East Texas Results 2012-2013

I was just wondering if all of East Texas was slow this year or if it was just our lease. Think we had 30 bucks killed all year, most of the time thats about what is taken opening weekend.

we had good success in Houston County on our small place, although after the rut we saw little activity

30 bucks??? How big is your place?

It was sllloooowwww at my lease in Tyler County!!! I saw 1 nubbin and 3 does all year!!!

man, i wonder what could be to blame.......








i kid! i kid!

About like usual at my Houston county place. Not as good as last year because the drought had the bigger bucks out in the open alot more-but that was unusual.

The rut is always our best chance by far to see/kill a good buck.

I hunt in tyler county, it was a slow one...hope it gets better!!!

Mine was slow during rifle season. Our main rut hit during bow season this yr and the deer never really got hungry toward the end of season b/c they were getting rain & things were staying green.

TPWD forgot to spray the magic genetic dust!!!

I saw deers out there.....

I'm still not going to the darkside!!! Next one will be in Hardin County!!!

Had a great year in leon co.

you can run from it, but ya can't hide......

HA

It's 16000 acres in Hardin county.

Where in Hardin County? My new lease is near Saratoga!!!

1293 and Segno RD

Not too far!!! The one thing I did ask is if the property was timber co and they said no!!! They did have a pretty good year with some bucks and I saw some good deer there!!!

Of the two leases I have in Nacogdoches county, 11 hunters killed two does all year. I personally only saw one deer from the beginning of bow season to the end of muzzle loader season.

I killed a doe in Trinity County. Hunted one evening and one morning.

Well I guess it was all over East Texas, I hope this season is better.

I apologize for the length, but here's an entire article about this subject I put on the website a while back:

The East Texas Deer Herd: Is it time to worry?

Posted on 1/19/2013 by rick

It’s rough being a game biologist in east Texas. Since opening weekend of the rifle season in the Pineywoods, they’ve been hearing the same question from friends, neighbors and worried hunters: “Where have the deer gone?”

Deer processors have been getting it, too.

“Everybody is talking about it,” says Terry Tyer of Tyer’s Processing in Crockett. “I can’t remember a worse year. It’s scary. We usually process 250 to 300 deer a year. This year we did 113.”


It’s the same story in Fairfield at J&S Meat Processing where 4 years ago it handled 1400 whitetail from loyal customers. But the numbers have been going down every year since: 1000 last year, 800 this season. “I think there are a lot of reasons for it,” owner David Baker says of the low numbers this season. “We had warm weather the first two weekends, the economy forced some people to give up their leases, and the drought wiped out a bunch of the deer.”

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) biologists answer the question about declining deer numbers this way: A plentiful acorn crop that dropped a month early (perhaps as a result of the drought), a full moon opening weekend and warmer than usual temperatures. They say it was a perfect storm that kept sightings, and the harvest in east Texas, down. But, they don’t think the drought caused a massive adult deer die-off.

“We have heard that concern a lot this season, but I am almost 100-percent certain the drought did not kill a lot of deer,” Daniel Price, TPWD biologist based in the Rusk office, says. “But, we are in a long-term drought condition, so we are keeping our eye on it.”

Price’s colleague, TPWD biologist in Lufkin Sean Willis, agrees. “I’m a hunter too, and I noticed a big drop this year in the number of deer coming to feeders. But, for whatever reason, they started coming back during the last two weeks of the season.”

The Pineywoods includes the Davy Crockett National Forest where the old-timers remember seeing a lot more deer in these woods years ago. On a personal note, as a hunter in the same one-mile radius of the DCNF since 1989, deer sightings have dramatically declined. I was accustomed, for example, to seeing 10-20 deer each day of opening weekend. This year, my father and I spotted three deer in two days.

So, is it time to get worried?

Well, short of a long-term scientific analysis with hundreds of man hours in the field each year, we really can’t know for sure.

However, we do have deer density numbers and fawn survival rates from TPWD surveys. For one section of the Pineywoods referred to as Resource Management Unit 14, which includes the DCNF, here are the numbers from 2005 through 2011:

Year/ Deer per 1000 Acres/ Fawn Survival Rate

2005 13.69 82%
2006 15.25 42%
2007 21.23 28%
2008 24.38 32%
2009 23.63 20%
2010 23.96 25%
2011 24.52 18%

Based on these figures, the number of deer is actually growing — nearly doubling since 2005. However, the number of fawns has steadily decreased. How is that possible?

“I can see where one might think these two figures contradict each other, but not necessarily,” says Alan Cain, white-tailed deer program leader at TPWD. “The low fawn crops are most likely attributed to the drought, however, TPWD survey efforts may not be capturing an accurate depiction of the fawn crop, which may be higher than what we are finding in our deer herd composition surveys. Either way, we have no indication of a die-off.”

Cain says the low fawn survival rate, although not ideal, is not a reason for concern — yet. “Ideally, I would like to see the rate between 40 and 50 percent. But even at 20 percent, the deer numbers are not declining; there are enough young deer recruited into the population to replace the deer removed from the population through natural mortality and hunter-harvest. However, if the population saw a significant decrease over time we would certainly consider a change in regulations.”

Currently, many east Texas counties allow the taking of does without a permit.

Despite the lower harvest in east Texas, deer appear healthy and the bucks are sporting larger racks. Some hunters say they killed their best deer this season and saw plenty of deer. Many others spotted very few deer and never crossed paths with a legal buck.

Our place in Wood county sucked last season. One doe was taken between all of us. That was it. With antler restrictions, we should be crawling with mature bucks by now. Oh wait, maybe we are. I hear they get more nocturnal the older they get.

Upshur Cty 550 acres - We saw better than average deer this year. We had a 139" killed and had several legal 110" - 130"'s on game cam, but were never seen while on stand. They're there, you just dont see them.
I went down there last weekend and saw freakin deer everywhere. I've been all over that lease and I can't figure out where they hole up during deer season/daylight hours.

It was slow after the acorn crop hit the ground and not enough rain to sour the acorns.

yes

Yeah knid of figured that had a lot to do with it.

ours wasn't so much the acorns as everything else. After it cooled off, everything just kept getting greener & greener and the weather wasn't cold enough on a consistant basis to do anything about it. Hope the trend continues because 2 good years of antler growth could do a lot of good for some that should be shooters next year.

Damn, your not far from our place either. We have about 1300 acres a few miles away of 787.

As for hunting in east Texas this year, It wasn't horrible on either of our places. The 1300 we have behind our property we saw plenty of deer and took a few good bucks. I saw deer almost every time i went out. Our other place is 7000+ in Polk county outside Corrigan. We didn't make our buck quota for MLD #'s, but we saw and still shot plenty. I'm too selective on what i shoot so i passed up a LOT of bucks to see what they could be next year. Saw 5+ deer almost every time out there. Overall it was a slow year, but we still saw them, just not the ones we wanted to shoot. And when we did see the ones on the hit list, they were either too far and didn't feel comfortable taking the shot or were moving too quick to get a shot. Hopefully the ones we passed this year will be much better next year.