By Shannon Tompkins
July 8, 2017 Updated: July 9, 2017 1:22am

Texas offers some of the highest-quality and most diverse hunting opportunities in the nation - more turkey, feral hogs and white-tailed deer than any state; mule deer and pronghorn in the Panhandle and Trans-Pecos; javelina; alligators; and exotics such as nilgai antelope, aoudad sheep and axis deer.
Add to that, world-class wingshooting options - the largest wintering population of waterfowl in the Central Flyway, more mourning and white-winged doves than any other state and what unquestionably is the country's premier bobwhite and scaled quail habitat and populations.

Texas, though, also is a place where 97 percent of the land on which that game lives is privately owned, with hunting privileges almost wholly limited to family and friends or sold to the highest bidder. Simply scoring access to the state's rich hunting potential at a cost they can afford proves the most elusive quarry challenging a majority of Texas' million-plus licensed hunters.
But thousands of Texas hunters annually bag high-quality, low-cost hunts through the state's public hunting program. The "drawn hunts" portion of that long-running program offers hunters a chance to apply for drawings for permits that gives them access, usually for multiple consecutive days, to state-owned and managed lands and some private tracts for hunting specific game. Those hunts can and do rival anything found on even the best-managed private lands.

The 2017-18 "drawn hunts" portion of the Texas public hunting program kicked off last week, opening its wholly online operation that this year offers almost 9,500 permits for hunts in 50 categories. Application fees for most of the drawings are $3 or $10 per person, although a handful of drawings have no application fee. Most successful applicants pay a hunt fee of $80 to $130, depending on the hunt category and length of hunt, but several hunt categories do not charge a fee for successful applicants.
More permits available
The 9,470 permits offered in the 2017-18 "drawn hunt" program is an increase from the 8,978 permits issued last year, said Justin Dreibelbis, director of public hunting programs for the wildlife division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the agency responsible for the state's public hunting program.

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