on hunts other people have done there. Good luck! I'm sure you guys will have a great hunt.

Lucky! I've drawn the devils river and palo duro canyon, the Powderhorn is the one I really want.

Did you draw the deer hunt or exotic?

The hunt is for Exotics and of course all the feral hogs you want. I have plenty of hogs around the home place. I'm not wasting my time with those.

Awesome. Good luck! let us know how it goes. I'd love to draw that hunt.....one day!

There are plenty of hotels now in Port Lavaca 30 minutes away. I use thermacell on our lease down the road and it really works Bob

Make sure you give some thought to getting an animal out and meat care. Sambar can run well over 500 lbs. They ain't like whitetails.

The unusual thing about Powderhorn I've read is the TPWD will help with retrieval. And I hope they have a cold storage, I don't know about that one. There was cold storage when I hunted a couple of other WMA.

I'm still up in the air about what rifle to use. My easy to tote 270s with 140 Barnes bullets, A 300 Win mag or for grins a 375 H&H.
The 375 would be expensive for it's NIB and I have zero ammo or dies.

My BIL and I hunted there in 2020 on the GDE hunt. My BIL took a nice Sambar. I was in a spot where I didn't see anything. Moved to my BIL's stand on the last morning and saw a Sambar cow but was facing the wrong way and couldn't get turned around fast enough.

I saw tons of animals come in when we were skinning BIL's out. Nice Sambar, axis, and WT. It is really marshy out there but the biologists have a UTV. That would carry a 550 lb sambar with ease. It took four of us to load BIL's sambar and that was after gutting him. My BIL and sister are still eating on that one.

Don't get hung up on staying in one place if you aren't seeing anything.

Did you get drawn for the WMA or the SP? I tried to draw the SP since it was the first year they opened that up.

Let me know if you have any question s and good luck.

There was no cold storage when we were there. The skinning rack can back up also.

High shoulder shots on the sambar to keep them from going back in the nasty stuff.

If Daniel Walker is still there he is a great source of info. We called him before we went and he was more than willing to give us info.

You don't need a 375 to drop sambar. My BIL used a 7mm RM and dropped a large bull with one shot. I had a 300 Wby and I was confident that it would handle anything I came across.

I wonder how many "Powderhorn" peaks, creeks, drainages, and gun shops there are W of the Mississippi? Same for "Ramshorn".