State wildlife officials are considering proposing hunting regulation changes that would benefit young hunters by reducing the minimum draw weight for bows used in hunting and dropping the minimum age for certification in the state’s hunter education program.

The modifications were part of a package of potential rules changes Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife division staff are considering recommending for 2008. This month, wildlife division staff briefed the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s regulations committee on the potential proposals.

Official proposals for changes in Texas hunting and fishing regulations will be announced in January. Any changes adopted would take effect September 1, 2008.

Texas is one of only 14 states where bowhunters are limited to using bows that have a minimum peak draw weight of 40 pounds; all other states with archery-only hunting seasons have lower or no minimum draw weights.

That 40-pound draw weight — basically, like lifting a 40-pound sack of sand with two fingers — was designed to limit archers to using only bows that wildlife managers figured produced enough arrow velocity and energy to be effective on white-tailed deer.

And the minimum, which has been in place for decades, applied to equipment used for bowhunting any game animal except squirrel.

But the draw-weight requirement meant a lot of young people and many women were shut out of bowhunting because they didn’t have the upper-body strength to draw a 40-pound bow.

Improved Technology

Today, with much advanced-technology archery equipment, bows with less than a 40-pound draw weight can be effective in some situations. Because of those changes in bow technology, and its policy of working to increase participation in hunting, Texas officials are considering lowering the draw weight requirement to 30 pounds, or maybe even eliminating it as have 15 other states.

“Lowering the minimum draw weight would increase (hunting) opportunity for young people and people with smaller frames,” Mike Berger, Director of the TPWD’s Wildlife Division told the regulations committee as he presented potential hunting regulation proposals for the coming year.

Big Whitetail Bucks Harvested in 2007

Increasing opportunity for young hunters is part of the reasoning behind TPWD staff considering proposing lowering of the minimum age for Hunter Education certification.

Currently, only persons 12 years old or older can receive certification for taking and completing the state-authorized Hunter Education course.

All persons born on or after September 2, 1971, and at least 17 years old are required to have taken and passed a Hunter Education course before they can legally hunt. A one-time, one-year Hunter Education exemption/deferral is available for $10.

Age Could Drop To 9

In Texas, hunters 12 to 16 years old are required to possess the Hunter Education certification if they are not under the direct control of an adult hunter.

People younger than 12 can take the state-recognized Hunter Education course, but can’t be issued the certification, which is valid for life.

TPWD is considering proposing to drop the certification age to 9 years, the same as the minimum age for the Texas Youth Hunting Program.

The bow draw-weight issue and the hunter education age requirement were the only two hunting regulation topics with state-wide implications presented at the regulations committee briefing.

Other than opening brief seasons for mule deer in five counties in the Panhandle, no other potential major changes in hunting seasons or bag limits or other hunting regulations for 2008 were offered by the wildlife division.

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By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Houston Chronicle

When Brianne Stewart, 12, of West Newton, shot her first deer this fall she joined a sorority of hunters who are bucking a nationwide trend. She is one 304,000 girls – 19 percent of all hunters ages 6 to 15 – who took to the woods last year, almost doubling the number of girls that hunted in 1996. According to the just-released 2006 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service five-year census, four times as many boys hunt, but their numbers have remained unchanged.

Stewart also is part of a Pennsylvania hunting surge, the survey says, in which hunting by adult males increased 7.6 percent and female participation jumped almost 10 percent, while numbers dropped 10 percent nationally in all but 20 states.

A 2005 five-year survey by the National Sporting Goods Association painted a rosier picture of female hunting participation, claiming a 72 percent increase nationwide.

“We can explain decreases in men,” said Mark Duda of Responsive Management, a Virginia firm that tracks and interprets outdoors trends. “Male hunters live in rural areas and they’re aging. As to why female participation is increasing, that’s more of a mystery, since it appears to span various age groups, incomes and levels of education.

“Something is happening with women and hunting.”

Cultural change, societal acceptance and a concerted recruitment effort by state game agencies and shooting and hunting organizations has driven the spike in female interest that began 30 years ago, flattened in the 1990s, and peaked again at the start of this century.

While the Fish and Wildlife Service says female participation is too scattered to measure in detail, Brianne represents the traditional female hunter, in that she grew up with parents who are avid about deer.

