Texas has the best hunting. Here's why

This article was first published in my email newsletter in November of 2024. I've added it to my website, because I think the information is useful in general, not just for the month it was published. If you'd like to keep up with the latest hunting information, including my open dates and available hunts, you can subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of this page.

There are a lot of states with trophy game hunting, but Texas is different from the others. There are physical and geographical differences, of course, but the single biggest difference is land ownership.

If you’re deciding where to hunt, it’s important to understand how all those differences play out, and that’s what I’m going to talk about here.

LAND OWNERSHIP MAKES A DIFFERENCE

As I said, land ownership is the biggest difference.

In the Western states, ninety percent or more of hunting land is publicly owned. Here in Texas, the situation is reversed. In Texas, more than ninety-five percent of hunting land is privately owned.

Ownership has a huge impact on hunting.

The state and federal agencies responsible for managing public lands have a variety of priorities they have to balance. One of those priorities is hunting, but it’s only one out of many concerns those agencies have to take into account. They’re also responsible for maintaining biodiversity, protecting endangered species, and ensuring the health of entire ecosystems. Sometimes those other goals can directly conflict with the best interests of hunters.

Private landowners in Texas, on the other hand, are focused on hunting. They sell access to their land to hunters, so providing a great hunting experience is a top priority, and they manage their property and their game populations with that in mind.

In general, I’d say that these are the primary differences you’ll see when comparing private land hunting in Texas to public land hunting in the Western states:

1. It’s a lot easier to schedule a hunt in Texas.  

2. Although there’s a lot of variability based on the ranch you hunt, generally speaking, hunting is physically easier in Texas. 
   

3. You’ll get a lot more shot opportunities in Texas. 
   

4. You can get higher-quality trophies in Texas. 
   

5. There are a lot more types of game available in Texas. 
   

6. Hunting is open year-round for at least some species; you’re not limited by season.

Let me take each one of those things in turn.

IT'S EASIER TO SCHEDULE A HUNT IN TEXAS

State agencies in the West have an obligation to make hunting available to the public at large. They can’t really control demand by raising prices for their licenses and tags, so they do it by running a draw or a lottery. To hunt on public land, you need to enter a draw to get a tag. Because there’s a lot of demand and a limit to the number of available tags, you can enter the draw year after year after year and never get a hunt. I know people who have been trying for twenty or thirty years. It can be pretty frustrating.

In Texas, on the other hand, if you can pay the price, you can schedule a hunt.

Hunting is still regulated by the state, but, in terms of access, it’s really regulated by landowners. If you want to hunt on a piece of property, you need to pay for the privilege, either directly to the owner or through an outfitter like me.

Yes, that makes hunting more expensive, but it also makes it easier to get a slot.

The best ranches and the best outfitters are usually booked a year or more in advance, but that’s a heck of a lot better than waiting twenty years and still not getting your hunt. And if you really want to get a hunt in right away, some less-challenging put-and-take ranches can fit you in sooner than I can.

(For that matter, sometimes I get a last-minute cancellation. When that happens, I’ll let you know and give you a shot at it. Just a few weeks ago, I had that happen with an aoudad hunt. A hunter scheduled for Sunday suddenly had to cancel on Friday. I announced the availability of that hunt in an email newsletter, and it was booked within a few hours.)

HUNTING IS EASIER IN TEXAS

There’s a lot of variation from ranch to ranch, but generally speaking, hunts are less physically demanding in Texas.

The biggest reason is roads.

My most demanding hunts are in West Texas. The ranches there are huge, and the terrain is mountainous and rugged. Comparable hunting acreage in the West would require that you backpack in, just to get close to the game. There aren’t a lot of roads in the backcountry on that public land, and trophies don’t usually do you the favor of hanging out around the few roads that exist.

In my West Texas ranches, on the other hand, we can use roads to get to the farthest reaches of the property. That’s because the landowners need roads for their other businesses, either to help them move their cattle to different pasture land or to provide access for heavy equipment to oil and gas rigs.

These roads are rough. Basically, they’re just cleared, leveled and covered in caliche stone. But they’re all-weather, and they do the job. Because of my advance scouting, we’ll know the general area where we can find the animals we’re hunting, and we can drive out there in my buggy. There’s no need to backpack in. By the time we start hiking, we’re already hunting.

Another thing that makes Texas hunts easier is the accommodations. On my hunts, you won’t be living in a tent camp. After a day of hunting, we’ll return to the ranch house, relax, have a good dinner and a drink or two, and then go to our rooms to catch some sleep in a real bed.

I mentioned earlier that there’s a lot of variation from ranch to ranch in terms of the physical challenge.

