All the camp sites on Lake Travis are closed. We moved to a motel.

Scouting tomorrow. If anyone else is pm me and we can compare notes. I'm in unit 9.

Scouted Unit 9 yesterday. The area is similar to Sovervell, Hood, Palo Pinto and Erath Counties. Hilly, rocky, mixed juniper/cedar and live oak. Early scouting was not producing any patterns but I finally figured out the travel routes. I'm not sure if they are day or night travel. Found one rub. No scrapes. found one doe bed and busted a shooter buck on the way back to the truck. Our unit is surrounded by NWR on three sides. I had initially attempted to scout the borders looking for crossing points. There were no fences between our unit and the rest of the NWR so I had to regroup and figure out a different scouting strategy. I went to soft areas without rock and finally found sign. It doesn't appear there is a dominate food source so I expect they will move from bedding to water to browse back to bedding. Unless of course the rut kicks in before then. There didn't appear to be rut activity, no buck tracks crossing other tracks. There are high areas with tree cover from which we can glass the surrounding areas. I've picked out some within shooting distance of the bedding areas that we will sit the first evening and morning, watching for deer patterns and plan our attack from there. The live oaks are conducive to tree stands and the juniper/cedar stands are conducive to ground blinds but I expect we won't need the ground blinds (we are taking them anyway). The areas I would set up in a ground blind are higher elevation and the setup process would be exposed. I think we will work up the the tree line set down next to a tree and glass from there. I think that will be less disruptive. Our unit runs north/south with our only access being from the south. Current projections are for south winds so we will have to figure out the approach.

Good luck to all hunting the youth weekend. I see some of you on the 16th.

Anyone have reports from youth weekend? I was wondering how it went. For those hunting this weekend, WU forecast for the Lago Vista area shows temps ranging from the low 40s to the high 60s Fri and Sat with SSW winds 4-5. Sunday shows low 50s to low 60s with NNE winds of 8. WU has another station in Bertram that my be closer to where you are hunting.

Leaving tomorrow for the hunt this weekend. Anyone else have this hunt?

Sorry it took till today to post an updated on our youth hunting experience at Balcones Canyonland. Where to start, First off we stayed at Idyll Glen RV Park. which is about 10 min away from the head quarters where the orientation was.
In my opinion it was an excellent RV camp and I have no complaints. We got there Thursday and left Sunday at 12:00pm checkout.Total price was $120.00@ $40.00 per night.Cash,check or money order only. No debit/credit cards excepted. What was the killer was the Toll booths,From Houston area to Balcones Canyonland( around 10 of them)."Texas Dot tag or we'll mail you the bill" was their slogan on all the toll booth signs. I guess its no more throwing your change in a basket or a live person to take your money.

In near by town called Jones town there is an Ace hardware,Lowes grocery store, Sonic and a couple other restaurants.You have to do a hunt for diesel.

As far as the youth hunt goes, it was hard hunting...and we didn't see any deere movement the whole time on the WMA. If there was any deer around we couldn't see them for the 3 foot tall blue stem that surrounded our hunt area. We hunted in a pop up blind,and should have had a tree stand.

When we ended the hunt at 10:30 Sunday ,I looked over the hunt log and no one on our unit killed anything. As far as i know there was only a small nub buck and a doe seen.

I really am baffled as to what the food consumption for deer is. I mostly seen Post oak trees and cedar. Didn't see any acorns.

I think this hunt would have been better if they allowed you to throw corn out. As far as unit 7 terrain goes,you really need to have 4 wheel drive cause 2 wheel is not gonna get you up the climbs. There were times I was kinda nervous my 4x4 was gonna let me down.It wasn't muddy just loose gravel and steep.

The Park Staff will let you use ATV or any off road vehicle to get you to and from your stand, due to the rain they had.They stress that if you get stuck, they are not allowed to pull you out.

You are given a list of about 30 wrecker services in your hunt area that you can call to bail you out of the pickle your in when your stuck.

Use your GPS/Google maps cause I hate to say it but I got lost. I was a D1 idiot{Division 1}. They gave us a map and on this map was Xs that marked the cones from Letter A to Letter J. After the evening hunt we left at 5:30 to go to the entrance gate. I took a wrong road/trail and I had a heck of a time trying to figure out the right road to get back on. Needless to say I found Cow Creek Road entrance gate at 7:15pm. I didn't make that mistake a second time.

I think I pretty well covered everything. I email the Federal Game Warden(Lionel Castillo) and thanked him and Balcones Canyonland park staff for sponsoring a great and last youth hunt for my daughter and I.

It is the last Texas Parks and Wildlife hunt for us do to age restrictions. We really enjoyed the beautiful environment for our father/daughter bonding time.

I asked Mr.Castillo if any of the youths were successful at getting a deer. He said, as far as he knew there were 9 bucks and 1 doe killed. out of all the units.

I believe there was around 40 to 50 youth hunters present at the Friday orientation.

Well guys and gals, I hope that I answered any and all questions you might have, and hope you will have a very successful hunt at the Balcones Canyonlands NWMA..Good luck and happy hunting.

Thanks for the update!

Thanks for the update doesn't sound that encouraging we are in unit 1 for the Nov 30 thru Dec 2 hunt.We have a house we rented by turkey creek unit.

I saw on another Texas hunting forum that there was some pretty nice bucks taken at Balcones last week.

I fought the BCP every week for 10 years stealing land in Austin as an avid mountain biker..
Bastards

We'll be hunting at Balcones Canyonlands starting tomorrow. If anyone else is, good luck to you.

My son and I just hunted this unit on the hunt ending today. Our experience was almost identical. It would be much better if you could bait. No animals killed or seen in our unit. When we checked in this morning, 5 of the hunters had signed out on Saturday stating that they were done for the weekend. Two other hunters signed out this morning at 9:30 stating they were done. I checked the log of Unit 9 right by the headquarters and the hunters left after Saturday's hunt with no animals seen or killed. Hopefully we will have more success at Aransas NWR this weekend.

My wife and I had Unit 12. The unit had a couple of really great stands, very comfortable. The unit had around 350 acres and from the looks of it, it looked like a decent hunting property. We started hunting at 2pm on Friday afternoon until dark on Sunday afternoon. The only thing we saw was 1 coyote. I got out of the stand a couple times to see if anything was moving and didn't see anything and saw hardly any sign either. I noticed on some of the property around this unit, the owners had put up feeders or had a grain fields. The few tracks I saw were trails from the cedars going to the grain or feeders on adjoining property. As long as they deny hunters throwing some feed out it may not get any better. I'm not real sure I will put in for this hunt again. The up side is, it is close to home.

When we hunted it last year and heard at the orientation that there were about 30 animals killed for 250 hunters on their hunts i told her we will kill the first legal animal that steps out. we saw 3 deer total and maybe 10 hogs.

My daughter managed to kill a small 8 point.We were.in unit 1. the hunting was very hard .I was expecting a way better hunt, but we managed to have some fun and got to spend time with my daughter We hunted right up next a farm house 200 + yrds away but because they had feeders we was able to find a trail and set on it that was the only deer we saw the whole weekend.