Got invited to join a lease 2 years ago with another dad from my son's youth football team. It was a 5 year lease through the state land auction, and we joined on the 4th year. The other guys on the lease didn't bow hunt and waited until rifle season. On our first year there they shot their limit of 6 deer between 3 people, does and spikes on opening weekend, and then 3 more does at the end of the year. They said that is the most they had ever gotten in one year, but usually shoot 6-7.

The following year they shot 0, and my son shot hit first deer ever, a small buck with a crossbow. They kept saying the deer #'s were way down but couldn't figure it out. The property was 360 acres, so good size, but not big enough to shoot 9 deer a year and expect a ton more in my opinion.

Has anyone else joined a lease where the other members shot their max limit, and didn't care the age of the doe or buck?

To the question, not every year to the limit, but I hunted on a ranch for many years over west of Coleman. On our last year there, the landowner told us he had sold the place to a partnership out of the midwest and we were invited to take our limits as this would be our final hunt on the place. There were a handful of us in the group and we all limited out on deer and turkey. There was a lot of processing going on.

One of the reasons many landowners around here have stopped leasing their ranches to hunters.

You said it faster than I could! Also the reason I tell my Sellers to wait until AFTER deer season to let the hunters know the place is selling. They have a tendency to take every inch allowed and some that isn't.... ....

To the OP's question.....


Depends entirely on the deer population. 9 deer off 360 acres sounds high, but may be acceptable in relation to the deer population in the area. I'm not condoning the killing of spikes as a habit however.


Lots of determining factors that will take longer than 2 seasons on whether or not they are shooting too many deer

The place I hunt in OK is not a lease, but is a good friend's property. He hunts it, and has quite a few friends whom he lets hunt it. It is about 1000 acres, and there are about 25 people that hunt it I believe. Some come one weekend a year, and some come multiple times a year. The LO's policy is, if it is a legal deer, and you want to take it, take it. OK has no antler restrictions, so basically, everything is legal. It's just a question of do you tag with a doe tag or a buck tag. I have seen everything form yearling button bucks taken to 180" monsters taken. Even with that policy, the deer herd is in good shape, and I see lots of mature deer. I think that policy works there for two reasons. 1. We don't hunt over feeders. (there are 3 feeders on property, but no stands overlooking them) 2. The rifle season is short (2 weeks), so if a big buck can escape for just two weeks, He's got a good chance of surviving until next year.

curious as to why the feeder aspect plays into it?


Is the general take 25 deer a year off the property? how many of those are bucks and how many are does on an average year?

How many folks archery hunt or is all the pressure just those two weeks?

IMO, hunting over a feeder makes it easier to kill a deer. With the policy of "if it's brown, it's down", I think more young deer would be killed if everyone hunted over a feeder.

Most of the guys only hunt during rifle, and I would guestimate a 50-60% success rate. Some guys have a "if it's brown, it's down" mentality, and some guys come back to camp talking about the nice 8 that they let walk because it would make a great first deer for one of the kids. There are about 7 that bow hunt as well, and those that bow and rifle hunt generally have a higher success rate. I do not know the exact harvest numbers, but from what I have seen over the years, I would guestimate that around 25 deer a year come off the property. Some guys take 2 or 3, some guys take zero.

Yes, a very, very long time ago. An East Texas lease when I was about 25 years old. These guys were like dove hunters, all about getting a "limit". They were meat hunters and didn't seem to enjoy it or find any challenge to it. They had hardly any fun at all. Now, there's four of us on 16k acres in the panhandle. We're all like-minded on what we want to accomplish. If someone wants to shoot a doe, that's been done a time or two.

ha, brings back fond old memories from my youth (1960-70s), hunting hill country where it wasn't hard to see 40-60 deer (mostly does) during a morning or afternoon hunt. My dad and his hunting buddies (8-12) had hunted together for several decades and hunted for meat. Back then the leases were relatively cheap, like $1/acre total and put as many hunters on it as you wanted. The LOs weren't looking to make a fortune off hunting but were trying to thin out the deer population with the thought they were competing for food with the livestock, so they preferred they (deer) were all killed.

each paid hunter could bring their immediate family and some that weren't married or didn't have kids, could bring a friend ... all hunting off their own tags, not just the paid hunter's limit. I know I filled my tags plus a few the first roughly 15 years of my hunting life, as did pretty much every hunter on these leases. The deer were thick each year, way over populated and very small in size but same thing year after year.

This was way before any formal herd management or scoring were popular with anyone we had any association with ... the question on bucks was how many points and how wide of a spread, nothing dealing with age, mass, score, etc.

it was a way of life, hunting and filling the freezer ... we processed everything and filled multiple freezers that were empty by the following season opener. We also helped feed neighbors and others around town that needed help, it was the right thing to do.

My grandfather killed his 5 deer limit opening day every year so he could get back to quail hunting at the house. He preferred young deer. I watched him trade a once in a lifetime trophy buck for two young does at a gas station in Rankin on the way home one time. I never killed a deer opening weekend because I knew we’d be processing 5 on Sunday when we got home.