Some ranches design their hunting to be easy. That’s especially true with smaller, high fence, put-and-take operations in the Hill Country. Those ranches have animals they’ve purchased from breeders or from other ranches — animals that are not naturally wary of humans — and they don’t have a lot of room to evade hunters. In fact, many of those ranches even set up feeding stations and blinds, making the hunts really easy.

That’s not the kind of hunting I do, but there’s nothing wrong with it. For people with limited mobility, those ranches can be a great option.

And since I’m talking about those high fence ranches, I want to take a minute to clear up a big myth about Texas hunting. A lot of hunters think that all the hunting in Texas is high-fence hunting. That is absolutely not the case. I suspect this misconception may be due to the fact that the high fence put-and-take ranches I’ve described above are operations that do a big volume, so that’s the kind of Texas hunting that a lot of people have experienced.

But that’s not the kind of hunting you’ll get with me.

In West Texas, my half million acres is all free range and low fence. Even in the Hill Country, where my ranches are high fence, the ranches are so big that it doesn’t really matter. If you’re hunting eleven square miles of land, do you really care that there’s a high fence somewhere out there on the boundary?

YOU'LL GET MORE AND BETTER SHOT OPPORTUNITIES IN TEXAS

Generally speaking, you’ll get a lot more shot opportunities in Texas than you’ll get on public land in the West, and you’ll get better trophies.

That’s because Texas landowners manage their game animal populations specifically for hunting. Hunting isn’t just one priority that’s being balanced against a lot of others. The result is a higher density of game animals and a better trophy quality.

Of course, not every landowner is a good manager. Some landowners over-hunt their properties and don’t effectively restrict the age of animals that can be taken.

But that’s not how it works on the ranches I hunt. I work with the landowners to limit the number of hunts each year and to prevent the killing of immature animals.

TEXAS HAS MORE TYPES OF GAME ANIMALS, AND YOU CAN HUNT YEAR-ROUND

Unlike in the Western states, hunting here in Texas is truly year-round, and we offer a lot of game that isn’t available elsewhere — our so-called ‘exotic’ (non-native) species.

In the mid-20th century, Texas ranchers started importing exotic game animals from Africa, Asia, and Europe, turning their land into hunting preserves. The introduction of exotics like axis deer, blackbuck antelope, nilgai, fallow deer, and oryx began in earnest around the 1930s, gaining popularity through the 1950s and beyond.

Ranchers saw exotics as a way to diversify income and offer unique hunting opportunities beyond native species like whitetail deer. The Texas climate and varied landscape — from dense woodlands to open grasslands — provided ideal habitats for many exotic species. As a result, these animals often thrived in Texas, sometimes even out-competing native species. Today, Texas has the largest population of exotic game animals in the U.S., with an estimated 125 different species found on private ranches across the state.

Hunting of these non-native animals isn’t regulated by Texas hunting laws, so they can be hunted year round. It’s up to the landowner.

That kind of thing isn’t going to happen on public land in the West, where these animals would be considered invasive.

TEXAS HAS A GEOGRAPHIC ADVANTAGE

There’s another advantage that Texas has over the Western states, one that’s dependent on geography, not land ownership.

While West Texas does have mountains, they’re nothing like the mountains you’ll find in the Western states. That means we don’t experience either migration or winter kill.

In the Western states, the snow line goes up and down the mountain during the year, depending on the season. Some animals — including elk and mule deer — like to stay closer to that snow line. They like to follow the line up in the spring, getting away from the summer heat and finding wind to keep the insects off, but then, when the weather cools off and the snow line moves downward, they need to move, too, because their food sources will die back or be covered by snow.

The result is annual migrations up and down the mountains, driven by the weather. You can’t be sure from year to year and season to season exactly where the mule deer are going to be. It depends on this year’s weather. That makes the hunt harder.

We don’t have that kind of migration in Texas. Our populations of game animals stay in a reasonably limited range.

In addition, out West during really harsh winters, a lot of game animals can be killed off. That can impact the density and quality of hunts in the next season (and beyond). We rarely get winter kills here in Texas.

ADDING IT ALL UP

The bottom line is that there are a lot of good reasons to pick Texas for your hunt.

First, you’ll be able to get a hunt scheduled. Yes, it will cost more than a Western hunt, but a cheap hunt doesn’t mean much if you can’t get one at all.

Second, the hunting is easier. You’ll spend your time stalking, not packing in your gear. You’ll sleep in a bed and eat good food. And, even in Texas, there’s a big range of options in terms of difficulty. My West Texas aoudad hunts are physically demanding. At the other extreme, there are some ranches (not mine) that will just put you in a blind overlooking a feeder.

Third, you’ll have more shot opportunities and better trophies. The ranches I hunt are managed for exactly that result.

Fourth, you can hunt year-round and bag some animals you couldn’t get anywhere else in the U.S.

When you get right down to it, there’s no better place to hunt anywhere in the U.S. than right here in Texas. I’d like to show you.