“When she was little, I’d dress her in ‘camo’ and put her in one of those jerry packs and take her along with me to the woods,” said Brianne’s mother Cathy Stewart, 43. “From the time she was old enough to flip the switch on the grinder, she’d be there when we did our butchering. I think one of the reasons she wants to hunt is she likes the taste of deer meat.”

Brianne says it goes beyond that.

“It was the excitement of, like, … my heart was pounding, my blood was racing, I was breathing heavily, I felt confident I could shoot it,” she said. “Some other kids hunt. Most other girls — my friends — they’re like, ‘Ewww!’ Most of them think it’s cruel to shoot animals. Usually, I tell them if you don’t shoot deer the population will go up too high and they’ll destroy a lot of crops.”

Putting meat on the table is, statistically, the top reason women take up arms and head to the woods, a perception corroborated by Stewart, who learned to hunt from her father.

“Although I love the woods in fall, hunting is a shopping expedition for me,” she said. “It beats going to the grocery store.”

But among women who begin hunting as adults, food gathering is secondary, according to Peggy Farrell, a hunter who runs the Becoming an Outdoors-Woman program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “A connection to nature is No. 1.”

Often women are nudged into hunting by close friends or relatives, and find support through mentoring programs like Farrell’s or those sponsored by the National Rifle Association, National Wild Turkey Federation and other groups that pitch hunting and shooting as family-friendly activities.

“The only way kids will get into the woods is through women, so in order to target youths, you have to target women,” said Anne Hall, 45, of Ligonier, who took up hunting three years ago at the urging of her brother-in-law, a wildlife biologist with the National Wild Turkey Federation. Most new adult hunters today are initiated through deer hunting — as opposed to small game — but Hall learned by targeting turkey through the federation’s Women in the Outdoors program. This year, she called in her first bird, hunting alone in the woods.

“It has become such a passion with me, I had no idea what I’d been missing,” said Hall, who also hunts small game and deer with her two teenage sons, her female friends, and her husband, who picked up a gun again for the first time in decades. “It’s not about the harvest,” said Hall, who recently introduced her 11-year old son to squirrel hunting through the national Families Afield campaign. “It’s about being in the outdoors, watching the woods wake up, sharing the experience.”

Whether such programs are answering a demand or creating one is hard to know, Duda said, since female hunters are still considered a niche market. But the bottom line appears to be the same: women bought up to 15 percent of the 12 million hunting licenses sold in America last year (50,000 to 100,000 in Pennsylvania) and generate $420 million in sales of guns, clothing and female-specific products including recoil reduction pads that fit onto bra straps, portable urinals, scaled-down sporting arms and camouflage apparel tailored to the female form.

“If the gun’s got too long of a stock, it would be uncomfortable to shoot and a new shooter might lose interest,” said Kevin Howard, whose Missouri-based firm handles public relations for Browning, Winchester Firearms and others in the industry. “Women want to be comfortable, and those involved in a social hunting atmosphere, like bird hunting, want clothing to be stylish, too. If you look at catalogues, you’ll see they seem to be catering to women.”

The hope is that efforts to cultivate the female market will pay off in the long term, although Fish and Wildlife retention statistics aren’t yet available, and Duda said people who start later in life are less likely to remain avid.

While 25 million people call themselves hunters, only 12 1/2 million hunt 15 to 20 days a year — the strictest definition of “avid.”

Kay Peyer, 85, of Murrysville, fits that demographic. She hasn’t missed a single deer season since she was 12 and hasn’t lost her ardor for hunting.

A retired registered nurse, Peyer learned to hunt from her father, a Pennsylvania game warden. When he died, she inherited his .300 Savage, which she took on a three-month adventure in Alaska. There, she killed a moose with one shot in the wilderness below Anchorage.

In September, she took part in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s three-day season for youths, the elderly and the disabled, hunting with a pistol north of Kittaning.

“I’d love to have gotten a shot, but the deer just weren’t moving,” she said. “It was too warm. But it was a lovely day to be sitting in the woods.”

Three cheers to all who elected the days after Thanksgiving to be seated in tripods or box blinds deer hunting rather than queued up with strangers outside retail stores to save a dime on anything. Deer season’s busiest weekend dropped tons of meat all across Texas. You may have bagged one, now what?

