Archery

Outdoor Annual, Means and Methods and Hunting Endorsements

• Archery equipment during the archery-only season, on an archery endorsement.

• Arrow guns during the archery season.

Firearms

Outdoor Annual, Means and Methods

• Any legal firearm, with no magazine capacity restriction.
• Suppressors, on any wildlife resource.
• Pre-charged pneumatic air guns and arrow guns meeting the calibre, weight and energy minimums.

• Rimfire ammunition of any calibre, for white-tailed deer.
• Fully automatic firearms.

Muzzleloader

Outdoor Annual, Means and Methods

• Any firearm designed so that the projectile and powder can be loaded only through the muzzle, during the muzzleloader season.

• A cap-and-ball firearm whose powder and ball load into a cylinder — that is not a muzzleloader.

Legal Shooting Hours

Outdoor Annual, Definitions — "Hunting Hours"

Half an hour before official sunrise to half an hour after official sunset.

Fluorescent Orange

Outdoor Annual, which prints no hunter orange requirement

The Outdoor Annual prints no hunter-orange requirement anywhere in its hunting regulations — on private land there is none. Individual public hunting lands may impose their own, so read the area's own rules before hunting one.

Sundays

Outdoor Annual, which prints no Sunday exception for deer

Texas sets no Sunday restriction on deer hunting: every season runs each day it is open.

Bag limits

Outdoor Annual, county pages

• The bag limit is set county by county and counts all seasons combined. Six different limits are in force across the 252 counties with a season.
• A hundred and seventeen counties add an antler restriction: two legal bucks, only one of which may have an inside spread of 13 inches or greater.
• A legal buck under that restriction is one with at least one unbranched antler, or an inside spread of 13 inches or greater.
• Where MLDP buck or antlerless tags have been issued for a property, harvest there is by MLDP tag only, and the landowner supplies the tags.

Means and methods

Outdoor Annual, Means and Methods

• Baiting is legal for game animals on private land — it is unlawful on most public property.
• Calling devices, including electronic and amplified calls, and decoys are legal for game animals.
• Rimfire ammunition of any calibre may not be used for white-tailed deer.
• There is no magazine capacity restriction, and suppressors are legal for any wildlife resource.
• Pre-charged pneumatic air guns and arrow guns may be used for deer, firing at least .30 calibre and 150 grains at 800 feet per second or 215 foot-pounds — but arrow guns may not be used during the archery season.

Chronic wasting disease

Outdoor Annual, After Harvesting a Deer or Pronghorn

TPWD designates CWD zones. In zones with mandatory testing, the intact unfrozen head of any white-tailed or mule deer must be presented at a TPWD check station within 48 hours of harvest. Zones may be established anywhere in the state without prior notice.

Outdoor Annual, After Harvesting a Deer or Pronghorn

Every deer must be reported immediately after harvest, before the deer is field dressed or moved.

• Fill out the hunting licence tag or permit and cut out the dates before field dressing or moving the deer
• Complete the Hunting License Harvest Log legibly, for white-tailed deer taken on a licence tag
• Proof of sex must accompany the deer to its final destination
• In a CWD zone with mandatory testing, present the intact unfrozen head at a TPWD check station within 48 hours

• El Paso and Hudspeth counties have no white-tailed deer season and are not in the unit list, so a pin there finds no county. That is correct: 252 of Texas's 254 counties have a season.
• Many counties open antlerless deer to a hunting licence tag only during a designated stretch of the general season — commonly the first three weeks of November, and in four counties a different stretch either side of Highway 59. This app shows the general season as either-sex throughout and names the restriction in the notes; read the county's own page before filling a doe tag in November or December.
• The Managed Lands Deer Program changes the rules on a property rather than in a county: where MLDP buck or antlerless tags have been issued, harvest is by MLDP tag only and the season dates may differ from the county's. None of that is carried here.
• The special late season is shown as antlerless-only because that is the closer of the two labels this app has, but the rule is "antlerless deer and unbranched antlered bucks" — a spike buck is legal, a branched one is not. The season's own note says so.
• Texas requires no hunter orange for deer, and the Outdoor Annual prints none. Public hunting lands may impose their own; check the area.
• TPWD's own rut study gives peak breeding dates by ecological region, and its sixteen study areas span nearly three months: 30 September and 31 October in the Gulf Prairies and Marshes, 10 and 11 November in the Post Oak Savannah, 12 and 22 November in the Pineywoods, 15 and 17 November in the Cross Timbers, 7 and 24 November and 5 December across the Edwards Plateau, 20 November and 3 December in the Rolling Plains, 8 December in the Trans-Pecos, and 16 and 24 December in the South Texas Plains, which the department calls the latest rut in the state. The rut meter carries a single statewide 15 November, because TPWD publishes those peaks against ecological regions and Texas hunts its deer by county — there is no published county-to-region list to hang them on, and guessing one would put a Gulf Prairies county on a South Texas date. In the far south and the Trans-Pecos the real peak is four to six weeks behind what the meter shows.
• Texas publishes no open statewide parcel service, so there are no property lines on the map here.

TPWD

1-800-792-1112

Public hunting programme

(800) 792-1112 menu 5 selection 1, or (512) 389-4505

Licences

tpwd.texas.gov/business/licenses/online_sales