Texas Hunting Leases

Weekly migratory bird hunting reports are posted from early September through early February.

High Plains Mallard Management Unit: Goose hunters enjoyed better decoying action near Dumas, Spearman and Amarillo with the snow and colder conditions. Larger Canada geese are showing with frozen ponds in the northern states. Snow geese have been tough to fool over decoys without weather. Specklebellies and Canadas continue to work in Knox and Haskell counties. Duck numbers continue to build in the Panhandle, with more mallards showing on playas. Most hunters have had to break ice to find open water in shallow ponds. Prospects are good.

North Zone Duck: Duck hunters have taken good numbers of mallards in sloughs, creeks and river bottoms. Colder weather and frozen waterways to the north have encouraged more mallards to cross the state line. Canvasbacks and other divers have been steady on Lake O’Pines, Toledo Bend and Lake Fork. Backwaters around Toledo Bend has produced good mallard shoots as well. Gadwalls and wigeons have been taken in shallow coves of lakes and reservoirs. Wood ducks have been steady at first light in the timber. Hunting remained steady around the zone boundaries of IH-10. Freshwater impoundments have held pintails, wigeons, shovelers and green-winged teal. Prospects are good.

South Zone Duck: The coast continues to produce steady duck shoots on the prairies, marshes and bays. Gadwalls, wigeons, shovelers and pintails have been steady near Eagle Lake, Garwood and Wharton. Absent has been the large concentrations of green-winged teal that many hunters count on to fill limits. Bay hunters enjoyed limits to half-limits near Port O’Connor and Rockport. Redheads, bluebills, gadwalls and wigeons have made up the bay bags. Hunters in Trinity Bay have enjoyed half-limits of gadwalls and bluebills on the north shoreline. Marsh hunters near High Island and Sabine Pass have seen slow hunting. Snow goose hunting has been difficult, even with weather conducive to goose hunting. A small juvenile population of snows has been the culprit for slow decoying action. Specklebellies have shied from calling. Sandhill crane numbers are steady, but few hunters have set up decoy spreads. Most cranes have been harvested by goose hunters in white spreads. Prospects are good.

If you ever are as fortunate as I was to shoot a Sandhill Crane while on a duck or goose hunt, you are in for a treat. Sandhills are fairly common in Texas during the winter migratory season. However, they are not prone to forage in the same exact habitat as most of their waterfowl brethren. Thus, getting one on your game strap is a rarity if not hunting for them on purpose.

For years I have seen the historic St. Charles Bay Hunting Club while fishing and hunting in the Rockport, Texas area.   If you have ever been to Goose Island State Park, then you were not very far from its campus overlooking its namesake bay.  For nearly one hundred years, the club has played host to outdoorsmen who came to the mid-coast to enjoy some of the best waterfowl hunting and fishing the state has to offer.  And, despite the growth of the surrounding area, it has managed to hang on, keeping its charm and traditions alive and well.

As a private club, its members have maintained a low profile away from the hustle of the once quaint town of Rockport/Fulton.  Not much has changed about the club’s buildings except some modernizing of the maintenance and storage facilities.  Upon arriving, you are assigned a room in one of the half dozen or so cabins, each having comfortable and clean beds and bathrooms.  The cabins have a small front porch in which to hang things or hang out and enjoy the view of the bay.  In the center of all this, is a main lodge with all the things needed to make this the perfect “man spa” but comfortable enough for the wives and kids.  It is here where we start our evening with a home cooked dinner in the dinning room.  Afterwards, we slip off to the lounge for some conversation and adult beverages.  It was late in the evening when we made our way back to our cabin for some sleep.  The 4:00 AM wake-up call is an early one but some of the younger die-hards give the trout a hard time under the lights on the pier before giving into the urge to rest.  When the morning knock comes at the door, its back over to the main lodge for a hot breakfast and coffee and back to the cabin again to get ready for the air-boat ride out to the blinds.

It felt good to be back on an air-boat.  Duck hunting the coast and air-boats seem to go hand in hand.  As a teenager, one of my first waterfowling trips was from an air-boat near Matagorda and I was hooked ever since.  Gliding over grass flats and oyster reefs and getting way back into the marsh where you could never get with a bay boat makes you feel like you are almost cheating.  This morning’s ride lasts about thirty minutes as we hug the shorelines and shallows out to the barrier island known as St. Joseph Island.  The boat pulls up to a wood blind with thick bay leaf brushing and there are three dozen decoys already sitting in the water.  I am reminded of a picture by one of my favorite artists, John Cowan, as I survey the scene.  Cowan notes the benefits of using bay leafs for blind brushing as they are perfectly suited for the task.  After unloading, we send the boat on its way and await shooting time.  A few minutes before, we load up our steel shot and wait for the show to begin.

Today’s weather is cool and windy out of the north.  And, it did not take long for the first ducks, a group of Wigeon, to make their way into the decoys and we dispatched two from the group.  Soon after a large flight of green-winged teal sneak in from behind us and somehow we overcame our being startled and took five in a quick volley.  The end of the day had us with Teal, Wigeon and a few obligatory Shovelers on our straps.  Although we saw plenty of Pintail, we did not have them come in close enough to make them our “hunters-choice” ducks.

Despite a full-limit hunt for our three man party, my favorite part of the trip was the boat ride home.  With the boat hugging the shoreline, I looked out ahead and as far as the eye could see were rafting waterfowl.  As our less than stealthy craft approached, the sky turned dark with ducks of all species trying to escape the sudden interruption of their feeding time.  It was good to see their numbers out in force and a reminder that all of the banquet dollars that I personally have contributed to their health was paying off.  The Texas coast is changing and attracting more people.  But, its always refreshing to see some things stay the same like traditional duck hunting lodges, hunting friends, bay-leaf blinds, air boats and miles of rafting ducks!