Day Lease

[lairdoglencairn]

Anyone know of any self guided day lease operations in Texas that don’t break the bank?

 

[Sam Colt]

For what species?

 

[Eastexasrick]

For what, flora or fauna. Hunting or bird watching. If hunting what species? We have lots of type 2 and WMA in Texas.

 

[lairdoglencairn]

Sorry, should have made that clear, whitetail!

 

[Eastexasrick]

You have several WMA in your area that show white tail hunting

TPWD: Wildlife Management Areas: Find a WMA

WMA Activities Search Results

tpwd.texas.gov

There is also a lot of type 2 hunting.

Search for an Area or Legal Game:Public Hunting in Texas

Plenty of excellent deer are taken every year on these public access areas.

All the private property day or weekend hunts for White Tail I know of are high $ and not self-guided.

 

[Lonesome Dove]

If you're new to Texas and you had the impression you could hunt for free well Texas doesn't do much of that. It's high dollar or make friends who own land. The open public land is a hard game. Personally I don't even consider it.

 

[lairdoglencairn]

If you're new to Texas and you had the impression you could hunt for free well Texas doesn't do much of that. It's high dollar or make friends who own land. The open public land is a hard game. Personally I don't even consider it.

Yeah I’ve never tried it and the thought scares me a little! I’ve lucked into a few hunts and I pay for a weekend hunt annually. The paid hunt is hit or miss, which was fine when it was cheap but it’s creeping up there in price and I’m just trying to figure out options.

 

[Hoji]

I will add that any “day hunts” that seem affordable are usually scams. You will be set up on a 10 acre piece of land that is devoid of deer

 

[jimbo]

If you're new to Texas and you had the impression you could hunt for free well Texas doesn't do much of that. It's high dollar or make friends who own land. The open public land is a hard game. Personally I don't even consider it.

Yeah, it's not like it used to be. It's all about $ now.

 

[Lonesome Dove]

Yeah, it's not like it used to be. It's all about $ now.

And for the land owners who cry Piggy Piggy Piggy but won't open their gates can just just suck it up.
I get all the hassles and stupidity from some hunters / shooters but there are steps that can be taken to avoid the damages to an extent.

 

[Hoji]

And for the land owners who cry Piggy Piggy Piggy but won't open their gates can just just suck it up.
I get all the hassles and stupidity from some hunters / shooters but there are steps that can be taken to avoid the damages to an extent.

Biggest one is not letting “hunters “ on their property and hiring professional trappers or spending a couple of grand and buying their own high tech traps.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, no one is crying about pigs except the California/Blue state transplants that bought 1-5 acre tracts near existing wildland areas.

 

[Texasjack]

I found a day lease some years ago that seemed like a pretty decent place. The owner had property that was in a canyon that was very difficult to get to. It bordered on a ranch with a high game fence. The owner had several deer blinds with nice feeders and had them loaded with corn. He told me that the deer were eating up all of his corn, so I should be able to shoot one pretty easily if I just hunted diligently. Well, I did that for the 3 days I paid for and I didn't see a single deer. (To be fair, the wind was blowing very hard the whole time and not much game was moving.) What I did see was more raccoons that I've ever seen in my life. They swarmed those feeders and ate every ounce of the corn, some of them hanging off the side and reaching in to turn the spinner. I shot one, scattering the others. Within 5 minutes, those little bandits were back climbing over that one's dead body to get back to eating corn. There were no pigs on the property and the deer never saw a grain of that corn.

The cabin on the place was an old pole barn converted to living space. It had electricity and propane for the stove. The propane system had a leak I could smell from quite a ways, so I avoided turning the tank on. There were several hundred mice inside the building and they ran around all night. There were also several small birds that got in some way. The owner claimed that Indians had used that area at one time and there was a part of the property that had produced a lot of arrowheads. He showed me an "oat patch" that he had sown and claimed that it really brought in the deer. There were at least 6 oat plants in the plot he had planted. I didn't say anything, figuring that he might be imagining the crop he described.

I did some searching around other advertised leases and, as someone else pointed out, there were some places that had 10 acres and supposedly could accommodate 12 hunters. One owner told me that his place was small, but the deer on the property next door would slip over onto his place and if you were just quick, you could shoot them before they got to the next property.

