Passport to Texas

Hunters in the field

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This is Passport to Texas

If you’re a hunter who enjoys a game of chance—apply for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Drawn Hunts. This year about 9,500 permits in 49 hunt categories are up for grabs… for drawn hunts on public and private lands. Apply online.

New this season: hunters may draw special permit hunts for exotic Sambar deer, as well as for white-tailed deer on the new Powderhorn Wildlife Management Area. Also new this year: a youth archery deer hunt through an e-Postcard drawing at Palmetto State Park.

You can also apply for hunts managed by other entities, including almost 2,200 deer and exotic hunt positions on four U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuges in Texas and 2,500 antlerless deer permits for U.S. Forest Service properties in East Texas.

Then there’s the program’s highly-popular private lands dove hunt permit category, which features almost 150 hunt slots at seven prime locations around the state. These permits are for dedicated hunt positions with quality dove hunting outfitters. Application fee is $10 with no additional hunt permit fees for this category.

Application deadlines are the first and fifteenth of each month. Entries cost $10; Youth Only category entries are always free. All applications, fee payments and permit issuance is handled electronically.

Find more information and view interactive maps on the Texas Parks and Wildlife drawn hunts webpage.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Texas Drawn Hunts.

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This is Passport to Texas

It’s time to put in for drawn hunts. The drawn hunts system is online only; adult application fees are $3 per adult, except Private Lands and Guided Hunt categories, which are $10. No application or permit fees for youth applicants or supervising adults on Youth Only hunts.

16—Our applications are not all at one time; they’re actually distributed through the month of August into January. We have regular gun/deer in September, and feral hog and exotics…and some of the later hunts for feral hog and spring turkey will actually go into December and January.

Kelly Edmiston, public hunting coordinator, says selection notification will be faster than ever.

20— We will probably be able to draw one to three business days after a deadline because we’re not having to rely on data and mail and late arriving applications. Before you had to get it here by 5 o’clock the day of the deadline. Now, because it’s online, you’ll basically have until that last day – probably up until 11:59 [p.m.]—to be able to submit an application.

Preference points of the past are loyalty points today.

22— You can now apply more than once within a category. Your loyalty points will still apply to each application you submit in that category equally. So, if you have five preference points for a
gun/deer either sex category, and you submit three gun/deer either sex applications, each at a different area, you’re going to get five points on each of your three.

Find a full list of the applications deadlines on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.