BY MIKE LEGETT
Mar/April 2004 Issue of Texas Deer Association Tracks

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Texans soon could have access to low-cost, close-to-home deer hunts through a program being discussed by the Parks and Wildlife Department's (TP&WD) advisory committee on white-tailed deer. If it worked, which it would, it could throw cold water on all those complaints about average guys being priced out of the deer-hunting market.

But there's a catch. There's always a catch.
The proposed program - currently called Trap, Transport and Hunt - is far from a reality right now, but it would allow surplus deer captured during population-control efforts on one ranch to be moved to a second ranch, released and then immediately shot by hunters. The key word here is "shot" because the objective is population control, and there's no fantasy that any deer captured under the permit is destined to do anything but die.

" This would be a way of further addressing the surplus deer issue that's a problem around the state," said Lee Bass, former chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission and current chair of the advisory committee. Bass was speaking to the committee members, who met on February 5, 2004, to discuss deer-permit programs and other methods of dealing with deer population problems.
" It's not just a rural landowner problem, but an urban problem as well," Bass said. Indeed, cities such as Lakeway, in western Travis County, have been fighting increasingly troublesome populations of deer for years. One sticking point in Lakeway has been whether the deer should be left alone, moved to a new location and left to fend for themselves or captured and dispatched as quickly as possible.
The concept of moving surplus deer - either from an urban area or from a private ranch - to new habitat where they could eventually be hunted isn't new. In fact, that's how ancestors of most of the state's whitetails came to be stocked by Texas Parks and Wildlife. But the idea of capturing the deer, moving them and hunting them immediately is new.
" There are those who say it's better for a deer to be taken in a hunting situation by a willing and enthusiastic participant than to be treated like a "cow" and killed as soon as it's captured, Bass said. That's true. And make no mistake about it, these deer are surplus deer, no matter where they reside, and they are going to die. The question is how and when.
Bob Cook, former wildlife division director and has plenty of practical experience in building and controlling deer populations. "There's no biological issue other than we need to get rid of a bunch of deer, " he said. "It's a social issue. We've got to figure out how to avoid a canned hunt, but this is in some way put and-take hunting. The goal is to get every one of those deer killed as soon as you can.
Put-and-take hunting and fishing already are legal in Texas, and Parks and Wildlife is involved through its popular trout stocking programs. Private hunting preserves also are allowed to release quail, pheasant, chukar and other game birds for hunts. But when the target has four legs and big brown eyes - and more important, when it's the state's most prized game animal - folks grown a little more queasy about the idea.

Some people, including some hunters, are going to scream "canned hunt" when they hear about the possibility of surplus deer being released for hunting. True canned hunts - which are prohibited by law in Texas - are hunts in which wild or domesticated animals are released without any reasonable chance for escape and then shot. Wild whitetails would be able to escape, and many would, but still, the ultimate goal of the program would be to allow hunters to kill deer that already are marked for death. "I think, to the public, it's not whether it's put and take, it's whether it's a canned hunt," Bass said. "When I first read about the idea, I was against it," committee member Wallace Klussman said. "But the more I think about it, the concept is fine if we can create a hunt" Again, that is the real issue.

Cook suggested that the committee consider minimum size limits on the ranches where deer would be released. Cook said those ranches would have to be high-fenced and that he foresaw most of the deer coming from private, rural ranches. He also agreed that Parks and Wildlife would help oversee and administer the first hunts as part of a pilot program to study the process and gauge its success and public acceptance.

I have always thought that one way to deal with some surplus deer, while also encouraging landowners to initiate management programs or join wildlife cooperatives, was to offer those landowners surplus deer as an incentive. The animals could be captured during late winter one year, released and then hunted the following fall.

The advisory committee is a long way from making any proposals to the Parks and Wildlife commission. Those proposals, which likely would target only does, will have to be worded carefully to make them palatable to the nine commissioners, too, because they are the ones who will take the heat should there be a blowout on the road to the final proposal. In the meantime, landowners, hunters and non-hunters have to decide just where the Trap, Transport and Hunt permit proposal fits in their view of deer population control and hunting.

©2004 Austin American- Statesman

BY MIKE LEGETT
Mar/April 2004 Issue of Texas Deer Association Tracks