Story by Bill L. Olson

A comment occasionally heard from those newly arriving to the Lone Star State is, “Texas doesn’t have as much land for public hunt as from where I’m from.”  On the surface that may be true given the size of Texas.  However, don’t let numbers fool you.

Of the 171,902,000 acres that makes up Texas current land area, about 97 percent is privately owned.  Based on research and calculations it seems the remaining three percent is leaves about 5,175,706 acres.  With further reductions this results in about 1.5 million acres of lands available for public hunting.

This includes Texas four National Forests — Angelina (154,140 acres), Davy Crockett (161,140 ac.), Sabine (161,088 ac.) and Sam Houston (163,264 ac.) that totals 639,632 acres.  Add to this the Caddo – Lyndon B. Johnson grasslands in the northeast part of the state and the number swells to 675,000 acres.  Not included in this number but make up a portion of the 1.5 million acres available is the National Wildlife Refuges.

The Bureau of Land Management is not a big player in Texas.  It does have the Cross Bar near Lake Meredith in the Panhandle that encompasses 11,883 acres available for a variety of outdoor recreational pursuits including hunting.

Some of the governing entities surrounding inland reservoirs offer public hunting.  Several manage their own properties for hunting.

There is an interesting website entitled Backcountry Chronicles (www.backcountrychronicles.com/public-hunting-land).  On this is a page they look at public hunting in the United States.  It states, “Most of the public land is in the Western States and Alaska, but look at the totals for the Top 12 States (all Western States; Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington & Wyoming) compared to the Remaining 38 States. To start with, the total land area of the Top 11 States plus Alaska are almost as large as the rest of the 38 states combined (49.3% of the total). Without Alaska, the Top 11 states make up 33% of the total land area of the U.S.”

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