Texas Landowner Tags
The Managed Lands Deer Program has no acreage minimum. The Harvest Option needs no plan, no data and no habitat practices; the Conservation Option needs a TPWD-approved wildlife management plan with two preceding years of population and harvest data and two approved habitat practices, then three per year to continue. Tags are valid only on the enrolled tract, they are guaranteed, and the bag limit disappears entirely - and there is no public list of enrolled properties, allocations or boundaries anywhere.
Checked against Texas Parks and Wildlife Department rules, October 20, 2026. Where the rule is silent or its sources disagree, the line says so.
MLDP Harvest Option · MLDP Conservation Option
with an exemption
Hunting Your Own Land
none for deer - the licence exception list covers coyotes attacking livestock, feral hogs and fur-bearers, and deer are not on it. A tag is also always required: the licence tag, or the MLDP tag on enrolled property, which also satisfies proof of sex (source: tx_mldp_info).
MLDP Harvest Option
Managed Lands Deer Program, Harvest Option (HO)
no acreage test
drawn with everyone else
out-of-state owners qualify
Who Qualifies
| Species | Deer (The Harvest Option covers white-tailed deer only.) |
|---|---|
| Acreage test | No acreage minimum. The Harvest Option requires no management plan, no population or harvest data and no habitat practices - only enrolment and a daily harvest log. Contiguous low-fenced tracts may be pooled into an aggregate, and tags issued to the aggregate work on any tract within it.1 |
| Land test | ✗ Contiguous✗ Agricultural use within the property |
| Who may hunt it | Anyone the landowner or their agent gives a tag to. All hunters on an MLDP property must hold the appropriate resident or nonresident general hunting licence. There is no public access requirement. |
| When to apply | May 1 - Sep 1, a hard window that is not auto-renewed. Fee or withdrawal by the Friday before the season; harvest reporting by Apr 1. Apply at lma.tpwd.state.tx.us. Enrolment is $30. |
What You Get
| The tag | Tags valid only on the enrolled tract, guaranteed, and the bag limit disappears: there is no personal or annual bag limit, against a statewide limit of five deer and three bucks. The season runs to Feb 28, 2027 where the general season ends Jan 3 or Jan 17. Issuance is auto-calculated and cannot be revised. Tags are self-printed PDFs and a daily harvest log is mandatory. |
|---|---|
| Transfer or sale | No. There is no sale prohibition on TPWD's page and no per-tag fee, and the programme is monetised through the lease market instead, which is why a separate Hunting Lease License ($79-$252, resident and nonresident, must be displayed) exists. There is no hunter-name field and no per-hunter cap. This reading rests on the absence of a prohibition, not on a stated rule.Not addressed in the rule. TPWD's MLDP pages state no prohibition on selling a tag and set no per-tag fee, so the no reading rests on the absence of a rule rather than on a stated one. |
LAMPS was folded into MLDP effective Sep 1, 2017 and the Antlerless/Spike Control Permit was eliminated in 2016, so any page describing either as current is wrong.
“MLDP tags are valid only for the specific tract of land for which they were issued” — TPWD MLDP information page: tag validity, bag limit and issuance rules1
MLDP Conservation Option
Managed Lands Deer Program, Conservation Option (CO)
approved management plan
drawn with everyone else
out-of-state owners qualify
Who Qualifies
| Species | Deer (The Conservation Option covers white-tailed and/or mule deer.) |
|---|---|
| Acreage test | No acreage minimum, but a TPWD-approved Wildlife Management Plan is required, with two preceding years of population and harvest data and two approved habitat practices, then three habitat practices per year to continue. Supplemental feeding does not count as a practice.1 |
| Land test | ✗ Contiguous✗ Agricultural use within the property |
| Who may hunt it | Anyone the landowner or agent gives a tag to, each holding the appropriate general hunting licence. |
| When to apply | Apr 2 - Jun 15, auto-renewing on timely reporting. Enrolment is $300 plus $30 per additional unit. |
What You Get
| The tag | Tags valid only on the enrolled tract, guaranteed, with no personal or annual bag limit and a season to Feb 28, 2027. Unlike the Harvest Option the allocation is biologist-set and can be increased on survey data. |
|---|---|
| Transfer or sale | No. Same position as the Harvest Option: no stated prohibition, no per-tag fee, monetised through the lease market.Not addressed in the rule. As with the Harvest Option, TPWD states no sale prohibition and no per-tag fee, so the no reading rests on absence. |
Same data gap as the Harvest Option: no public enrolled-property list, allocation table or boundary layer exists.
General Season or Limited Draw?
Texas is statewide over the counter and there is no public draw for private-land deer: buy a licence (resident $25) and hunt where you have permission. Regulation is by county rather than by draw - 252 of 254 counties have a white-tailed deer season, with county-specific bag limits, antler restrictions, special late seasons, youth-only seasons and mandatory reporting. The structure is identical for nonresidents at nonresident prices. The only draws are for public land (the Public Hunt Drawing System and Big Time Texas Hunts), and the Annual Public Hunting Permit covering roughly a million acres is walk-in with no draw. Elk is an exotic ungulate - no bag limit, no closed season, no tag, no draw and no landowner programme, just a licence and landowner permission.
Per-unit classification: The Outdoor Annual county listing (and the mobile app) is the authoritative per-county source, with the species page at /hunting/deer. tpwd.texas.gov serves an incomplete TLS chain, so WebFetch fails while curl -k works..
Check a parcel on the map →
Click the ground or paste a listing's coordinates: the unit for every species (114 Texas units mapped), and whether the acreage clears the floor.
Texas draw odds →
Every species, unit and hunt code, with the odds at each point level, fees and deadlines.
Things That Trip People Up
- MLDP is the worst state for data: the enrolled tract has a season to Feb 28 and no annual bag limit, so the county answer is simply wrong, and there is no public enrolled-property list to resolve the caveat from open data.
- MLDP tags are valid only on the specific tract for which they were issued, even though the surrounding geography is county-based.
- An aggregate of contiguous low-fenced tracts shares tags across all of its tracts, so the parcel boundary is not the tag boundary.
- Supplemental feeding does not count as a habitat practice for the Conservation Option.
- LAMPS and the Antlerless/Spike Control Permit no longer exist; sites describing them as current are wrong.
- Elk in Texas is an exotic: no tag, no season and no landowner programme.
- statutes.capitol.texas.gov hard-403s non-browser clients and tpwd.texas.gov serves an incomplete TLS chain.
Sources
- 1. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department · Managed Lands Deer Program information · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 2. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department · Outdoor Annual county listing · retrieved 2026-10-20
- 3. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department · Outdoor Annual deer page · retrieved 2026-10-20
This page summarizes agency rules for orientation. The statute, commission rule and the current year's application booklet govern; check them before buying land or applying.