Hey guys,if anyone has any info or input on the quality and safety of hunting near Zapata I would greatly like to hear about it.My Son and some friends are looking at a little low fence place among some larger ranches to deer hunt on.

Really depends on the location of it. Some place do not have many deer. Past hunting pressure will tell if the numbers are low. Can be areas of bad poaching in that county also. How many acres on the lease?

I am not for sure of the size of it but I think its less than 200 acres.I know that they wont be able to all be there at the same time and all are very conservative as far as the amount of deer taken.I told my Son that it would be great if they could get with the surrounding property managers to be on the same page as them.

Honestly you will not have many deer on the place with the low deer densities in South Texas. You could have from 7-8 deer( deer to 25-30 acres is normal in deep South Texas) to as high as 20 deer(very high end with a deer to 10 acres). If your buck to doe ratio is 1 buck per 2 does then you are not going to have a lot of deer to choose from, 1-2 bucks to as many as 4-6 in all of the age classes. IMO that would be a one gun lease tops no matter how management minded the hunters are in your group or on the neighbors. A lot of South Texas is one gun to 250-600 acres. It is not in an old subdivision is it?

I havent gotten any directions to it yet but I am in the same opinion as you on it just being too small.I personally am used to hunting fairly big places and I would be bored watching the same rocks all the time.I appreciate your opinion and was hoping you would respond.I will pass the info along.Thanks

It could be a great place if it is next to the right ranch. But if it was leased in the past and not lease now, that would indicate a problem to me. Might be worth looking at since it is very green and wet down there so any tracks will be fresh. Not every inch of South Texas has great deer either. I have land in northern Live Oak County and you will hard pressed to find a deer 120+ and even more rare to see one over 130+. I have never seen but one deer that I thought was that big in my lifetime. It just an area of old farmland in regrowth that was always hunted very hard. Won't have to go but a couple of miles to the west or northwest and you could find those type deer in numbers.

This was my thoughts.

sw53, my family and I have hunted a family lease for the past 36 years on the Zapata/Webb county line and have been pleased with the numbers and quality of deer throughout. Most years, we see an abundance of 120-140" class deer with the occasional larger, 150"+ and sometimes larger, 160"+. As has been said, it will greatly depend on the hunting pressure and management practices around you. Fortunately we are surrounded by multi-thousand acre places which are fairly lightly hunted. Lots of hogs and varmints down there as well. We commonly see between 10-20 deer per sitting and often times, 5+ bucks. Scout it out good luck to you.

It was leased last year by some co-workers of my Son"s that are transfering out of Tx.so we do have one pic of a pretty nice buck taken last year.I would say it scored near or above 140.I will be down that way soon and hope that we can possibly go and at least check it out.It may be a sleeper.Thanks again.