Hunting in Texas most often means white-tailed deer, and the hill country holds more whitetails than any other region of the state.

Not surprisingly, deer hunters in the Hill Country enjoy the highest success rate in Texas, with 76 percent harvesting at least one deer, and many filling their generous five-deer licenses.

Whitetails are not the only big game animals available in the Hill Country. The region is overrun with wild hogs descended from stock first released into the wild by Spanish explorers and missionaries in the 17th-century. While the average wild hog weighs 100 to 200 pounds, a few big boars can push 500 pounds. In addition to being good table fare, wild hogs make impressive trophy mounts, with some wielding tusks 6-inches or more in length.  Wild hogs are not considered game animals, and there is no season or bag limit.

Hunters who have always dreamed of hunting exotic game in Africa and India can save plane fare by hunting the Texas Hill Country instead. Tens of thousands of exotic deer, antelope, sheep, and other foreign mammals run wild behind high game fences, and many of them, including aoudad sheep, axis and fallow deer, and blackbuck antelopes, have escaped those fences and established free ranging populations. There are now more axis deer and blackbuck antelope in the Texas Hill Country than in their native India, and breeding stock has even been sent back to India to help re-establish native populations. Commercial hunting operations, such as the famous YO Ranch in Kerrville, the Flying A in Bandera, and many others, offer sportsmen a chance to hunt even more exotic fare, including kudu, eland, scimitar-horned oryx, several varieties of wild sheep, and dozens of other non-native species.

Wild, Rio Grande turkeys are also found in large numbers throughout the region, and the sound of their gobbles echoes through the hills. Most hunters prefer taking gobblers in the spring when they can be called in to shotgun range, but turkeys are also taken as a bonus during deer season in the fall and winter.

Upland game opportunities are more limited, with the best quail hunting to the south and west, and the best dove hunting in the southern and eastern portions of the region.  There are several upland game hunting preserves scattered throughout the hill country that offer good hunting for a fee, including Joshua Creek Ranch just outside Boerne, and many ranches offer day hunting for doves at fees ranging from $25-$100 a day.

It may sound like Texas bragging, but when it comes to hunting, it’s a plain fact that the Texas Hill Country offers more bang for the buck than any other place on earth.