Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 27, 1979)
Outdoors Deer hunt deadline Monday Prime state land open for hunting By LEE ROY LESCHPER JR. Outdoor Writer The whitetail buck glided through the South Texas brush thicket like the rapidly disappearing early-morning fog. Having fed during the crisp cold early morning, he was heading for heavy cover to bed down for the day. He was a big, mature Brush Country buck—big, fat and sleek, and sporting a heavy, taller-than- usual rack of antlers. He would dwarf the midget bucks most Texas hunters have come to ex pect in these days of over- populated deer range. He was also the biggest whitetail buck I’d ever seen while hunting. He walked through the mesquite scrub slowly but steadily, broad side only 30 yards from me, yet to tally unaware of me. He'd take a step or two, then stop to look to each side and test the crossing breeze with his nostrils. I eased the 6mm rifle to my shoulder and admired the buck’s tall, heavy antlers through the 4x scope. The crosshairs settled low on the chest, perfect for a quick heart-lung shot. Then I lowered the trusty deer- slayer and quietly walked on through the brush. The buck, now barely 20 yards away, seemed fro zen with surprise. He never did spook. Why would this self-respecting deer hunter pass up the best buck of his hunting career? Because I was hunting on one of the state's prime wildlife manage ment areas and my permit specified one javelina, but no trophy bucks. I never did catch a javelina napping during that two- day hunt, but I saw at least 15 trophy bucks as large or larger than that first old patriarch I’ve already described. Photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr. A fat whitetail buck, yet to grow his fall antlers, peers from a grassy hiding place on one of the Texas wildlife management areas. That hunt a half-dozen years ago convinced me that some of the finest hunting in Texas is available on the ten state management areas open to hunting. The state offers limited hunting on the areas just as it recommends hunting as a wildlife management tool through out the state. Six management areas — Chaparral, Engeling, Gene Howe, Kerr, Pat Mayse and Sierra Diablo — offer deer hunts. Permits for the deer hunts, and for javelina hunts on Chaparral and Black Gap, are allocated through a public drawing. A limited number of permits are is sued for each area and applica tions far outstrip the supply availa ble. But the potential opportunity is worth the “gamble”. The deadline for applications for the drawing for this year’s deer hunts is 5 p.m., Oct. 1. So if you want to apply for a deer hunt on one of the management areas, pick up an application form at the local Parks & Wildlife Department office, 3801 Old College Rd., and get it in the mail by this weekend. The state also opens each of the areas to hunting for a variety of small-game species. Quail and dove hunting is available, generally on an unlimited basis, for much of the fall on Black Gap, Chaparral, Eastern (Angelina), Gene Howe, Granger, Matador and Pat Mayse areas. The local P&WD office has complete information available on all these hunts. P&WD paints pelicans in population program AUSTIN—It’s not easy being a pelican. After being parodied for centuries in verse and cartoon because of their prodigious lower beak, now they’re being sprayed yellow and adorned with green wing streamers. Actually, only 50 white pelicans have been subjected to this treatment, and it’s being done for the birds’ own good. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists marked the 50 fledgling birds to start a five-year study designed to track the movement of the state’s only resident nesting colony of white peli- cans The colony nests each spring on South Bird Island about 12 miles south of Corpus Christi, within both the Padre Island National Seashore and a Natgional Audubon Society bird sanctury. The colony is the only one in North America utilizing coastal saltwater habitat for nesting, said biologist John Smith of Rockport. Smith said only about 200 breeding pairs of white pelicans nest on South Bird Island, and their fall and winter movements have been a mystery in the past because they mingle with populations which nest in the Northern U.S. and spend the summer on the Texas Gulf Coast. Persons sighting any of the yellow-dyed pelicans are asked to contact William C. Brownlee, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 4200 Smith School Road, Austin, TRx 78744. The information needed includes date of sighting, number of color-marked birds observed, location, presence and condition of green wing- streamers, activity and health of marked birds, number of other pelicans seen with marked birds and the observers name and ad dress. Commission sets special seasons to encourage antlerless hunting AUSTIN—Wildlife biologists agree that this year’s white-tailed deer hunting season in Texas should be outstanding. But the director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s wildlife division reminds hunters that favorable conditions this fall do not diminish the importance of har vesting anterless deer and spike bucks as well as “trophy bucks. “Too many animals for the amount of food and cover remains our number one problem with deer in Texas,” said director Ted Clark. “We had an unusual amount of rain this spring and summer, which provided excellent forage and, in turn, good reproduction and body condition for deer. However, we have to look at deer populations over the course of sev eral years instead of just one, and the fact remains that we’ve seen a continuing decline in deer quality over the past decade. Clark said this decline started in the Edwards Plateau 15 to 20 years ago. Smaller deer have become the rule. More recent biological studies have confirmed that the same type of decline is eroding deer quality in the South Texas brush cuontry, which in the past has been a mecca for hunters after trophy-quality bucks. “Our buck permit experiment in Webb County documented the fact that even in this prime deer hunting country, the average size and antler development has declined for sev eral year,” Clark said. “The buck permit study showed us that a buck permit system helps to more equit ably distribute the buck harvest, but it failed to solve the same old prob lem of too many deer.” The problem of low harvest rates for antlerless deer and spikes seems to be magnified in the brush country, he said. “The high cost of most hunting leases prompts hunters to concen trate on taking a trophy-sized buck, and many landowners have been reluctant to encourage the harvest of antlerless deer on their land for one reason or another,” Clark said. In an effort to encourage a more significant anterless deer harvest, the Parks and Wildlife Commission last April authorized an experimen tal “preseason” anterless season for whitetails in Dimmit, Maverick and Webb Counties in South Texas. The season will be Oct. 27 through Nov. 11. During the special season hunters may take anterless deer only by permit. Hunters may not take spike bucks during the early season. The department is offering spe cial “doe days” seasons in Bosque, Erath, Polk and Tyler Counties to encourage higher harvest of antler less deer. In those counties hunters will be allowed to take deer of either sex without an antlerless deer per mit during a four-day period begin ning Thanksgiving Day and ending the following Sunday. All anterless deer taken during the special season will have to be checked in at Parks and Wildlife Department check stations set up within each of the counties.