Texas Hunting Rules for Airguns ... New rule due for filing deadline 09 July

I agree with you 100% Michael.

I believe we as air gunners have probably made a mistake getting hung up on FPE and comparing our air guns to firearms for hunting purposes, when in reality they're far more like bows and crossbows in terms of what they're capable of and how they kill. A compound bow is a 70-80fpe weapon. Yet they're a time-proven reliable weapon for taking game when the hunter does everything they are suppose to. They have enough energy to penetrate the vitals, and their projectiles are of a design to do fatal damage to the vitals as it passes thru. Its up to the hunter to know where to put the arrow and to practice enough to be able to follow thru when actually hunting. So it is with airguns. Our airgun projectiles just need to be of the right design and size to disable the functioning of those vitals when they pass, and the hunter needs to actually get the projectile there. A big bore airgun projectile is a broadhead by other means. As where I might be able to shoot a deer in the liver with a 2,000fpe firearm and still lay him out because of the massive FPE dump that happens, any other projectile, whether it be airgun or bow, must be precise. 

That being said, I have a notion that shooters don't actually understand the truth of FPE and terminal ballistics all that well in firearms as well think we do. I've read that in reality much of a bullet's FPE converts to heat on impact and that cold, slow, projectiles have been found in military medicine to be be more lethal than hot, fast, projectiles. But that's another topic. 

No one is of the opinion hunting with an air gun is in any way unethical.
If fact the opposite is true those who know, understand the challenge
involved is far beyond powder and appreciate that their are people who
except and embrace the limitations an air gun places on a hunter. They
know those people value the experience more than just numbers of game
taken.
The problem arises when they take something perfectly suitable for say
a squirrel or rabbit and try to take an animal that weighs 20 or 30 times as
much. Yeah it might well be theoretically possible but its going to take the
equivalent of a hole in one golf shot to do it.
Too many of us are chasing the hole in one dream and im sorry guys the
law and society wont allow you to do that on living things. If we ourselves
don't correct this then some point in time its going to be game over for all of us.

Please support the proposal as it now is, but understand it does have some
flaws. Look at it and think about what I just told you. TPW is
a government controlled law enforcement agency who right now is loosing
revenue badly due to dropping license sales that' is good for us, because if
we can convince them enough of us are interested, they need the money bad
enough I feel like some kind of compromise is a very doable thing. Hell its government
it could pass just the way it is! If you own a 45 cal or larger I feel its very likely
deer hunting in Texas will soon be possible. But please understand its all about
numbers with them, its vital we all must pull together with friends, family, and
even the guy off the street to get the numbers as high as possible because
that will weigh heavier than any thing else on the panels decision.

Bullfrog, you and Fuznut both make good points. I am encouraged and hopeful. Next Friday (the day that TPWD Commissioners will vote) will be a big day in the world airgunners. (Bullfrog, I am about to send a PM for you).

I have lived in Texas for 70 years. TPWD is highly sensitive to the amount of $$$$$$ they can accumulate with their regs. Also about 1/2 the commissioners are anti hunters. I had no reason to believe they would get this going without a bunch of bidding.

I listened to the entire meeting, save that there was a couple of witnesses I only heard parts of because of phone calls I had to take.

As an outsider listening in, it sounded to me that the evidence presented by both citizens and the Commission itself was overwhelmingly in favor of leaving the new rule as is, save for the possibility to tweaking it to allow for PCPs only for big game. I thought the pro-airgun witnesses did a good job stating our case. Even Texas Parks and Wildlife themselves testified to clean kills on whitetails with a .308 airgun at over 100 yards.

The only negative I heard was from the rancher in question who stirred this all up, the rancher's hog trapper (who was the actual eyewitness to the pig hunt in question), and one Commissioner who wants a FPE requirement in excess "of a .22 magnum." 