Hunting is a clean and simple exercise. It’s squeezing the trigger and making an accurate shot that adds time to the back end of any trip into the woods. First order of business is to field-dress the animal and, if temperatures are mild as they have been lately, cool the meat. In surprisingly short time, heat can manifest itself in a host of undesireable effects on fresh venison.

“If it’s 70 degrees outside,” said Michael Cruz, of Pete’s Fine Meats on Richmond, “I wouldn’t leave a deer (undressed) for more than an hour.”

Handle With Care

Whether you prefer to hang your deer from trees or leave them on the ground for unzipping, be careful and patient throughout the process. Elementary as it sounds, keep the fingers of the hand that isn’t holding the knife away from the hand that is. Even with an extremely sharp blade, pressure must be applied during certain aspects of the field-dressing job, and you’ll be working in a slippery environment. Move slowly and carefully avoid a painful slice.

According to Cruz, one of the most wasteful hunter mistakes is poor field-care that contaminates good meat with other things inside the animal. There’s no need to be graphic here. If you don’t understand the message or the procedure, ask someone who does to observe and instruct.

Some things within a deer are supposed to be cut in preparing it for the professional’s blade and paper, and some are not. Confusing the two taints immediately upon contact; processors have to discard everything that’s suspect, then hack away a little more, before they can package remaining venison for consumption.

Also unnecessarily wasteful is sloppy shot placement. At a range inside 200 yards with good lighting through a properly sighted, scoped rifle, there is no reason to miss the intended mark by more than a couple of inches. I made this point in another column recently after hearing a “professional hunter” on video proclaim that we’re ready for the field when we can hit a dinner plate at 100 yards.

In addition to being woefully disrespectful to the animal, such casual marksmanship also ruins prime meat. Bullet strikes too high may rip through backstraps. Hits too far aft rupture some of those aforementioned bits and pieces that can ruin an otherwise prime piece of meat.

Incidentally, if you don’t know where to settle the crosshairs on a deer, you can learn quickly from Mike Kasberg’s Aim for Success laminated poster, just $7 plus incidentals at his Web site. I’d like to see each of his aim points lowered a couple of inches, frankly, but cannot argue with the placements so long as the bullet hits where the rifle is pointed.

Cool It Down

For the sake of argument here, we’ll presume a clean shot and prompt, careful field dressing. Next logical stop for most hunters would be the processor, but Cruz suggested otherwise.

“Once it’s gutted out, put it on ice right away and keep it there for a couple of days,” Cruz said. “Let it bleed out. That keeps the meat tender and nice and colorful.”

Hanging a deer in a cooler for the same length of time before processing, said Cruz, who has 46 years in the meat business, tends to dry it out.

Texas hunters have the option on most ranches of adding a wild hog to the meat locker. Same ranch, same temperature — but different strategy.

“With hogs, you want to do everything (in the field) in about half the time as for deer,” Cruz said. The “other white meat” apparently is that much more fragile than venison.

Larger hogs produce bigger, thicker chops, said Cruz, which some hunters prefer, but the meat of a smaller pig is more tender and a better complement to venison when mixed in sausage. Of equal size, sows make better eating than boars.

Basic cutting and wrapping for deer and hogs costs less than $50 at Pete’s, but extra services and special processing, such as smoking the meat or having some of it made into jerky, can jack up a tab in a hurry. Wherever you process your venison and wild pork, be sure to ask in advance exactly how much you’ll pay for what you want.

Texas deer hunters have much to be thankful for this time of year. A herd of nearly 4 million whitetails comes to mind, as do winters cool enough to keep venison from spoiling quickly but not so cold as to be bitterly uncomfortable while we wait for a big buck to step clear. Read about sausage making tips.

Doug Pike covers the outdoors for the Houston Chronicle and hosts Inside the Outdoors from 6-9 a.m. Saturdays on 790 AM. doug.pike@chron.com

When it comes to free-range, open country white-tailed deer hunting, that’s exactly what it is, “deer hunting.” If hunting were a sure thing we’d call it “deer shooting.” In addition to hunting for a deer to harvest, weather and equipment can also impact a hunter’s success on any given day. This was more than true for one Coleman County (Texas) hunter.

Last year, after finding a hunting lease bordered by the beautiful Colorado River, Jon passed on many young bucks, but managed to harvest a cull spike buck and a couple of does to maintain the buck to doe ratio and secure table fare. But this was year two.

