I thought this would be an interesting and educational topic....

I recently learned that the area around San Diego and Benavides is apparently a heavily poached part of South Texas. I never knew this until now, but I've always wondered why land in Duval County seemed to be significantly cheaper ($500-$1,000 per acre cheaper) than the surrounding counties....so I guess it makes sense.

I thought it might be good to start a thread on the topic of poaching. Besides the obvious challenges that plague portions of East Texas....what other pockets of Texas do you folks have first-hand knowledge of as being hotspots for poaching? (South Texas, West Texas, Hill Country, etc....)

I think it would help educate others on areas to avoid leasing or buying hunting property, or at least make them aware of potential issues before they do.

I think you can find poaching anywhere that has a good deer population. They caught a guy spotlighting within sight of our house in Lee County a couple years ago.

Yes, those areas are pretty well known to have lots of road hunting; I'd throw Starr county in there as well, around Rio Grande City and Roma. I think the price per acre down there is also more a reflection of the fact that there is still a lot of rough, unimproved country in those two areas, around San Diego and around Benavides more so than the poaching though it may play a minor factor....

Where is Texas Law on Sunday night?????????????????????????????????

Send Port Lavaca.

There are and have been pockets in every county with bad poaching. Duval has been that way for a very long time...lot of is due to the locals growing up and excepting poaching and then the amount of very old subdivisions with small acreage tracts. Lot non-resident landowners also. Lot of people own a small piece of land that kill everything off it then start working out off of it...poaching. They was year round poaching for years....probably still is some of it to a degree. Road hunting was a way off life in a lot of counties in this state. What keeps the price down also is the availability of drinking/livestock water or even drilling a well in a lot of counties down here.

Unfortunately this has been happening for many years in that area. So it's best to avoid low fenced areas as those are the one's you'll be lucky to see anything and the other thing is the bigger ranches are high fencing their places so less chances of deer crossing into adjacent property.

There isn't a county in Tx that doesn't have a pocket or areas within them that have significant poaching problems..

Duval county is the east Texas of south Texas

Prices are getting up there though it’s mid $2000’s/acre as an average

Totally agree with the poaching is in every county. Often it’s is folks who have lived there for many years and maybe generations. They believe they have rights to hunt on a property because they knew old man so-and-so who was three owners ago. I found Rio Grande City area to be very problematic. We left after one season.

We acquired a large ranch that had for all intents and purposes been abandoned for about 5 years due to owners death. The north side of the property was inherently hard to access and you had to cross a River that was normally try. We ended up using a 4 wheeler and got across and took survey of things. We found out the neighbor had been throwing corn over the fence, and had found where they had crossed into and out of the property.

I knew of the family so I made a few calls and shortly after one of them called me. After first asking for permission to hunt and then trying to plead his case he broke down and said “ well, that’s not right, we’ve been hunting that place for almost 20 years....”. Which in layman’s terms was “ we’ve been poaching this place for a long time “

Yes

If you have a place that you hunt and aren't there all the time,
somebody's there when you aren't. Just because you have all
kinds of game cameras out doesn't necessarily mean that
you'll get their image on it either. Neighbors watch you come
and go whether you realize it or not. They might not be the
ones trespassing. It might be somebody they know that they
told that " all those hunters from so-and-so finally left this
morning- maybe we'll have some peace and quiet now "
Nothing to be done about it unless you're there every day

Starr Co was the worst I had ever seen. Landowners extended family poaching, plus the local poachers and trespassers. Likewise, trailers broken into regularly. I quit the place twice, ended up going just to get out of the house.