The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission has been busy. If you saw this column last week, you know the Commission at its March meeting took action in a number of fishing areas that needed tweaking. It was also busy that week changing hunting regulations. The combined efforts of hunting and fishing changes were too much for one week’s column, so hunting regulations were held over to this week.
One of the changes benefitting hunters was extension of the mule deer season in 15 Southwestern Panhandle counties from nine to 16 days. The Commission has expanded hunting opportunities at every opportunity if the expansion didn’t adversely affect the health or populations of the resource species involved or created law enforcement difficulties. This and other changes will be on the TPWD website on May 13 and will appear in the TPW Outdoor Annual which will be available August 15. Be sure and check those sources for the county you hunt in to see if it was included.
Also concerning West Texas mule deer, antler restrictions were expanded to include 21 more counties. Restrictions have been successful in improving the age structure of white-tailed deer where they’ve been installed, and these restrictions are expected to have similar effects in designated counties.
Antler restrictions were also established for Terrill County in the Trans-Pecos.
For years, archery hunting was only permitted on the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. It gradually expanded to Collin. Dallas. Grayson, and Rockwall counties. Now, the Commission has established mandatory buck and antlerless deer harvest reporting in those counties during the whitetail season.
Presently, TPWD recognizes only two types of deer genders: buck and does. But sometimes it’s hard to tell which one you’re looking at through a scope on a foggy morning. Mistakes were sometimes made. My family was not immune to it. The problem often arose during the latter part of a season when bucks began dropping their antlers, as they do almost every year. At that time, bucks that have shed their antlers appear as “antlerless deer,” and may be shot by an otherwise law-abiding hunter.
Young bucks often have not developed antlers large enough to recognize. These “button bucks” or “nubbin bucks” are antlerless and were permitted to be tagged as “Antlerless deer.” But the “rub” (Sorry!) comes when bucks antlers are in “velvet.” So, the definition of “antlerless deer” was changed to include “… an antler protruding through the skin or a deer having antler growth in velvet greater than one inch.”
Also on the gender subject, hunters may leave deer heads at the harvest site to prevent spreading CWD and bring instead the skull cap with attached antlers or female anatomy parts.
Other changes include tagging, record keeping rules, and definitions of cold storage facilities, and closing the turkey season east of IH-35 in Ellis County.
Waterfowl changes include opening the West Zone goose season earlier, modifying merganser regs, and reauthorizing the requirement of possessing a sandhill crane permit while hunting them.
JJ
