Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Spring hunting season for turkey wraps up this month.

04— In Texas – the majority of the state – the western two-thirds of the state are going to be Rio Grande Turkey.

Robert Perez, upland game bird manager at Parks and Wildlife, says over the long term, Rio Grande turkeys are doing well in their range. Another sub-species is the Eastern Wild Turkey, which occurs in deep East Texas.

13— And it’s population, for many years, Texas Parks and Wildlife and partner –the National Wild Turkey Federation – worked very, very diligently to restore that bird. But there is a spring eastern season in certain east Texas counties only.

You can find those counties in the online version of Outdoor Annual on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website. Meantime, if you plan to take advantage of the waning days of spring turkey season…

13— To hunt any upland game bird, there’s the upland game bird stamp – a seven dollar stamp – required to hunt pheasant, quail, turkey, or chachalaca. So, to hunt those species, you buy that stamp, and then that goes toward the conservation of that bird.

Find license, hunting and management information for all game species on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series, funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuel.

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

This is Passport to Texas

Upland game bird hunters needn’t put up their rifles just yet. You still have about a week to get into the field and flush out a turkey…and you won’t be alone.

08— In Texas, what we’ve seen over the last several years – maybe over the last decade – is a continuing interest and growth in the number of spring turkey hunters.

Robert Perez is the upland game bird program leader at Parks and Wildlife. Perez says fall turkey hunting is often incidental to deer hunting.

05— Say, someone’s in their deer hunting blind, and they see some turkeys and decide, “Okay, I’m going to take a turkey.”

But, in springtime it’s all about the bird.

25— It’s more involved as far as calling a strutting male, or a male that’s going into breeding season. He’s going to be more colorful; he’s going to be looking for hens and responding to a hunter’s call. So, he’ll [the hunter] be imitating the calls of the hen, completely decked out in camouflage at the base of a tree or somewhere – trying to get that bird to get close enough to him to shoot. And it can be a very exhilarating, very exciting experience to successfully call in a bird. So, it’s quite addictive.

Log onto the Texas Parks and Wildlife website and find out when and where to hunt turkey this month. Just click on the hunting tab and then season dates by animal.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series, funded by your purchase of fishing and hunting equipment and motor boat fuel.

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

This is Passport to Texas

Black bears are returning to Texas after a long absence. No need for concern, though. While they aren’t cuddly teddy bears, they aren’t ferocious 800 pound grizzlies, either.

07—Black bears are much smaller animals. A very, very big black bear in Texas is 400 pounds.

They’re still big wild animals –emphasis on wild. Black bears keep a low profile, but Texas Parks and Wildlife mammalogist, Jonah Evans, says it is possible to come into contact with one because—well—they’re a lot like us.

13—Bears are a masterful generalist; this is where they can end up causing a problem with people, because they love human food. You know, humans are generalists, too. We can eat nuts and berries and meat and bears do as well.

Bears follow the food, making it wise when camping to keep your food at least 100 feet away from your sleeping area. However, if you do come face-to-face with one of these mammals…

24—What you want to watch out for is any kind of predatory behaviors, which are extremely rare. Most often what people think is threatening is a bear might stand up on its hind legs, growl, slam its feet down on the ground, pop its jaw – what we call ritualistic behaviors. And what that bear is doing is trying to communicate in as clear a way as it can that we are invading its territory, and just to back away.

Jonah Evans says attacks on people are rare, and primarily by solitary males, not females with cubs.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series and funds diverse conservation projects in Texas. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

This is Passport to Texas

Sometimes the best course of action is no action at all. At least that’s the stance Texas Parks and Wildlife botanist, Jackie Poole, takes when it comes to the endangered Tobusch Fishhook Cactus and the insect grubs that eat it.

09— And that’s a real problem, because one of these insects is only known to lay its eggs in Tobusch Fishhook Cactus; so, it’s basically as rare as the cactus.

Jackie says in the case of the Tobusch cactus – and its nemesis the Tobusch weevil – the best botanists can do is observe.

28—We’ve just been studying it for the last 10 or 15 years to see if there’s some kind of cyclical nature to this predator/prey relationship—where you have a big prey population buildup, like a lot of Tobusch fishhook cactus are out there, and then all of a sudden the insect population starts to boom because it has so many cactus to lay its eggs in. And then the cactus goes away and then it crashes, and then you just go through this cycle back and forth.

Other variables could also come into play to explain these fluctuations, making a hasty solution no solution at all. Patience is necessary.

13—That’s right. And that’s the main thing I think with endangered species. I often tell people to just to take a deep breath, because you just need to sit back and think about it and look at it and not think that the sky is falling.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series and funds diverse conservation projects in Texas.

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