I was on a really good lease up until a couple of years ago. The guy who ran it died and the owner sold it off. The only places I've found that I could afford were overrun with wahoos that made the place too crazy to hunt. The one that I had for a year was timber property, so logging operations kept it torn up. One of the guys on the lease put GPS dog collars on his kids and let them ride all over the place on 4-wheelers. People ran pigs with dogs outside of deer season, so the deer all became nocturnal. I had great pictures on game cameras - at 3 a.m. Opening weekend the camping area on the place must have had 200 people in it. Wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), booze, kids, dogs, you name it. Opening day, they shot one deer - a pathetic doe that wouldn't dress out enough to make a sandwich. The guy who shot it swore that it was a buck that he saw and the little deer must have jumped up and took the bullet.

Not being able to find anything I can afford - either seasonal or day hunting - and getting old, I'm thinking seriously about selling off my hunting gear and giving it all up. Just another step in getting ready for the bone yard. Makes me incredibly sad.

 

[Hoji]

I found a day lease some years ago that seemed like a pretty decent place. The owner had property that was in a canyon that was very difficult to get to. It bordered on a ranch with a high game fence. The owner had several deer blinds with nice feeders and had them loaded with corn. He told me that the deer were eating up all of his corn, so I should be able to shoot one pretty easily if I just hunted diligently. Well, I did that for the 3 days I paid for and I didn't see a single deer. (To be fair, the wind was blowing very hard the whole time and not much game was moving.) What I did see was more raccoons that I've ever seen in my life. They swarmed those feeders and ate every ounce of the corn, some of them hanging off the side and reaching in to turn the spinner. I shot one, scattering the others. Within 5 minutes, those little bandits were back climbing over that one's dead body to get back to eating corn. There were no pigs on the property and the deer never saw a grain of that corn.

The cabin on the place was an old pole barn converted to living space. It had electricity and propane for the stove. The propane system had a leak I could smell from quite a ways, so I avoided turning the tank on. There were several hundred mice inside the building and they ran around all night. There were also several small birds that got in some way. The owner claimed that Indians had used that area at one time and there was a part of the property that had produced a lot of arrowheads. He showed me an "oat patch" that he had sown and claimed that it really brought in the deer. There were at least 6 oat plants in the plot he had planted. I didn't say anything, figuring that he might be imagining the crop he described.

I did some searching around other advertised leases and, as someone else pointed out, there were some places that had 10 acres and supposedly could accommodate 12 hunters. One owner told me that his place was small, but the deer on the property next door would slip over onto his place and if you were just quick, you could shoot them before they got to the next property.

I was on a really good lease up until a couple of years ago. The guy who ran it died and the owner sold it off. The only places I've found that I could afford were overrun with wahoos that made the place too crazy to hunt. The one that I had for a year was timber property, so logging operations kept it torn up. One of the guys on the lease put GPS dog collars on his kids and let them ride all over the place on 4-wheelers. People ran pigs with dogs outside of deer season, so the deer all became nocturnal. I had great pictures on game cameras - at 3 a.m. Opening weekend the camping area on the place must have had 200 people in it. Wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), booze, kids, dogs, you name it. Opening day, they shot one deer - a pathetic doe that wouldn't dress out enough to make a sandwich. The guy who shot it swore that it was a buck that he saw and the little deer must have jumped up and took the bullet.

Not being able to find anything I can afford - either seasonal or day hunting - and getting old, I'm thinking seriously about selling off my hunting gear and giving it all up. Just another step in getting ready for the bone yard. Makes me incredibly sad.

I hunt by invitation in Texas. Usually near end of regular season or spike and doe season to clean up lesser deer that paid hunters won’t shoot.

I have a 1200 acre lease in Arkansas with 9 other folks and it is $525 a year. Factor in a $350 out of state hunting license and it is still scads less expensive than hunting in Texas and the deer are bigger up here.

 

[lairdoglencairn]

I found a day lease some years ago that seemed like a pretty decent place. The owner had property that was in a canyon that was very difficult to get to. It bordered on a ranch with a high game fence. The owner had several deer blinds with nice feeders and had them loaded with corn. He told me that the deer were eating up all of his corn, so I should be able to shoot one pretty easily if I just hunted diligently. Well, I did that for the 3 days I paid for and I didn't see a single deer. (To be fair, the wind was blowing very hard the whole time and not much game was moving.) What I did see was more raccoons that I've ever seen in my life. They swarmed those feeders and ate every ounce of the corn, some of them hanging off the side and reaching in to turn the spinner. I shot one, scattering the others. Within 5 minutes, those little bandits were back climbing over that one's dead body to get back to eating corn. There were no pigs on the property and the deer never saw a grain of that corn.

