Texas Parks and Wildlife Commissioners have approved the following changes to the 2024-2025 Statewide Hunting and Migratory Game Bird proclamations:
Big Game Regulations
- Change Desert Bighorn Sheep hunting season from Sept. 1 – July 31 to Nov. 15 – Sept. 30 to allow for safer flying conditions during TPWD aerial surveys.
- For properties enrolled in the harvest option of the Managed Lands Deer Program, allow youth to take bucks with a firearm for the same days that correspond to the early youth-only season for county regulations.
- Expand doe days in 43 counties in the Post Oak Savannah and Pineywoods ecoregions to better manage white-tailed deer populations.
- Expand youth-only seasons in the fall to include Friday for white-tailed deer, squirrels and wild turkeys to allow greater hunting opportunity for youth.
Migratory Game Bird Regulations
- Eliminate the Light Goose Conservation Order from both Eastern and Western zones due to continuous declines of wintering light geese in Texas.
- Reduce the daily bag limit of light geese from 10 to 5 in both Eastern and Western zones.
- Extend the regular goose season for light geese to 19 days in the Eastern Zone to provide more hunting opportunity during the regular season.
- Standardize the light goose possession limit to three times the daily bag limit for regulatory consistency.
- Change the Special White-winged Dove Days season structure due to calendar progression.
- Change the season structure of the second segment for doves in the north zone to allow later dove hunting during the holiday season.
- Change greater white-fronted goose daily bag limit restrictions from two in the aggregate to a dark goose daily bag limit of five in the Western Zone.
Upland Game Bird Regulations
- Require statewide mandatory harvest reporting for all wild turkeys during all seasons and counties to improve harvest data for their management.
- Close the spring-only hunting season for wild turkeys south of Highway 82 in Fannin, Lamar, Red River and Bowie counties due to ongoing wild turkey restoration by TPWD, NWTF and landowners.
- Close all wild turkey hunting seasons in Bell and Williamson counties east of Interstate 35 and in all of Milam County to allow the restocking of wild turkeys for population restoration by TPWD and landowners.
- Remove references to Rio Grande and eastern wild turkey subspecies in regulations and replace with “wild turkey” to simplify county regulations.
- Reduce the wild turkey hunting season length and annual bag limit in Brewster, Jeff Davis, Pecos, and Terrell counties west of the Pecos River; Comal, Hays, Hill, McLennan, and Travis counties east of I-35, and Guadalupe County north of I-10 to a spring-only season from April 1-30 and a one gobbler (male turkey) annual bag limit to be more proportionate with wild turkey populations.
Additional details
Hunters should make note of these changes and follow all regulations set for species, tagging, bag limits, counties, season dates, means and methods. Hunters can check the Outdoor Annual for complete and updated regulations for the 2024-25 season beginning May 13 on the TPWD website. Information in the current Outdoor Annual reflects last season’s information.
—courtesy TPWD
