reynolds357
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You can make good money turning a wrench.
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Price too high, rules too stringent
- Thread starter Roamin_Wade
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DukeConnor
New member
Pa has 1.5 million acres of state game lands. I have never felt the need to pay to hunt. Do other states such as Texas have state game lands ? Is land leased just for better hunting or are their just no alternatives ?
Double Naught Spy
New member
No, Texas does not disallow you from having a loaded rifle on/in your vehicle. For many of us, it is a common practice.
Double Naught Spy
New member
Okay, after reading over the thread a couple of times, what I get is that the OP is upset because hunting in Texas isn't as convenient or as cheap as he thinks it should be so that he can take his kids hunting like his dad did back in the day...which as it turns out was when Texas had less people and less hunters. Of course, him not being able to hunt is due to the Baby Boomers and all the hunters in the area are dumb rednecks that can't be trusted to hunt the way he thinks that they should be hunting. On top of that, when he hunted public land, the cops went after him for some weird something that isn't illegal, confiscating 2 of the "bullets" he didn't even need. Life has challenged him repeatedly with medical issues and Obama did him wrong with Obamacare. Still he can't afford to take his kids hunting despite having a a nearly new quarter million dollar house, classic "sweet" Corvette, and a boat.
I am going to agree with the poor decisions statement. If you have that kind of opulence but can't afford to go hunting, you have made some really poor decisions. If this is a value experience that you think is so important, sell the 'vette and get a lease for several years. Sometimes, you gotta make sacrifices for your kids.
I am going to agree with the poor decisions statement. If you have that kind of opulence but can't afford to go hunting, you have made some really poor decisions. If this is a value experience that you think is so important, sell the 'vette and get a lease for several years. Sometimes, you gotta make sacrifices for your kids.
buck460XVR
New member
Life has challenged him repeatedly with medical issues and Obama did him wrong with Obamacare. Still he can't afford to take his kids hunting despite having a a nearly new quarter million dollar house, classic "sweet" Corvette, and a boat.
I am going to agree with the poor decisions statement. If you have that kind of opulence but can't afford to go hunting, you have made some really poor decisions. If this is a value experience that you think is so important, sell the 'vette and get a lease for several years. Sometimes, you gotta make sacrifices for your kids.
again, IMHO, it has nuttin' to do with making "poor" decisions, but everything to do about priorities. Re-read the OP's posts. It's not that he can't afford to, it's just that in his situation, he can't justify it, and is only lamenting and frustrated. I took my kids hunting because it used to be a cheap date. While other kids were going to Disney world and and making numerous trips to the waterparks in the Dells, I took my kids fishing and hunting. The monies saved went towards their college educations, summer sports camps and dirtbikes. I understand how the OP would like to take his kids hunting, but what hunting does he have to introduce them to? Pay to hunt domesticated and semi-domesticated animals? While that is an okay thing to do occasionally, he really is not a skill set that one passes on. One reason it has become so popular....so folks with no or few hunting skills can feel like a successful hunter. In order to get that 180 class buck that seems the norm on Outdoor T.V., most folks likely aren't going to get an opportunity on public land......not even in Texas.
WE all have to make choices. Sometimes there just ain't enough to go around to do everything on our bucket list. Seems these types of forums are just a good place to vent about it.
Double Naught Spy
New member
again, IMHO, it has nuttin' to do with making "poor" decisions, but everything to do about priorities. Re-read the OP's posts.
No. Priorities are decisions.
WE all have to make choices.
Last I checked, choices are decisions.
He claims hunting is cost prohibitive. However as you noted in post #25, given prices over time, the cost to hunt in the past isn't that far out of line with the cost of hunting today. He has made the DECISION to not spend that kind of money on his kids, even though his father did something comparable for him.
Sometimes there just ain't enough to go around to do everything on our bucket list.
