We are thinking of approaching our land owner about applying for MLDP. We would do all the work and pay the costs. What would be a good guess for total cost to go through this process for the first year and then the following years? Thanks fellas.

Not sure of the license fee but I do know it's not expensive at all. Really more time intensive filling out the application and doing population survey.

Under the knew format that started this year you can go without the survey and they issue tags based on county census for your area.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding, unless you're absolutely covered up in does there's no reason to go MLD. Depending on what they find on your place, they can say you have to take off 60 does, or they can say you can't take any doe at all, and everything in between regardless the county regs. I looked into it some 20 years ago and unless something's changed it was pretty much a one-way street, too. Hard to get out of once you're in it.

You make a valid argument there are WAY too many folks on the program for the wrong reasons.

That last part is incorrect though you can get out at anytime.

OK, so it changed. Good to know, thank you. When I was looking into it years ago, it took another survey showing the results they wanted to see to get out of it.

edited to add: And unless I'm imagining it, I think there was a 10 year minimum period, as well. It may have been a 5 year.

As of 2017-18 season there is 2 different MLDP programs. LO or agent will have to decide which way to go.

There is no cost to do the MLD program, I have been doing it for 8 years in Milam county, its a very easy process, i just have to send game cam pics to the biologist and then he emails me how every many doe and buck tags he thinks i should harvest, i also get to hunt till Feb 28th, as far as land owner he will send them a email.

MLD can be a good thing for those that can benefit their Ranch in a positive way such as culling large numbers of doe and unwanted buck genetics without increasing the number of hunters, by accepting MLD you also grant unconditional access to your Ranch to TPWD. This is something to think about!

This is all very interesting. We have some really nice deer, but are plagued by some very narrow racks on mature deer that are illegal to harvest due to antler restrictions. I think our buck to doe ratio is good, but I don't want the dominant narrow bucks breeding the doe. I have a 150" 3 1/2 yo buck who won't come close to entering a feed pen when an old 8 pt with 10" spread is near the feeder. The 8 pt has 6" bases and 12" G2's! Deer needs to go but is restricted. Thanks for the information.

Go to the TPW website. They have an estimator that will tell you what you might can expect in the way of permits. You type in the county the property is in, out line the property on the map, and it will tell you what you can expect based on acreage and county census of deer population. I have heard some say that the estimate is much lower than what you actually get but when I did it for one of my leases the estimator told me it wasn't worth it.

Wow thanks for the heads up. I ran the estimate and was really close to what I was expecting. I had no idea this was available.

Good advice to go to the TPWD site for the answers however that tells you how to go about applying...it does not answer the question of need.

Have you done a survey? If not, that is the place to start. Then you have validated data to go on. We do 2 surveys a year. 1 is done on the ground via vehicles and the other is flown. Outcomes are far better once you have the actual survey data from your property.

do you have to create an account to get to the estimator?

No

I agree a survey is extremely important, but this does give you an idea of what you might expect.

https://lma.tpwd.state.tx.us/tag-estimator

This is a good tool, but highly inaccurate in some areas of the state, when this became available we put our information in just to see what it said, the result was 5 doe tags and 1 buck tag. For the last 3 years we’ve received 30-38 doe tags and 8-12 buck tags.

I would be interested to have someone chime in that had previosly been on the old MLD program that went to the new MLDP program to see if there was any changes to number of permits they got.

I have MLD on 3 ranches and have had it since early 2000's. It's great. It's easy. And it is by far the best way to insure your hunters get a chance at the trophy bucks before they break tines off.

In October the mature bucks pattern much better than later. You'll need to have good harvest records for the past several years, and do census's.

If I was your landowner and you wanted to do it and offered to do the legwork I'd let you do it. Some landowners don't because they don't want hunters out there hunting for 5 months in a row.

The biologists I work with are good about giving me more tags if I tell them I need them.

Do leases typically lease for more when they are under MLDP? I may be shooting myself in the foot if I ask landowner for permission to pursue and then create a reason for the price to go up....:-)

After a period of time, yes they often become more expensive as the animal quality raises. Depends on the land owner though.

It certainly can lease for more over time. If I were you I’d offer to do all the leg work and coordination in exchange for a long term contract with a reasonable increase over time.

On our lease, we shoot less than what the MLDP estimator comes out as. Just depends. Just because we shoot less does not improve quality. Too many other variables like neighbors hunting, cows, moisture, browse available, etc.

therancher makes good points to the pro's of being an MLD ranch. You must weigh both to determine if this will benefit your whitetail population in the quality you could provide with such program, I was MLD 3 for 10 years, which gave me ample time to get my ratio in check first most and increase the strength in my native genetics through proper culling.