As stated above, hunting in Texas is generally an expensive endeavor. Finding a quality deer lease takes networking and is generally about who you know. I’d avoid the lease search engines/sites as most good leases have a waiting list. With that said life happens and decent spots open up last minute and get posted within the classified ads on various state hunting and fishing forums. If you see or hear about a spot be prepared to act quickly.
If you have access and experience to hunt ground in Iowa you should be able to find a landowner willing to trade hunts.
You can also look into day leases, package type hunts, to get you by until you find a lease.
Around late July or early August parks and wildlife will open up the current year’s draw hunt system. It is a lottery system with preference points. It is only $3/entry so you might as well try. It took me 7yrs of entering before I drew my first hunt. However this year (10th year) I drew 1 hunt out of the 48 I entered and it was for a hunt that I had zero preference points for. I know guys who have drawn hunts with no points while others have 20+ points for the same hunt and still haven’t drawn.
While the draw hunts are regulated the general walk in units (mostly east Texas) are not. I’ll drive 24hrs straight through to hunt public land out west, but I won’t drive an hour to hunt a walk-in unit near my house.
South of San Antonio you can get into big ranches and big whitetail. West and north of town you generally find smaller ranches and smaller bucks, though you also stand a good chance of getting into some exotics.
Javis are south of town in large numbers and in smaller numbers west of town. Pigs are in most places. Both are fun to shoot in slow times, but a pain when you are deer hunting. Turkey are most anywhere with decent water. Quail hunting can be good down south depending on weather and habitat. You can get into some good dove hunting just west of town in Hondo. If that is something you are into you need to plan ahead as most fields book up early.
Most hunting is over feeders or on corned roads and there are a lot of high fences. I killed a buck in Iowa last year and have harvested several animals out west, but I will not pass an opportunity to sit over a feeder on a high fenced ranch. While I don’t experience the same sense of accomplishment when I’m successful, I can sit over a feeder any weekend I’m free while I only get to head out of state a few times each year. At the end of the day I just like to hunt. I tell you this to encourage you to keep an open mind about any hunting opportunities that you may come across.
Your job may dictate where you want to live, but I personally prefer the north side of town. If you don’t mind a commute the Boerne area is nice northwest of town.
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