This time there is enough to go around. It isn't that he can't afford it, but that he won't afford it. Again, that is a decision. Sorry, but when a person boasts about their wealth and material belongings and then talk about how something they really want to do for their kids is cost prohibitive when that cost is a drop in the buck compared to what they boasted about, then I see no validity in their ranting.
Maybe that life long joyous set of memories of hunting with dad back in the day that he wants his kids to experience is just too far down that bucket list below "sweet" Corvette and a boat.
As a parent, either you make things happen for your kids or you don't. He is choosing not to make this happen, despite having the means, and then putting the blame on everybody else. After all, it isn't his fault that hunting costs money.
stagpanther
New member
This whole conversation makes me a bit sad--it sort of illustrates the gradual disappearance of the notion of "public's right to hunt public access land"--which I personally consider just as sacred as the 2nd amendment.
It strikes me that if the price of lease is too high and the rules are too stringent the OP has an excellent business opportunity to buy the land he would love to be able to hunt on, hunt on it under the rules and dates he chooses, and lease it out for the rest under appropriate rules and fairer prices.
reynolds357
New member
I hope your hands get better. I am sure that is frustrating. I guess we all have choices. I am guessing your vette and Whaler probably cost about what my hunting land did.Yes sir, not about having made wrong decisions. Quite to the contrary, I’ve come a long way from where I’ve come from. Parents divorced when I was 9 and my mother declared war on my father and made my life hell. She spoiled me with letting me do things I’d have never done if my father was able to play a larger part of me. I wasn’t spoiled with monetary things, just let me go wild. I never got out of the 9th grade, but when I was 17 and quit, my father promptly made sure I had a drivers license and GED. I tried like hell to get into the Army at 22 yrs old but because I had quit school and because I was arrested twice for city charges (never been to county jail) I had to get a waiver for the school thing and then again for the arrest record, which I got, and then took the ASVAB and physical and was waiting on a ship date when Jan 1 of ‘94 rolled around and as of that moment no non-grads were let in. Two months later I began a 15 month Aviation Maintenance school which culminated in me becoming an FAA licensed A&P Mechanic. I’m now just turned 47 and I’ve been working at a well known Firearms store for a year now because I had a lower back ALIF fusion surgery and a hand condition called Dupuytren’s Contracture where my fingers curl up into my palm. I had the first one cut out at 41 yrs old and I’ve had 7 others surgically removed since then. It’s recurring and it’s exasperated by working with my hands and so I was having a surgery per year right when that IDIOT obama screwed up healthcare and every penny I could save in a year was being spent so I could get my keys out of my front pocket! I live in a 5 yr old $250,000 home, I have a sweet ‘72 Corvette LT1 and a little Boston Whaler on the side of my house. Now that my kids are old enough to hunt I want to pass on our awesome National traditions to my kids and flat can’t afford those prices.
Now, if the person that said that stupid stuff thinks I should have chose better he can go get bent and pound sand! There’s another thing that happens in Texas. Folks like that can very easily find themselves on their backs staring up into the sky wondering who just knocked the S*** out of them...
Hunting in Texas is Different: Get Over It or Get Frustrated
Hunting in Texas is different, even outside the lack of public land. Y'all who have not lived or hunted here really have no idea just HOW different--and how what is unethical or illegal outside of Texas is just SOP here. It takes time & effort to absorb the paradigm shift.
Toss in the lack of public land and you see folk from elsewhere get really frustrated, really fast. Pile on top of that all the whining and moaning and carrying on about feral hog damage by the land owners while they simultaneously display a lack of willingness to work with prospective feral hog hunters(1). Enough to make folk from the other 49 states wonder "Whiskey tango foxtrot? None of this is making a lick of sense." Not helped by the Texas "I got mine, F-you" crowd.