It had been a great spring and summer in Coleman County. The lease, like the rest of the area, received ample rain and put deer body conditions and antler quality in great shape. However, after opening weekend Jon returned home without “horns.” Sure, he’d seen some young bucks, but nothing he wanted to prescribe a lead pill.

He couldn’t get back to the lease the second weekend of Texas’ General Season to deer hunt, but the third weekend would prove to be the charm… but it still wasn’t easy. Saturday morning, Jon spotted a spike at 100-yards and, after some contemplation, decided to go ahead and take the genetically inferior 1 1/2-year old buck. He settled in for the shot, but the bullet didn’t connect with its target.

Jon’s confidence was blown, he had missed a textbook, 100-yard shot. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but he had a hunch it could have been a number of things. Had he pulled the trigger or did he squeeze it? Did he hit a limb or did something else obstruct the bullet’s path? Was the scope off? Did the deer move?

After a process of elimination, Jon suspected the scope must have been comprimised. At 4:30 that afternoon, Jon spotted two raccoons he ranged at a healthy 138-yards away. Here he had the option to implement a little varmint control and see if his gun was “on.” Jon deliberatly placed the crosshairs on the furry omnivore and let some hot lead fly. The bullet just sailed over the back of the ‘coon, so he dialed the scope down about and inch and a half and felt confident in the decision.

Afterwords, Jon settled in for the evening hunt. Not much was happening, but then he detected a hint of movement through the scattered mesquite brush. In his own words, Jon makes his account of the event:

It was a quick shot, he came out of no where. I picked up my binoculars and only saw he was outside the ears, picked up the rifle and made the shot all in about 5 or 6 seconds before he disappeared into the brush. I didn’t have time to range him or anything, another 2 seconds and he would have been gone. I didn’t know if I hit him or not because he disappeared as I made the shot and worked the bolt.

Jon was not sure the bullet flew true, although he felt confident that he had done his part. But was the deer down? Not being sure, he decided to wait a few minutes before making the 250-yard plus trek over to the area where he last saw the buck. However, within 5 minutes of squeezing off on the long-range buck, a spike buck walked into view and Jon knew he had a second buck tag to fill. He put the crosshairs on the kill zone and dropped the spike like a sack of rocks.

Jon jumped from his position and approached the spike. After tagging him, he ran down the field to find that his “long-range buck” had fallen in a low spot just out of view of where he had shot him. He placed his buck tag on the bruiser with the satisfaction of a well-placed shot on a nice 7-point buck with over an 18″ outside spread. In a matter of a few minutes, Jon had filled both of his buck tags on two Coleman County bucks!

More from Jon and some specifics:

This is not the biggest deer in the world, but it’s pretty good and I waited two seasons before a fellow like this one walked out in front of me. The buck had an 18 1/4″ spread 7 points.

I took him at 255 yards (Leupold rangefinder) walking through some mesquites. Hit him in the neck, DRT with Remington 7mm magnum LH700 BDL with 3.5×10 VXIII Leupold, 150gr green box Remington Core Lokt’s.

The general season for white-tailed deer hunting opened across most of Texas in the north and central zones this past weekend, sending tens of thousands of hunters to the field in what has become an annual rite of fall stretching back many generations. Texas Parks & Wildlife Department field biologists reported a lot of hunter and staff activity across the state, although much of the data and numbers won’t be available until later in the week.

For example, a biologist in central Texas stated:

“After five years of working that locker, I can say that overall it was about an average weekend. There was warm weather, and a lot of folks saying they weren’t seeing deer – it was too hot. There’s still just tons of acorns on the ground, keeping many deer under cover since they don’t need to come out to other food sources, so I’m surprised it went as well as it did with the warm weather. Deer were in good shape physically; we saw some nice bucks. We were working in some antler-restriction counties, and we were hoping to see some older deer, and we did. Most people seemed to be pleased with the restrictions, some saying they’re seeing bucks on their property for the first time ever.”

Biologists in East Texas counties stated that, overall, it was fairly slow. Opening weekend turned out hot, deer activity was down, and harvest was maybe a little below average in the southern end of the Post Oak Savannah. Now, antler quality was maybe a tad above average. Harvest was still dominated by younger animals, mostly yearlings and two-year-olds. But antler quality of those classes, as well as the few older bucks that came in, seemed to be pretty good, probably a result of all that good summer rain.”

