Another good season is forecast for dove hunting. About 10 million white-winged doves and 30 million mourning doves – more than we’ve seen in a decade – are expected on the landscape. The season will run 90 days, and we expect to have 90-day seasons in future years.

NEW this year, Special White-Winged Dove Days have been expanded to the entire South Zone. It’s open on the first two weekends in Sept. You can shoot from noon to sunset for a 15 bird daily bag limit with no more than 2 mourning doves and 2 white-tipped doves daily.

During regular season, you can shoot from sunrise to sunset and the daily bag limit is 15, with no more than 2 white-tipped doves. For more information, including complete season dates, refer to the new Outdoor Annual. And look over the dove identifier guide so you’ll know which birds to avoid. 

It’s likely you’ll have a season of successful dove hunts, so check out this video for tips on how to clean, store and cook your bounty. See you out there! 

Practice helps you become a safe, skilled and efficient hunter. It helps you recognize safety issues before you take a shot, you waste less ammunition, and that means you’ll save money. 

If you can’t get out to a sporting clays field, this video demonstrates 3 exercises your can do with an unloaded shotgun to build your skills.  

Hunting safety is a developed skill. You must take Hunter Education if you were born after Sept. 1, 1971, and carry proof of it when you hunt. If you misplace your Hunter Ed certification card, get a free replacement online and keep that proof in your pocket.

Becoming skilled in safety is not a one-time thing, it’s ongoing. Watching a refresher video is always a good idea. This short video goes over wing shooting tips like:

• Know your safe zone of fire
• Know what’s behind your target
• Never swing on game

Just as practice is a skill of patience, safety is a skill of restraint. Pass up shots which have the slightest chance of being unsafe to make the field a safer place. 

Pronghorn season runs Sept. 30 – Oct. 8 in 41 counties. They can be hunted by permit only. Pronghorn Permits are issued to landowners, and you must have landowner permission to hunt on their land. Contact participating landowners using this online list.

Hunters can also participate in an experimental, buck-only pronghorn season in areas of the Panhandle. To hunt in these areas you need landowner permission, plus a free Experimental Pronghorn Permit. Landowners set buck harvest limits on their lands in these areas themselves. This project's goal is to simplify pronghorn hunting regulations and increase hunting opportunities. 

Be aware that both male and female pronghorn can have horns, but a male’s are much larger and the female horn is seldom branched or pronged. Pronghorn hunting tips can be found in the digital Texas Hunting Guide, available free with the Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine app.

Trans-Pecos pronghorn restoration efforts are continuing. Our strategy is to bolster pronghorn populations through translocations, habitat improvements and predator management. Watch this short video to see the ongoing work. 

The official guide to Texas hunting regulations is the 2017-2018 Outdoor Annual. It also highlights what’s new for hunting this year, like the expanded Special White-Winged Dove Days.

The most convenient way to access the Outdoor Annual is with the mobile app. It’s free for both Android and Apple devices. Even if you’re in an area without internet service, you can still access the entire Outdoor Annual if you’ve downloaded the app. So get that free app today! You can also pick up a print copy at your local retailer or view regulations online.

We appreciate your ongoing observance of regulations. They are an important tool in wildlife management and help us maintain healthy numbers of game animals.

Walk-in hunting is available on more than 1 million acres of land in Texas. This is land that we’ve made accessible to the public by leasing it from federal and state agencies, private landowners and industry. This magazine article tells how we work with landowners to expand your hunting options. All you need is a $48 Annual Public Hunting Permit to gain access to this vast array of opportunities.

Go online to access our interactive map and search for a public hunting area. There are options to search for for a variety of locations and game. Or refer to this pdf of the Public Hunting Lands Map Booklet.

We also have public hunting opportunities just for the youngsters through the Texas Youth Hunting Program. These educational hunts include hunting mentors, lodging and meals. Youth hunts are an excellent way to instill a love and respect of hunting into young people, and offer them a recreational outlet that doesn’t involve a screen.

How does a premium guided hunt sound? Think about it – a guide, lodging, meals included. If that's your kind of hunt, you need to enter Big Time Texas Hunts. 

We’ve put together 9 hunt packages on some of the finest private ranches and public lands. The stand-out is the Texas Grand Slam, which takes you on 4 separate hunts for bighorn, white-tailed deer, pronghorn and desert mule deer. 

The other 8 packages include the Exotic Safari, Gator Hunt and the popular Ultimate Mule Deer Hunt. NEW this year, a Benelli Super Black Eagle 3 shotgun, valued at $1,600, has been added to the Waterfowl Adventure!

An entry is $9 online or $10 by mail, phone or at retail outlets. Enter as many hunts as you like, as many times as you like. All proceeds go directly to support wildlife conservation and public hunting in Texas, so any way you look at it, you’re going to come out a winner.

Please note that a $5 administrative fee is charged for each phone or online transaction, but you can purchase unlimited entries or licenses in a single transaction and pay only one fee.