I have come to my own accommodation with Texas's perversity when it comes to hunting. First off, I don't indulge in a hunting lease. After all, I only have .mil experience, a STEM degree, have risen to the top of my industry the last 20 years, and make a multiple of the median income(2). I hunt in Texas on occasion, as reasonably priced opportunities pop up. But most of my hunting has been out of state, as it is much more economical to drive 1000 miles elsewhere and hunt for a week than do so inside Texas's borders. I am sure some of ya'll outside Texas have heard of the exotic game ranches here? Well, it is cheaper to travel to Africa, pay the licences, fees, air travel, etc. and bag your exotic in Africa than to hunt exotics in Texas. I have hunted the few public lands in Texas and will not so waste my time and money again on such.
In many other states there was/is a broad swath of society ranging from working class up on through the affluent who can afford to and do hunt. This makes for a broad hunting culture, anchored in the middle class and middle class values(3). Again, Texas is different. Texas takes its lead from Mexico, in that there is a statum at the top of the population that can afford to hunt or are connected by blood/marriage to the land owning class--and then the huge majority that will not ever afford it. This makes for more of a narrow "I got mine, F-you" hunting culture and a lot of folk who are indifferent as they will never be part of it(4).
One last thing a hunter from the other 49 states has to realize is that the tease of feral hog hunting is mostly that: a tease. Y'all need to dismiss it and move on. Once you realize it is nothing more than a tease and mostly illusory, you'll be less frustrated by the dichotomy of, "Oh, woe is me, look at all the damage done to my land by these feral hogs!" followed by either a rebuff of your offer to help out or a "Sure you can help out, but pay me $500 for the first day's hunt and remember it is BYONOD(5)." See, you're either known by them/theirs personally, a cash cow to be milked, or potentially one of those yahoos who will do even more damage and put them at risk(6).
So get over it. No matter how many hog-damage sob stories you read, you're not going to get the opportunity to hammer hogs on the cheap in Texas. Cheaper than hunting deer in Texas, perhaps, but not cheap. And in the end you're either blood, a cash cow, or a dangerous yahoo, so "F-you, I got mine."
(1) Understandable, given the Litigious States of America. In exchange, though, could we have less whining about feral hog damage, then? My Tiniest Violin needs a rest every once in a while.
(2) You're not taking your family (F, M, 2 kids) hunting here unless you have serious money (not mere UMC) to throw around or you were born/married into local land-owner circles. On the surface is hospitality, but below that is clannishness, distrust, etc. Also remember, the public schools are overrun and have become pits of despair so you get to pay for private school in addition to eye-popping property taxes for single family homes while ag land pays a pittance. Other posters have written about priorities & choices, well here you go: to hunt or to educate your kids is but one of many. Make your choice and live with it.
(3) Think "The Deer Hunter," but without all the Vietnam, POW camps, Russian Roulette and Christopher Walken blowing his brains out in the end.
(4) The narrow hunting base/culture here in Texas has persisted for a while (see the money spent at Cabela's), but I think we are beginning to see its end as non-Norteno latins fill up the state and completely alien folks (yankee, foreign, muslim, etc) stuff the urban areas. Texas ain't gonna "turn blue" as quick as the politicos think/hope, but eventually the indifferent-to-hostile non-hunting majority will eat the hunting culture alive, just for fun. See the UK and their hunting bans/humiliation of the hunting class.
(5) "Bring Your Own Night Observation Devices"
(6) Seems like the only folk who know how to erect a fence in the state of Texas are those running the high-fence exotic hunting ranches. Those are wired down tight. If the rest would learn how to erect and maintain barbed/hog/hot wire fencing, the land-owners' hog problems would be attenuated quite a bit. As it is, slovenly fencing practices are the rule. Compare that to fencing up north, where they manage to mostly keep livestock--to include hogs--contained by means of well-maintained fencing. "It's a mystery." My sympathy for the Texas Land Owners' Lament has withered over time.
Hunting in Texas is different, even outside the lack of public land. Y'all who have not lived or hunted here really have no idea just HOW different--and how what is unethical or illegal outside of Texas is just SOP here. It takes time & effort to absorb the paradigm shift.