Although warm weather may have challenged Texas deer hunters on opening weekend, good habitat conditions and generally strong deer populations statewide mean that cooler weather coming this week could mean good hunting ahead this fall. Get out there!

Ted Nugent, rock star and avid bow hunter, was being interviewed by a French journalist and animal rights activist. The discussion came around to deer hunting. The journalist asked Ted, “What do you think is the last thought in the head of a deer before you shoot him? Is it, “Are you my friend?” or is it “Are you the one who killed my brother?” Uncle Ted then replied:

“Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, ‘What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away. They are very much like the French.”

The interview ended at that point.

Hunters is Lampasas County and the Hill Country ecological region should have an excellent opportunity to bag a trophy buck this season, as range conditions are excellent throughout the area. “The rainfall has ben outstanding and couldn’t have come at a better time for antler production and fawn survival,” said Mike Krueger, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) Edwards Plateau district leader and former technical guidance biologist in Lampasas.

“Last year was the first year in which antler restrictions were in force in Lampasas County, and it looks like they met the intended purpose as many better-quality young deer moved up another age class,” Krueger said.

Derrick Wolter, TPWD Wildlife Biologist for Lampasas, Bell, and Coryell counties, agreed that the 2007-08 hunting season should be a very good one. “In our recent spotlight deer surveys, we noted an increase in fawn numbers and an increase in deer numbers,” he said. “Due to the antler restrictions and adequate forage available, hunter should see older bucks with larger antlers this season.”

The Hill Country region contains several counties in Central Texas that range from Coryell on the northeast, south to Comal, and then west to Crockett and Val Verde County. Lampasas County is included in the region. For many years, the Hill Country has shown the highest deer harvest numbers in Texas.

During the 2006-07 hunting season, TPWD estimates that 172,184 hunters harvested 185,920 deer in the Hill Country. Of these, 97,608 were bucks; does numbered about 88,320. Hunters success was 76 percent.

The region with the second highest harvest was the South Texas Plains with 77,784 deer taken.

Regions with the lowest white-tailed deer harvest were the High Plains (612 deer) and the Trans-Pecos (1,575), however these two regions have a good population of desert mule deer.

Reprinted from the Lampasas Dispatch Record Hunter’s Edition 2007

Last year’s Texas deer hunting season was consiedered textbook by state wildlife biologists. However, this season hunters may have to throw out the book. Indicators leading into the November 3 season opener point to potentially great hunting across much of the state, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife Department biologist.

“Generally speaking, it’s a banner year for (fawn) production,” said Mitch Lockwood, TPWD Deer Program leader. “As far as quality of the animals, the deer we are seeing are in pretty good condition, and I expect antler quality and body weights to be above average. Not only do we expect this year’s crop to be better, but there are more mature bucks out there simply because harvest was down in 2006.”

Whitetails have responded well from last year’s extended dry spell, thanks to an unseasonably wet spring and summer and the deer have taken advantage of resurgent plant growth, Lockwood said.

That bodes well for the deer, but could pose a challenge for hunters hoping to find success from a blind over supplemental feed. Biologist point to 2004, when timely spring rains created ideal range conditions, healthy deer and high expectations from hunters. Due to the abundance of vegetation available to deer during that year, hunters observed fewer animals during the season and overall harvest numbers were down.

When conditions became relatively dry in 2005, deer harvest jumped considerably and, in particular, more mature bucks were killed that season. “That’s what makes this year tough to predict,” Lockwood said. “There will be more deer on the ground this fall, but hunting could be tough early in the season.”

Because some parts of the state are drying up as rainfall slacked off in September and October, deer movements and hunting conditions could change. “Deer were seeing so much good native groceries all year, corn was something new to them,” the TPWD program leader said.

“In the Edwards Plateau, we’re loaded with acorns. Once those food sources run out, deer should hit the feeders.”

With the expected high percentage of recruitment into the deer population this year, it’s important for landowners to actively manage whitetail numbers. “It’s important for hunters to use those antlerless tags this season and get excess animals off the range before winter sets in to ensure there’s enough food to go around,” said Lockwood.