Speak now if you want to put your two cents into future hunting laws as KBTX reports. Hunters, this is your chance to weigh in on proposed changes to state hunting regulations. Some of the changes include a unified statewide deer season opener, legalizing air guns and air bows for hunting certain wildlife species and a reduction of the spring eastern turkey season.
Texas Parks and Wildlife officials have put a lot of resources online. You can find that information at the TPWD website in the Related Links section. TPWD staff will also be doing a Facebook live on March 6th to answer questions and respond to comments. We have a link to their Facebook page in the Related Links section.
Comment may also be made in writing to TPWD, attn. Hunting Regulations Public Comment, 4200 Smith School Rd., Austin, TX 78744 or in person during the March 22 public meeting of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission at TPWD headquarters in Austin prior to rule making.
Some of these are great ideas. Others, not so much. Taking alligators with air guns and bows? Why?
The following amendments to the 2018-19 Texas Statewide Hunting Proclamation are being proposed by TPWD staff:
• Standardize the general deer hunting season statewide to open the first Saturday in November and end on the third Sunday in January. Additionally, staff propose to open the special late season, muzzleloader season, and the late youth season on the first Monday following the third Sunday in January for 14 consecutive days. This proposal would also adjust concurrent turkey hunting seasons with the general deer season in the North Zone.
• Allow the take of alligators, game animals, non-migratory game birds and furbearers with air guns and air bows.
• Remove references to the take of antlerless deer by MLDP tag only on U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and river authority lands, and clarify in regulation that take of antlerless deer is prohibited on U.S. Forest Service properties except during archery only season, muzzleloader season, special youth season, and during the 4 doe days on the LBJ National Grasslands in Montague and Wise counties.
• Clarify in regulation that in each county where antler restrictions are imposed that a person who takes a buck in violation of antler restrictions is prohibited from subsequently harvesting any buck deer with branched antlers on both main beams in that county during that current deer season.
• Remove requirement minimums for certain archery equipment, including: broad head hunting points, 125-pound pull for crossbows, crossbow stock length of 25 inches, and mechanical safety on crossbows.
• Open a 9-day buck only mule deer hunting season (no archery season) in Lynn County.
• Implement an experimental “antler-restriction” regulation for mule deer bucks in Briscoe, Childress, Cottle, Floyd, Hall, and Motley counties.
• Increase the possession limit from 2 to 3 times the daily bag limit for chachalaca, ring-necked pheasants, and squirrel.
• Shorten the Eastern spring turkey hunting season in Bowie, Cass, Fannin, Grayson, Jasper, Lamar, Marion, Nacogdoches, Newton, Panola, Polk, Red River, and Sabine by one week while retaining the current closing date of May 14. Staff also proposes closing the Eastern turkey season in Upshur and San Augustine counties.
• Increase the daily bag limits on northern pintails from 1 to 2 per day during the 2018-19 duck hunting season.
• Add dove hunting opportunity to the end of the late segment (December – January) of the North and Central Zones; and add a week to the early segment of the South Zone during the 2018-19 dove season.
Texas, your hunting-friendly ways are encouraging.
I want to hunt deer with an atlatl…
And I’m gonna whine about it until I get my way…
🤠
Opening up more of the smallish plots of public land to archery, shotguns (atlatl?) would be nice too.
🤠
Maybe they’ll do what they did here in PA and do all that and disregard public opinion, hold a biased survey which they wont release the sampling data on, and then not implement all of the changes that they said they would regarding Semi Autos for hunting….
I’m afraid more Fudds will have to go into the cold, cold ground before we get some sensible changes made to some of the PA hunting rules. You have hunters in our state who are so parochial that they clearly don’t know that practically the entire country allows semiautos for hunting and it hasn’t brought on the apocalypse. And they just assume that if they are allowed it’ll automatically lead to a bunch of knuckleheads with ARs and 30-round mags traipsing through the woods blasting away at anything that casts a shadow with bulk .223 ammo in the hopes of bagging a deer. Like the new rules couldn’t be written to mitigate that…
And don’t get me started on the Sunday hunting ban…
The Sunday hunting ban was put into effect so people wouldn’t hunt deer on their way to church.
Why the deer were on their way to church I’ll never know.
Ralph,
Good one, needed a chuckle 😲
Will think about it later when at semi-annual MD for check up😲
The Whitehouse.gov petition web site has a lot of pro-2nd Amendment petitions that need people to view and sign if possible. Please help save our 2nd Amendment rights. Look at these and decide which to sign. There are too many to link here.
A lot of anti-2nd Amendment petitions are post there also.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov
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