Are We Losing Public Hunting Land?

In 1987 TPWD introduced a walk-in program to the Timber Companies in the state. They presented a mutually beneficial arrangement increasing opportunities for Texans to hunt throughout the state. TPWD began reaching out to private landowners to lease land for hunting in 1994. The last of the timber companies elected not to renew their hunting lease with TPWD in 2023, a loss of over 16,000 acres. In 2024 Texas hunters noticed some of the more popular public land hunting locations like Stiles Farm also decided not to lease their land to TPWD this season.  This has all Texas Hunters wondering, are we losing the little public land Texas has to hunt on?

Each year TPWD initiates 120-125 new leases to private landowners for public hunting use. Of those 120, half are on a year-to-year lease which means they need to be renewed every year. Some of the private landowners elect not to renew the lease in the spring of each year. There are 4 main reasons why a landowner may not want to renew their lease with TPWD.

1.      Competing land use. “People have to remember hunting isn’t the primary use of the land TPWD leases. It’s farmland,” Kelly Edmiston with TPWD said. In some cases, the field might be in some sort of rotation, or the owner has plans for it during the hunting season. “Sometimes the landowner will come back to the program after a year or so,” Kelly said.

2.      Land is sold and fragmented. Ideally, TPWD wants to lease land between 100-400 acres for hunting. It gives room for hunters to spread out and work the birds.

3.      TPWD can’t afford to lease it. Sometimes a better offer to lease the land will come in and price out TPWD.

4.      Littering and Land Damage. “There are complaints of littering every year. Although not the most prominent issue. It is in the Top five,” Kelly said. Hunters like Cayden Holland have heard this directly from the landowners on the public land he hunts. “We want to keep these landowners happy so they keep leasing to TPWD. We need to make sure the land isn’t trashed,” Cayden said.

Even with these concerns, TPWD has 1.3 million to 1.4 million on average acres available for public hunting each year. “The landowners understand TPWD’s mission and are supportive of it,” Kelly said. This year TPWD added 18,000 new acres to the public land hunting program for 2024.

It is a challenge for the TPWD to find new land to lease for hunting each year. The local biologists do most of the legwork to find promising new properties to lease along with their other duties. If you are a land owner and are interested in finding out if TPWD will lease your land for hunting season you can reach out through the TPWD website  https://tpwd.texas.gov/landwater/land/habitats/  for a list of biologist and their contacts. You can also call TPWD main offices directly.  “We are very appreciative of the landowners who lease, continue to lease, and who come back to lease to TPWD,” Kelly said.

Leased land comes and goes from year to year for various reasons. If you are a hunter who uses public land you have a responsibility to the landowners who do lease their land to TPWD. Leave it better than you found it. A magnet on a stick and an extra trash bag goes a long way. Littering shouldn’t be one of the reasons a landowner decides to end their lease with TPWD.