Howdy all,

I am pretty close to being out of someplace close and affordable to hunt and my game warden friends keep encouraging me to buy a Annual Public Hunting Permit (what I've always heard labeled a Type II permit) to access and hunt on State land. For $48 I can buy a permit that will enable me to hunt on state land that supposedly has some good deer on it. Any feedback on this? I'm thinking its about the best I'm going to do this year without being on a $500/year lease.

Thanks,

There is some excellent land available but there are problems. The game wardens are overbearing, the properties are generally over regulated and in many cases you have to win a drawing to get on a good hunt. That said 48 dollars is cheap for access to lots of land to hunt small game and ducks on, add feral hogs to the list also. The Cooper Lake WMA is a good one.

I bought it a few years back, and there was only one place in the state with big game hunting, Sam Houston IIRC. Maybe it's better now. THere are a lot of dove hunting places and coastal duck hunting . Most of the duck hunts were free with permit and something like $5/day without.

I used it twice and quit. If the deer and hog huts are more available, let me kow as I might try it again. You can't see the map of hunt sites until you actually buy the permit...so it's totally buyer beware.

Now I stick with the drawings...the odds are long but the hunts are nice when you get picked.

I hunted deer once on the Davey Crockett years ago. We never saw a single deer, but did have a scary experience with a couple of drunk redneck hunters who pulled into our camp the afternoon we arrived. I think their intention was to rob, or otherwise harm us. They first drove through camp like they were casing the joint. Based on that I watched them drive on through the pines. They only went about a hundred yards then pulled in and started to turn around. I took my rifle and eased into the trees. My friend got his and stayed in camp. They pulled back into our camp, and got out of their jeep, with their bottles in hand.

Long story short, my friend talked to them a while as they looked around. They were aware that there had been two of us and were now one.

My friend was as unnerved as I was. When they left, my friend told me they were asking a lot of questions, and also wanted to know what had happened to me. He also said they told him how they had just shot a hole in the floorboard of their jeep while they had been driving around road hunting. They showed him the hole.

We packed our camp up quickly and moved on figuring we might get a late-night visit.

I grew-up on New Mexico public land hunting so it doesn't bother me, but I wouldn't go on a public land deer hunt in Texas again if you paid me; too much trash roaming around. Maybe our problem was that we were just too near a big metropolitan area (Houston).

Think twice.

I hunted the archery season for deer and hogs for 8 years with great hunts and success. Why I quit buying the permit was that TPW started putting everything into drawings including archery season, making the allowed number of days I could hunt too small and predatory asinine game wardens (Richland Creek WMA). They also dumped my favorite WMA, Aquilla on to the Corps of Engineers though I may still hunt it. But no permit needed. By the way there are several places you can hunt run by the Corps such as Lake Whitney, Navarro Mills, Bob Sandlin Reservoir. The big problem really is the TP&W inability to handle public hunting within reason and their attitude that there must be two game wardens for every hunter.

I hunted type 2 several years ago. I had some good times even if I never did see any big bucks. I bought a permit last year and was disapointed that there were very few places to deer hunt. Back in the late 80s and early 90s there were several places for deer. I probably won't buy one this year unless I know they have added more deer hunting areas.

I get the permit every year. There are lots of places to hunt and some of them have pretty good game. LBJ Grasslands worked fairly well for me, deer, turkey, hogs, quail are pretty scarce.