too most serious deer hunters, its common knowledge that until the 70's, much of the state had little to know deer. Re-stocking efforts by TPWD and the eradication of screw worms boosted the populations.

Much of the Deer in East Texas and Central Texas came from the King ranch, A lot of the deer on the Coastal Prairie came from Louisiana (Avery island, home of tabasco sauce).

I recently read an article that really shed light on just how decimated the populations were in other areas of the country and where they restocked their deer from. Georgia was pretty much devoid of deer. They re-stocked with deer from North Carolina. Alabama, which became famous for its "deer a day" bag limit, received deer from Michigan. Florida received deer from South Carolina. Mississippi stocked deer from Wisconsin as well as 12 other southern states.


pretty interesting to read, especially with all that's going on with CWD and bringing in "northern" genetics" to breed for bigger deer

I have never heard this. Thanks for sharing..
Now I've got something to read up on.

I moved here to Bandera in 1963. At that time there were a lot of deer. Screw worm eradication started after that and then there were even more deer. Screw worm eradication to me has been the main reason for the increase in deer numbers. Plus it made Sheep, Goat and cattle raisers lives a lot easier.

a book i read about east Texas settlement
had a part where the author talks of when
a rail car of deer was brought through a
town and a young boy asked what those things
were in the stock car, and was told they
were deer. the boy had never seen or heard
of any deer because they'd long since been
killed out for food before his time

Where we hunt in north Texas, locals never saw a deer until 35 years ago. Out west you could not shoot a doe 10 years ago and now you can shoot 5.

I lived in Nocona in the 50's - 60's. My grandparents had a farm out west of there and my mothers family had land by St. Jo. There wasn't any deer or turkeys to be seen anywhere around there. I grew up hunting all over Montague county. There were rabbits, squirrel, quail, and dove. Things have sure changed since then. Today deer and turkey everywhere and no quail. The only deer I remember seeing back then was when we were fishing on Hagerman out of Pottsboro.

I bet many of us remember needing "doe permits" to shoot does. Hunting has come a long way

Yeah, I remember needing doe permits. Funny,I was just thinking that.

I bet some of us even remember when you had to have "x" amount of acres per buck to kill one in certain areas of South Texas.

I recall my dad talking about hunting bucks only because there were no doe hunting allowed. This was around central Texas as he hunted mainly Burnet, Llano and Mason counties. He had a small 300-400 acre lease where he would take clients hunting on the backside of the old Fitzsimons Herford Ranch between Llano and Lake Buchanan (rumored to be 50-60k acres) ... anyway, back in the late 50s or early 60s, the state opened up doe permits issued to the landowners, so many per acre. The Fitzsimons ranch ran an ad in the Austin paper inviting hunters to come kill all the does off the ranch one weekend. They lined up about 100-200 yards apart along hwy 29 and took off walking to the north, a deer drive of sorts, shooting every doe they saw.

I started hunting in 1963 and does were by landowner issued permits only.