Axis deer range

Not too familiar with their territory. I live down in the Rio Grande valley and am thinking of getting some property up towards San Antonio cause it's actually cheaper than here. Do frio and/or Atascosa county have axis deer?

Maybe at a HF exotic ranch but not free range. You will only start to see them when heading west once you past Hondo or North of SA in/past Boerne.

Coyotes and cats play havoc with axis. There are plenty of axis in South Texas but only where predators are held in check. Most of south Texas (south of san antone) is eat up with predators. In sheep and goat country where the helicopter predator control is prevalent you have large populations of axis.

I sold a ranch in Falfurrias that was low fence that had a good population of axis....but it was a pocket of them not widespread.


I hear that from time to time they are in the nueces river bottom.

like rancher said predators are hell on the young ones.....little to no recruitment will see a population fall quickly.



you need to be in the bandera/tarpley/boerne area to get into areas where there are a lot of them and then they are property specific. they like lower elevation/bottom country as opposed to hill tops and steep terrain.

Two recent incidents lead me to believe that Axis range is fairly broad. Two saturdays ago I spotted a group of mature and juvenile axis does feeding on the west side of 183 about 16 miles north of Lampasas. I don't think any of the group were males (from the size) but it was dark, I was going fast, and Axis males drop antlers throughout the year, so it's hard to tell. Then last Saturday I spotted a mature axis doe roadkill on the inside shoulder of southbound I-35 about 8 miles north of Schertz Parkway on the north side of San Antonio. All could have been escapees from exotic ranches, but I doubt it. Populations may be sporadic and not widely spread over all these counties, but axis deer have had 50+ years to slowly spread across Central Texas, the Edwards plateau and beyond.

they have def. expanded their range, but in a lot of these areas there pockets of them, not large populations.

I saw one dead on hwy 90 between Hondo and Castroville last week but there isn't large populations of them in that area.

Ok thanks for the info, I don't think ill be able to afford more than about 80 acres but so not sure it will be worth it or just keep leasing.

Nueces River bottom east of Cotulla has a large population of axis. Back in the early to mid 2000's they covered a very large area of the river bottome for about 20+ miles. I used to see them regularly along HWY 624 and even a few dead ones on the highway itself. They prefer a river bottom habitat if given a choice.