Filled my 5 deer tags every year with does for several years hunting on a place with way too many deer. We shoot 10+\- deer a season off our 320 acre place and not even close to running out of deer.

I think folks hone in on one thing or another they think is causing something when in reality it’s something else.

Yeah did it once and that was the last time - they brought tons of family and friends and overtook all of the stands and shot everything in site - they also let their kids run around on the ranch at night on 4 wheelers shooting the place up - no thank you

That brings up another good point…when I was a kid it was common for us to get into camp late Friday night, often close to midnight. Get some sleep and then hunt in the morning. At mid day we would all ride around on our 4 wheelers until about 2, come back to camp to eat and then went out at 3. After the evening hunt we would ride around at night. Then hunt the next morning and leave.

That was common and we and everyone we knew did it ( at this stage of the game we were all city people who didn’t know any different, we didn’t think anything about it). Not all surprisingly, we never killed many deer and dang sure not big deer.


My inner pasture nazi comes out when it comes to joy riding the pasture and riding around at night. When it’s hunting season I don’t let my kids run around unless is to the blind or to perform a specific task. They wanna joy ride there is several miles of county road they can go on. My deer are not vehicle shy at all but I keep the night rides to almost zero.

A lot of guys I know get to the ranch and spend half the time there riding around at night shooting coons and rabbits.

yes, My daughter will shoot any and everything. I’m cool with it. Now I many not be honest with her on how many bullets she has to use.

It was very common in East Texas before AR's were put in place. However, hunters seemed to appreciate deer meat a lot more in those days because fewer deer were being taken.

When someone hunts 200 yards across the fence from you, they`re not in your group, but they absolutely effect your hunting. One group of hunters beside us and one of them is from Houston and he hunts a 20 piece of property on the south side that joins ours and the other 2 hunt 300+ on the north side. He`s purely a meat hunter. I think he qualifies as a person who shoots anything. I stopped and visited with him by the road a few years ago and he told me his wife told him, we can`t eat horns. He parks on the road, so I know when he is down hunting, which is pretty often for someone from Houston hunting northern Erath county. I haven`t ever seen what he kills, but he isn`t afraid to let the lead fly. I`m glad for him to shoot some does because the only does we`ve shot off of our lease is from a friend who I give a meat hunt to.

200 yards is an acceptable distance from a fence line as long as the blind is facing away/into their property. Had a guy put a blind 100 yards out looking at my fence, baited the road next to my fence, put a water container there as well. Said he wasn't changing a thing. Glad they are gone.

Did they shoot everything? IDK. We're they unsafe? Yes. Got no use for these types.

There will likely always be the two camps.....ratio/antler people and freezer is full folks. If both follow the rules of the state, it is hard to fault either. I'm guessing most landowners are more conservative.
As Texas properties become smaller, I'd hope the TPW folks would reconsider bag limits/mix.

They way things seem to be going, I suspect if there was a test that required ownership or access to the habitat needed to support the number of deer taken from a given property, there would be many Texas landowners and/or hunters who would fail it.

The same guy put a pop up 50 feet from our fence line and the same distance from the county road (in the corner of his lease) the first year he hunted there. He would get there early in the evening and wave to us when we drove by. The landowner made him move it the next year. He was actually less than 30 yards from 3 other properties from that spot and could have easily shot a deer on any of them and gotten away with it since there very little traffic down our road.

Me when I was working my way through college. I was broke, hungry and I wasn’t playing.

In the 60s 70s it was completely normal with almost everyone, with me included. There were some trophy hunters and deer managers back then but very few and I didn’t know any.
Since I got a little older and wiser I havent been a part of anything like that. I’m usually in charge so no brown and down with my crowd. Im ok with others being different but I have always made sure to lease many thousands of acres so I don’t have to worry about neighbors.

I didn`t even hunt with a feeder back when I started hunting in 1977. Not many people did. Climbed a tree with 2x4`s nailed on it or sit under an old oak tree. I see more deer in one sit now days than I saw in a whole season back then. If you saw a deer and wanted to make jerky for that year you better pull the trigger. Most of the deer I killed back then were does to. Never thought I`d get to a point where I`d pass on bucks 4 out of the last 7 years because they weren`t old enough. Never pass a hog though. .............My 4,000th post.

If there were ever a disease outbreak in Texas that made it illegal to hunt deer over a feeder, I suspect the number of hunting licenses sold would drop by at least 25%. A lot more deer shooters in the state now than deer hunters.

My deer hunting has changed a lot since then as well Free. I was blessed even back then with exceptional places to hunt. These days I am picky about what I shoot and where I hunt. Full disclosure though, It meant more to me back then than now. I always keep that in mind and make a point not to be judgmental towards the strictly meat hunting crowd. Even though they mostly don’t fit in where I hunt, I can still relate to the sportsman that wants no more than the first good eater they come across.