The cabin on the place was an old pole barn converted to living space. It had electricity and propane for the stove. The propane system had a leak I could smell from quite a ways, so I avoided turning the tank on. There were several hundred mice inside the building and they ran around all night. There were also several small birds that got in some way. The owner claimed that Indians had used that area at one time and there was a part of the property that had produced a lot of arrowheads. He showed me an "oat patch" that he had sown and claimed that it really brought in the deer. There were at least 6 oat plants in the plot he had planted. I didn't say anything, figuring that he might be imagining the crop he described.

I did some searching around other advertised leases and, as someone else pointed out, there were some places that had 10 acres and supposedly could accommodate 12 hunters. One owner told me that his place was small, but the deer on the property next door would slip over onto his place and if you were just quick, you could shoot them before they got to the next property.

I was on a really good lease up until a couple of years ago. The guy who ran it died and the owner sold it off. The only places I've found that I could afford were overrun with wahoos that made the place too crazy to hunt. The one that I had for a year was timber property, so logging operations kept it torn up. One of the guys on the lease put GPS dog collars on his kids and let them ride all over the place on 4-wheelers. People ran pigs with dogs outside of deer season, so the deer all became nocturnal. I had great pictures on game cameras - at 3 a.m. Opening weekend the camping area on the place must have had 200 people in it. Wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), booze, kids, dogs, you name it. Opening day, they shot one deer - a pathetic doe that wouldn't dress out enough to make a sandwich. The guy who shot it swore that it was a buck that he saw and the little deer must have jumped up and took the bullet.

Not being able to find anything I can afford - either seasonal or day hunting - and getting old, I'm thinking seriously about selling off my hunting gear and giving it all up. Just another step in getting ready for the bone yard. Makes me incredibly sad.

Your day lease sounds a lot like my day lease! I’ve killed way more mice than I have deer but the landowner insists he’s covered up with great deer.

I hope you find something, makes me sad to hear you’re thinking about giving it up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Texasjack]

Back in my old pipeline days (1980s), we used to get invited to deer leases by vendors. Mostly the engineers got the invites, but I helped enough of them that I got swept along with them. Some of the leases were pretty cool. One of them was near Del Rio and it had been a target practice area for fighter planes training for WWII. There was 50 cal. brass everywhere and you could still see the lettering that the poor GIs that worked there had to make with rocks. (There would be a long line of rocks marking off an area and the words "No Pass", for example.) Shot some great deer (no record racks, but nice). Refused to shoot some javelina. (You can smell them long before you see them.) It was a lot of fun. Back then, a group of us would go in on a "poor boy" lease that didn't have a lot going for it, but we'd build stands and clear shooting lanes, and work together to make it usable. Again, a lot of fun.

 

[leVieux]

Try to ask smaller landowners. I always tell that I raised cattle when younger, and understand about gates, etc.
Also, I’ve learned to pick up hulls and drink cans. Just don’t take glass containers into the field. Report broken fences & livestock problems to the owners. If anyone allows you to hunt “free”, control the behavior of those with you, and try to take something, a small gift, for the landowner or resident manager. In the “olden days”, fresh milk, newspapers, & whiskey were popular. Today, try ice cream or adult beverages. Many ofur problems with landowners were caused by misbehavior of prior “hunters”.

 

[SIGO]

I tried public lands hunting in Georgia. When some yahoo shot my white pickup, two days before rifle season, while I was driving it on a recon, I decided public lands weren’t for me. I was hoping Texas would be different… I know, bit it never hurts to dream

 

[leVieux]

I tried public lands hunting in Georgia. When some yahoo shot my white pickup, two days before rifle season, while I was driving it on a recon, I decided public lands weren’t for me. I was hoping Texas would be different… I know, bit it never hurts to dream

The farther from large urban areas, the better.

 

[Lonesome Dove]

When you see that sprawling acreage all fenced in and that nice entrance or plural. Yeah you aint getting on that shit.
Look for hidden places, places that have junk in front of or close to the homes. Old tractors, farm equipment or cars and trucks.
Watch for pickups coming out of gated areas try to get their attention and conversate with them. Visit small eateries and talk to people rather than just eating. Old dudes have land and old dudes love to talk. Make a friend and see where it leads. Offer help and Never push anything they aren't interested in.
I learnt this as a pup. Thanks Dad!