Toss in the lack of public land and you see folk from elsewhere get really frustrated, really fast. Pile on top of that all the whining and moaning and carrying on about feral hog damage by the land owners while they simultaneously display a lack of willingness to work with prospective feral hog hunters(1). Enough to make folk from the other 49 states wonder "Whiskey tango foxtrot? None of this is making a lick of sense." Not helped by the Texas "I got mine, F-you" crowd.
I have come to my own accommodation with Texas's perversity when it comes to hunting. First off, I don't indulge in a hunting lease. After all, I only have .mil experience, a STEM degree, have risen to the top of my industry the last 20 years, and make a multiple of the median income(2). I hunt in Texas on occasion, as reasonably priced opportunities pop up. But most of my hunting has been out of state, as it is much more economical to drive 1000 miles elsewhere and hunt for a week than do so inside Texas's borders. I am sure some of ya'll outside Texas have heard of the exotic game ranches here? Well, it is cheaper to travel to Africa, pay the licences, fees, air travel, etc. and bag your exotic in Africa than to hunt exotics in Texas. I have hunted the few public lands in Texas and will not so waste my time and money again on such.
In many other states there was/is a broad swath of society ranging from working class up on through the affluent who can afford to and do hunt. This makes for a broad hunting culture, anchored in the middle class and middle class values(3). Again, Texas is different. Texas takes its lead from Mexico, in that there is a statum at the top of the population that can afford to hunt or are connected by blood/marriage to the land owning class--and then the huge majority that will not ever afford it. This makes for more of a narrow "I got mine, F-you" hunting culture and a lot of folk who are indifferent as they will never be part of it(4).
One last thing a hunter from the other 49 states has to realize is that the tease of feral hog hunting is mostly that: a tease. Y'all need to dismiss it and move on. Once you realize it is nothing more than a tease and mostly illusory, you'll be less frustrated by the dichotomy of, "Oh, woe is me, look at all the damage done to my land by these feral hogs!" followed by either a rebuff of your offer to help out or a "Sure you can help out, but pay me $500 for the first day's hunt and remember it is BYONOD(5)." See, you're either known by them/theirs personally, a cash cow to be milked, or potentially one of those yahoos who will do even more damage and put them at risk(6).
So get over it. No matter how many hog-damage sob stories you read, you're not going to get the opportunity to hammer hogs on the cheap in Texas. Cheaper than hunting deer in Texas, perhaps, but not cheap. And in the end you're either blood, a cash cow, or a dangerous yahoo, so "F-you, I got mine."
(1) Understandable, given the Litigious States of America. In exchange, though, could we have less whining about feral hog damage, then? My Tiniest Violin needs a rest every once in a while.
(2) You're not taking your family (F, M, 2 kids) hunting here unless you have serious money (not mere UMC) to throw around or you were born/married into local land-owner circles. On the surface is hospitality, but below that is clannishness, distrust, etc. Also remember, the public schools are overrun and have become pits of despair so you get to pay for private school in addition to eye-popping property taxes for single family homes while ag land pays a pittance. Other posters have written about priorities & choices, well here you go: to hunt or to educate your kids is but one of many. Make your choice and live with it.
(3) Think "The Deer Hunter," but without all the Vietnam, POW camps, Russian Roulette and Christopher Walken blowing his brains out in the end.
(4) The narrow hunting base/culture here in Texas has persisted for a while (see the money spent at Cabela's), but I think we are beginning to see its end as non-Norteno latins fill up the state and completely alien folks (yankee, foreign, muslim, etc) stuff the urban areas. Texas ain't gonna "turn blue" as quick as the politicos think/hope, but eventually the indifferent-to-hostile non-hunting majority will eat the hunting culture alive, just for fun. See the UK and their hunting bans/humiliation of the hunting class.