I think the airgun community needs to understand what the allegations were regarding the hog hunt in question. The hog hunt was set up for unspecified out-of-state air gun hunters on a private ranch. The guide was the ranch's professional hog trapper, a fellow who claims to have removed over 22,000 hogs over the last few years from that ranch alone. The trapper claims that over the course of the hunt, 7-9 hogs were shot with air guns (I can't remember the exact number he claimed). All hogs shot were shot with .45 airguns of various models. All shots occurred within 30 yards with 280 grain bullets. All the shots were "perfect lung shots" according to the trapper. All but one of the hogs were recovered, and all of the recovered hogs were dead when found. There was no claim of having to "finish them off." However, he also claimed that he dug the bullets out of the hogs and that although the hits were double lung shots, no expansion occurred. He also claimed that there were no blood trails except for on two hogs and but for the use of a good blood trail dog, only those 2 hogs that bled a bit would have been recovered. He claimed one hog ran over a mile and did not say how far the others had ran except that they didn't run as far as the one that went over a mile. 

I don't know how the trapper looked in person, but he sounded completely sleazy, both in mannerism and content of his speech. He makes his living trapping hogs for people in Texas. It sounded like he doesn't want his resource messed with by airgun hunters. Why would a rancher need to pay him to trap hogs when the rancher can go buy a quiet airgun and wipe out entire sounders in a day or two? I wasn't impressed with the rancher either. He sounded very entitled. His only statements were to introduce the trapper and bolster his credibility as an expert hog hunter.

I don't believe air gunners came off actually looking all that bad. It really seems like the rancher and trapper were just dripping with agenda and they had a friendly ear from one of the Commissioners. Were it not for them being friends with a Commissioner, nothing would have come of this. Sounds like the hogs in question were actually well hit and died quickly. 

Its just Southern politics playing out that many outsiders don't get to see outside of movies. 

If the Commission would be willing to ride roughshod over the Commissioner who wants an unrealistically high FPE limit (higher than a .22 mag is putting it above 400fpe), I believe they'll settle on PCPs only, which is what Florida's rule is. 

The hog trapper was definitely questionable. He smelled like a freaking hog and needed a bath extremely bad. I asked him afterwards if the projectiles he recovered from the hogs were hollow points. He couldn’t answer me. I found that smelly too. 

Anywho, I believe the airgunners that spoke did a fine job and represented the community well. It was nice to get to meet you all. 

I still think its self preservation and perhaps another agenda we haven’t fathomed yet. Even though hogs will still be legal regardless, the average joe in Texas probably isn’t going to shell out $1,000 or more to get into airguns if they can’t deer hunt with them. Bob doesn’t want competition. 

NYT article or not, Bob sounded like a shady nobody who crawled in from somewhere unsavory to spin a bad lie. I’m serious, when TPW posts the audio archive from today ya’ll should listen to that guy and contrast his testimony with all the clean-cut sounding airgunners. I too am dumbfounded why they care what he thinks. Presuming most of the Commissioners are reasonable, I bet only one Commissioner, the friend of the rancher, is pushing this and the others are just trying to placate him.

Well guys, I have been following this discussion and I wonder why TPWD is being so asinine about airguns when legal means and methods in their out door annual says: there is no weight restriction on archery equipment and no restriction of any kind on black powder guns except that be loaded only through the muzzle. What gives? You can shoot a 10 pound bow at a whitetail and shoot a black powder firearm with a lower than needed powder charge and everything is just fine, but airguns are going to be ridgidly checked in the field with portable fps gauges. What a load of c--p.

Absolutely, Thurmond. I don't understand why we need to reinvent the wheel here. 

Ok guys when they said rescinded instead of voting.
We were home free, that is the best thing possible.
Where do you think 780 no votes came from? lol
When it comes back up its virtually guaranteed to pass.

What a pain in the butt this has become.

most animals skulls do not require that much energy to penetrate. a .25 with around 60 fpe or even less than that will kill deer or hogs (I have seen videos of hogs being taken with break barrel .22 shot placement is king)but if you allow anyone to use lower powered airguns to hunt you will have idiots give the sport a bad name and so I see where they are coming from trying to make a much higher standard then necessay to keep idiots or people not serious about the sport out. but it affects all of us. and we definitely need to stand together.