This might not be the best place for this but I have recently been bitten by the hunting bug and seeing as how I have no friends that currently hunt I was wondering how one would mind going about getting into it. I do not want to hunt for trophies as much as I want to hunt for meat for the freezer, I live in Texas and so I figure that might make things easier.
What part of TX? I have a wildlife management degree from a university in TX and and one time I hunted every day of the 60 day duck season, plus the teal season and drove down to the coast to catch the late season goose season.
I also hunt deer, hogs etc...
Finding public areas in TX is next to impossible unless you live in East Texas where you can hunt on the 4 national forest or the $48 program to hunt a little over a million acres designated under the program to be open for hunting which is mostly timber company land in East Texas.
Texas has a draw hunt program for some wildlife management areas etc..Look on the TXPWD website for those. They send you a book (at least they used to) and you entered and applied for the species and locations you were interested in hunting and the turnout is controlled so you don't get 10,000 on 5 acres hunting etc..
Some of the hunts on the draw WMA hunts can be fantastic. If interested let me know and I can point you in the right direction. Some of the hunts hover around 50% on the draw rate and a little more if you bow hunt. The book gives the results from the previous years hunt. Besides deer they also do javelina, exotics, and alligators etc...
Just let me know what you're interested in and what area and I can get you started in the right direction.
I have had great sucess over the last 15 years on public land. But I own property sandwiched between the national forest and some the annual hunting permit land that I aquired in a 3 way land swap with the US Forest Service and a timber company. So I effectively cut off a portion of those who had to work to get to the area to hunt which eliminated a lot of competition.