(5) "Bring Your Own Night Observation Devices"
(6) Seems like the only folk who know how to erect a fence in the state of Texas are those running the high-fence exotic hunting ranches. Those are wired down tight. If the rest would learn how to erect and maintain barbed/hog/hot wire fencing, the land-owners' hog problems would be attenuated quite a bit. As it is, slovenly fencing practices are the rule. Compare that to fencing up north, where they manage to mostly keep livestock--to include hogs--contained by means of well-maintained fencing. "It's a mystery." My sympathy for the Texas Land Owners' Lament has withered over time.
Roamin_Wade
Moderator
Amazing, at first I made poor decisions and now I have too much opulence and I need to sell one of my toys or just shut up about it. This is quickly becoming a lot like talking to a democrat. No matter what someone says or means they just spin it in their own direction.
The reason I was ticketed in the camp on public land is because of a technical public hunting law where one isn't supposed to have a rifle out of the case, period.
The reason I was ticketed in the camp on public land is because of a technical public hunting law where one isn't supposed to have a rifle out of the case, period.
What you have is not enough desire to make it happen and you came here wanting validation for your angst - and when you didn't get it; well, you got hit with a variety of opinions. I mentioned several times to go out of state; what's wrong with a road trip and time spent bonding with your kids?
reynolds357
New member
Well, read your own posts.Amazing, at first I made poor decisions and now I have too much opulence and I need to sell one of my toys or just shut up about it. This is quickly becoming a lot like talking to a democrat. No matter what someone says or means they just spin it in their own direction.
First, You don't have enough money to hunt. Then, you have plenty of money and start naming off high priced toys you own.
What you have is not enough desire to make it happen and you came here wanting validation for your angst - and when you didn't get it; well, you got hit with a variety of opinions.
Well said, it is all about desire and making your own opportunities.
Art Eatman
Staff in Memoriam
If more than 50% of your income is from your farming or ranching, you qualify for an agricultural exemption (low evaluation) on your land. Texas is not alone in this. And, FWIW, ag land evaluations are similar in south Georgia.
jfruser, I don't care how you build a fence, it won't stop hogs. They'll root under the bottom barbed-wire strand of sheep-and-goat fence. And all it takes is a gully-washer rain to give them a freebie.
What it amounts to, overall, is that as the population grows, city folks are at a disadvantage for hunting opportunity. Economics 101: Fixed amount of acreage with increasing demand forces an increase in price.
jfruser, I don't care how you build a fence, it won't stop hogs. They'll root under the bottom barbed-wire strand of sheep-and-goat fence. And all it takes is a gully-washer rain to give them a freebie.
What it amounts to, overall, is that as the population grows, city folks are at a disadvantage for hunting opportunity. Economics 101: Fixed amount of acreage with increasing demand forces an increase in price.
reynolds357
New member
A guy I shoot with did it, but he has more time and money than he has sense.I don't care how you build a fence, it won't stop hogs. They'll root under the bottom barbed-wire strand of sheep-and-goat fence. And all it takes is a gully-washer rain to give them a freebie.
Art Eatman said:What it amounts to, overall, is that as the population grows, city folks are at a disadvantage for hunting opportunity. Economics 101: Fixed amount of acreage with increasing demand forces an increase in price.
I used to have over 50,000 acres of huntable private land for deer and pronghorn that I had access to just for the asking. However, things change old farmers and ranches pass on the places get sold or people offer stupid amounts of money for hunting rights and my access has dried up to less than 8,000 acres. I know it sounds like a lot of land but you might be lucky to have 5-10 mule deer on the property during season, pronghorn are almost always there but not in great numbers every year.
You usually pay by the animal out where I grew up. I know one ranch that I used to have access to gets $1,200 for every buck and $800 per doe pronghorn, and last I heard $3000 for buck mule deer still only $800 per doe. If you need a landowner voucher because you didn't draw for that area that tacks several hundred more into the price of the hunt. I don't really blame people for trying to get extra income any way they can, I just try and manage what I still have the best way I can to be successful.
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