Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Later this month a handful of lucky sportsman will participate in a Texas Parks and Wildlife special permit hunt for alligators in South Texas at the Daughtrey Wildlife Management Area, Choke Canyon Reservoir.

:09—By conducting these hunts, we can collect harvest data and learn more about this species which will, in turn, help us to manage the species and to conserve it.

Chris Mostyn is a wildlife biologist at the Daughtrey, a 44-hundred acre WMA that surrounds the Choke Canyon Reservoir.

:16—Choke Canyon reservoir is public water, and it is unlawful for anyone to use firearms or harvest alligators in open waters by any means…unless under the special permit that we use to harvest alligators through Parks and Wildlife at the Daughtrey.

Information on drawn hunts is available in a publication called Special Drawing and Regular Permit Hunting Opportunities.

:24—There’s application cards in the back for the alligator hunt category hunt here at the Daughtrey. You simply just need to apply and send the application card with the appropriate fees to TPW where each hunter will be put into a computerized random selection process. And if you are selected, you will be able to participate in the alligator hunts.

Although the drawing for this opportunity is over, you can apply for other alligator hunts that happen later in the year at other WMAs.

That’s our show…with support from the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program… For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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This is Passport to Texas

You need to be a shooter before you become a hunter.

:12—Shooting sports comes first. Go to a shooting range and get some experience shooting. Nobody wants to cripple an animal. So, being proficient with a firearm becomes very important, and comes before the actual hunt.

Ty Harris is hunter education volunteer with Parks and Wildlife.

:15—The biggest thing to understand about the shooting sports is that it’s a big responsibility builder, and don’t be afraid to get your kids started very young. It’s not unheard of to have seven, eight and nine-year-old shooters come out and perform very well, in sporting clays or any of the shooting sports.

I witnessed a new shooter in the making. By moving the gun and the shooter together Harris helped newbie, Christina Huth, assume a safe and proper shooting stance.

:25—Don’t let go. Hang onto it. Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Stop. Right there’s your shooting stance. So now, wherever the target goes, you go. Head, arm, gun, everything moves together. Okay? Up, down, right, left. Head never comes off. Keep both eyes open. That’s all there is to it. (That’s so easy). It is. And when you see the orange thing flying, shoot it. (When do I get to shoot?) Right now. (Alright.[gunshot]). That’ll break it every time. (I love it).

By the way, Christina has since become a Texas game warden, stationed in Val Verde County.

That’s our show for today…with support from the Wildlife Restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting opportunities in Texas …

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

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This is Passport to Texas

I met Ty Harris, a volunteer with Parks and Wildlife’s Hunter Education program, at the five stand sporting clays field at the Parrie Haynes Ranch, near Killeen.

:12—And it’s a type of shooting game. There are numerous games. But in this type of shooting game you basically have five stations. And from the station, you’ll be presented a series of targets. Some right to left, some incoming.

Clays are launched remotely from each location, including from atop a huge wooden structure behind the shooters.

:07—This structure is called a tower shot. So it throws the clay from over your head and behind you; so it’s a very challenging target.

Harris says sporting clays offer real hunting situations.

:10—For a bird hunter, you never know where the birds are going to be coming from. So sporting clays provide that uncertainty, yet, you still have the anticipation that you know a bird is coming.

The shooting sports, says Harris, should come before you ever go into the field, gun in hand, to hunt.

:15—Before we become hunters, we are shooters. We can’t hunt if we don’t know how to shoot. So, a situation like this, where we can provide that shooting experience in a safe environment, just really lends itself to hunting.

That’s our show for today…with support from the Wildlife Restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting opportunities in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

To hunt ducks, you need to know where to find them.

People know where ducks typically are—along the coastal zone, maybe in the playa lake region of the Panhandle—but oftentimes they don’t think about these other places.

And those other places might surprise you, says Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife.

Had we not been surveying places like the Blackland Prairies and Rolling Plains, people wouldn’t understand that there’s a large number of ducks in Texas on the stock tanks out in the central part of Texas. Sometimes we’ll see upwards of 800-thousand birds there. Those numbers actually, a lot of times, rival the numbers of ducks we count on the coast.

Biologists are presently conducting the annual mid-winter waterfowl survey, where they visually count and ID birds throughout the entire state, in a small plane 150 feet overhead. It helps them understand the birds’ movement, which they discovered is weather dependent.

You get conditions that are dry on the coast, but you get a hurricane that pushes a lot of water up on that brush country, puts a lot of water—guess what—a lot of ducks show up there….that otherwise people wouldn’t know they’re there. They say, well, the ducks aren’t here. Well, yeah they are. They just moved. Habitat conditions forced them into other areas. So, it gives us the ability to better understand where do birds go under different circumstances.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

It’s time for the annual mid-winter survey of waterfowl.

Mid-winter surveys are pretty much a snapshot in time that states conduct every year the first week in January.

Dave Morrison is waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife. He says the survey gives biologists an idea of how many of what species are “on the landscape.”

And, what it does for Texas, it gives us a comparison of what Texas has within the Central Flyway. Typically, when we do the mid-winter surveys, compared to the other nine states, seventy percent of the ducks are in Texas during that snapshot in time.

And this is good news for Texas duck hunters, because the survey can tell them where the ducks are.

It provides an opportunity for us, when people start questioning—well, there’s no ducks in Texas—well, we can say ‘no…here’s what it shows.” Because our surveys are designed to be able to detect changes over time. So, if there was a significant decline in numbers of ducks, we’d see it. But, by and large, we’d say, ‘well, they may not be where you’re at, but we know where they’re at. They’re over here.’

See what I mean? What factor moves ducks to unexpected locations? Find out tomorrow.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

Mid-winter Waterfowl Survery, 1 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download