EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
As some of you already know, Texas is home to exotic hunting on ranches. Most of it is done behind 8 foot tall fences on properties ranging from hundreds of acres to tens of thousands of acres. Their are animals from all over the world on these ranches, and some species exist in Texas in greater numbers then they do in their native country. Over the years, some of these animals have escaped from the high fence ranches and grown in numbers all over the state. These exotics are called free range because they can come and go as they want by jumping fences for cattle and goats. In some areas, there are so many that the owners of those ranches want them hunted just to keep the numbers under control. Probably the most famous exotic animal in Texas is the wild pig, which is native to Europe.
I learned about a ranch near Sonora Texas from a guy on Facebook who takes 4 free range sika bucks off of it every year. The hunt is done at night time using spotlights since that's the only time they are out moving around. Here in Texas, exotics do not have a season or rules on how to hunt them. Anything is legal. The landowner makes the rules, all a hunter is required to have by law is a valid hunting license. While hunting I was hunting for the sika buck, my wife would be hunting for axis does. Axis meat is probably the very best meat there is. There really isn't anything that compares to it. On the ranch we where hunting, there are so many of them that the landowner encourages hunters to shoot them since they are so prolific. Axis are in direct competition for food with whitetails, so if you have too many axis, you will have fewer whitetails. There is a lot of money in having whitetail hunters on your land, but not so much for axis does.
We saw several nice sika bucks and I finally connected on a real nice buck at 2 am. He made the mistake of running off into an open area instead of thick cover for a running 80 yard shot.
The next day we went to another ranch where they have free range blackbuck antelope. I saw my first blackbuck when I was in the Marine Corps and traveling through India at the Taj Mahal. Ever since then, I've always been interested in them. There are a lot more blackbuck in Texas then there are in India!!!! We spotted quite a few really nice ones, but they where too fast and I wasn't able to get a shot off on any of them. Then in the early afternoon, we spotted one that was breeding with a female that didn't notice us, and we where able to sneak up to about 80 yards for an off hand shot.



I learned about a ranch near Sonora Texas from a guy on Facebook who takes 4 free range sika bucks off of it every year. The hunt is done at night time using spotlights since that's the only time they are out moving around. Here in Texas, exotics do not have a season or rules on how to hunt them. Anything is legal. The landowner makes the rules, all a hunter is required to have by law is a valid hunting license. While hunting I was hunting for the sika buck, my wife would be hunting for axis does. Axis meat is probably the very best meat there is. There really isn't anything that compares to it. On the ranch we where hunting, there are so many of them that the landowner encourages hunters to shoot them since they are so prolific. Axis are in direct competition for food with whitetails, so if you have too many axis, you will have fewer whitetails. There is a lot of money in having whitetail hunters on your land, but not so much for axis does.
We saw several nice sika bucks and I finally connected on a real nice buck at 2 am. He made the mistake of running off into an open area instead of thick cover for a running 80 yard shot.
The next day we went to another ranch where they have free range blackbuck antelope. I saw my first blackbuck when I was in the Marine Corps and traveling through India at the Taj Mahal. Ever since then, I've always been interested in them. There are a lot more blackbuck in Texas then there are in India!!!! We spotted quite a few really nice ones, but they where too fast and I wasn't able to get a shot off on any of them. Then in the early afternoon, we spotted one that was breeding with a female that didn't notice us, and we where able to sneak up to about 80 yards for an off hand shot.


