Trenton777:

Because public land is on National Forest property, there are STATE and FEDERAL rules and regulations.  You must have a valid state hunting license as well as the Annual Public Hunting Permit to hunt on U.S.F.S. lands AND obey the additional restrictions which apply to the national forests.

In order to understand both, you need to visit the Texas Parks and Wildlife web site and the U.S.F.S. web site.

You may hunt from Sept 1 through Aug 31 of the following year and may take any species which is in season for the specific county in which you are hunting.  For instance, the Sam Houston National Forest covers three counties, Walker, San Jacinto and Montgomery.  All three counties have the same open seasons for exactly the same species so you can't accidentally kill an animal in one county and then traverse over a county line in which the animal is not in season.

There is no hunting allowed at night without specific permission by the game warden covering the area you want to hunt so make sure you receive prior approval if you want to hunt hogs or fur bearing animals at night with artificial light.

I hope this helps.  If you have any other questions, please feel free to email me directly and I can answer most of your questions or provide a source to get your question answered.

Paper woods?I was on one close to a neighborhood and suffered the same thing.My first year on I was waving to people on fourwheelers that were not even on the lease.During the first year i saw the same bastards riding at night with rifles.I was unarmed so I drove past them hiding on side of the road.My suggestion is to cut your losses and get off!!

We use the hog pipe at our ranch in Benavides and have good success getting the hogs to come in, problem is they can empty the corn in one night, we are upgrading by putting a trail cam near the hog pipe and gonna put a hog light to hunt the pigs after dark if needed.  We alos like to put cut apples in with the corn to keep the scent longer in the pipe and we put gravel rocks in also so when the pipe is empty with corn the pigs can still roll it around and the rocks make noise to attract other pigs.

We just got back from a trip to Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Ephesus, and Private Tours in Istanbul did a fantastic job for us. All of our transfers from the airports were smooth, all of our travel guides to the various sites (mosques, Topkapi Palace, Ayasophia, Dolmabahce Palace, Hagia Sophia, Topokapi Palace, Blue Mosque and of course the Turkish night Ephesus, historic sites in Cappadochia) www.privatetoursinistanbul.com were great. I highly recommend this travel group. Very seamless. Makes for a terrific trip. Visited August 2011

Its true that deer will move a long way for food, but in a heavily-hunted area like SHNF most times they'll move any significant distance from cover only at night.  So, unless there's enough cover left in your area for them to hide, and you can probably tell if they're bedding in that remaining cover, more than likely you'll have to find out where they're holing-up and hunt near that cover.

I went out Friday night with a group for my first Thermal hog hunt.   [url=http://www.doubledrophunts.com]Double Drop Hunts[/url]  http://www.doubledrophunts.com I have hunted before with night vision and been fairly successful if hogs were around to shoot at. But this night we were very lucky. We watched from a fence line downwind from a field and a large Oak tree where bait had been put out. At the time I was not feeling overly optimistic because it seemed too open a field. But after waiting for 40 minutes one of the guys whispers that he sees movement. And one after another hogs start coming into the field. There had to be at least 60 70 hogs. We were instructed to shoot on the count of 3. All the guns were suppressed and some had Thermal and others had night vision.
In Short order we had 9 hogs down. This was a rush and I really enjoyed the hunt.

Made it over to the convention hall about 9:40am this morning.  Eva Wilson & Ron Bartels were both waiting there for me at the Humanitarian Services booth.  (That's the branch of safari club that runs the <strong>blue bag</strong> program and all the disabled hunter services which includes the pathfinder award.)

We all went over to the Oelofse's booth so I could introduce my dad to Jan & Annette and Ron could present Jan with yet another donor plaque for his generosity toward the program.  Dad bought Jan's book and we had another long talk about hunting in Namibia.  Alex and I talked about maybe going after a mountain zebra on my safari.  I'm pumped!

From there, Ron took us over to Jim Shockey's booth so we could meet and talk to him too.  Ron has hunted several times with Jim and I believe he knows almost everybody that's worth knowing in this whole building.  About every ten steps, someone stops to talk to him.  Ron said both Jim and his daughter Eva were there earlier (and that Eva is really "worth meeting").  They weren't there though.  Rumor had it that Jim had slipped away to book a few hunts for himself before his wife Louise found out about it.

From there, Dad & I headed off on our own to browse through the myriad of outfitters, artists, merchants, taxidermists, tv personalities & auction items that were spread out among four different rooms.  The place was vast, and let me tell you, some of the highest quality show stuff I've ever seen.  We could've literally spend three solid days here looking at just the art & awesome taxidermy.

Passed by the African Hunting Gazette booth next.  As I rolled up, I asked the lady behind the counter if the next issue was out, to which she replied "Yes, and you're in there.  Don't worry."  Ha!  I wasn't expecting her to recognize me.  I didn't know she was the person in charge of article submissions.  Needless to say, I was impressed and now y'all know I have a published piece in one of the 'big' safari magazines.  They gave me a few copies and we were on our way.  Oh by the way, they had a full mounted porcupine at the booth that was a gorgeous mount.  I'm putting one on my wish list for Namibia this summer.

Since my award dinner was that night, dad & I left early so I could get some rest before it was time.  Whew!

(On the way out, we heard that we'd missed Sean Connery by about ten minutes at the humanitarian services booth.  Sorry dad, you could've met one of your idols and the
2nd best James Bond.)

What is the light or laser on top of your scope and do you like it?  

Have heard that some laser designators dont work well in cold weather.  

I am using an Olight 350 lumen (with red cellophane over it...  red lense is on the way)  with a vortex 2x7x32 scope and am very happy with what I can see thru the scope at night.