By Robert Burns
Texas A&M AgriLife
Thanks to plenty of rain at the right times, the 2015 hunting season has been a “jubilee year” for the white-tailed deer crop, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service wildlife specialist.
“The deer crop this year has been fantastic,” said Dr. Jim Cathey, AgriLife Extension wildlife and fisheries program leader at College Station. “There are a lot of happy hunters out there.”
“We’ve had ample rainfall this year for much of Texas, and we could not say that in previous years,” he said. “Animal quality is very good. I’m hearing good reports of harvests out there in the field now. We will continue to have good conditions into the late fall and early winter.”
The economic impact in Texas for hunting was $3.65 billion in 2011, a drought year, and the most recent year for which he has statistics, Cathey said.
“Of that, deer hunting alone counts for $2.16 billion,” he said. “So it’s a pretty important economic driver for our state and wildlife conservation in Texas.”
Cathey said it’s been a very good year for other types of hunting, particularly quail, as numbers are back up. He noted that because 2011 was a drought year, which meant poorer crops of deer and other game animals, he would expect the economic impact for this year to be better.|
“We should probably have brand new numbers within a year,” he said. “But I can’t say they will be higher because everything depends on license sales and related items. But drought or not, it’s definitely worth getting the license, not only for the importance of going out there and enjoying wildlife recreation but for the contribution the hunter conservationist makes back into the management of wildlife.”