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Nothing beats hunting whitetails in the Lone Star state By
Sam Springer The hills and small mountains on all sides were filled with a continuous onslaught of shots echoing through the early dawn. It was not quite daylight and already, there must have been at least twenty to thirty shots already fired. Personally, I could hardly see the brush clear enough to discern whether the images I saw were merely low cedar bushes or if there was a herd of deer due west of my blind. I hoped that the people doing the shooting could see better than I could at that time of morning. Seven of us were hunting a lease just outside the hill country towns of Llano and Mason, Texas, arguably the deer hunting capital of Texas, if not the entire U. S. It was Saturday morning, and opening day of deer season. It appeared that the deer had completely left our lease with all the shots being fired. This proved untrue as I found a herd of deer along the backside of our lease that must have had 150 deer in it. They all broke and ran out of a cedar brake and I got a good look at them as they went through the canyon below me. As it began to get daylight, I could see several deer in the brush around my blind from the herd. Later on in the morning, I shot a small five-point buck as he came out of the canyon running, and was going over the next ridge. I thought he was bigger than he was when I shot. He had a nice spread, but did not have any brow tines. Later in the afternoon, I killed another little buck while still hunting. All in all, seven hunters killed nine bucks opening day. Not too bad, since there have been some years that I didn't even see seven deer, but this was the hill country of Texas where the deer population is beyond belief. In my years of deer hunting, I have hunted all over the Lone Star State, and without a doubt, the Texas Hill Country is the undisputed king of the elusive Whitetail Deer when dealing strictly with numbers. Nowhere else in Texas, or for that matter any place in the US will you find the numbers of deer that you will find in the Texas Hill Country. I have hunted near Mason, Llano, Junction, Fredericksburg, Blanco and a dozen other places in that same region, and there have been very few times that I have been out hunting that I didn't see over 50 deer in a morning or afternoon, or for that matter, around the noon hour. There is absolutely nothing like opening day in the hill country. The hill country is a 27 county region in central Texas, generally west of Austin, Texas. There are more deer killed in these counties every year than most places even have deer. These are not the Boone & Crockett deer you read about from the Brush Country of South Texas, however, although there are usually some good quality bucks killed every year in this area. If you are strictly after record book deer, you should concentrate on the brush country of South Texas, near the Mexico border. If you like to stalk and hunt from the ground, you will not find a better place in the US than the hill country of Texas. Nowhere else will you be able to walk and see as many as 100 to 200 deer per day, except on some of the leases in the hill country. If you have never experienced it, you owe it to yourself to find a lease and get in on best whitetail deer hunting you will find anywhere in the US.
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