One Saturday Opens Duck, Goose, and Deer Season Around Columbus This Fall
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
On Saturday, November 7, 2026, white-tailed deer season, regular duck season and goose season all open on the same morning in the part of Colorado County south of IH 10. The general deer season opens that day under the county's 2026-27 regulations from Texas Parks and Wildlife. The county's South Zone, which covers everything south of IH 10, opens regular duck season the same day. Both Eastern Zone goose seasons, one for dark geese and one for light geese, open that day too. North of IH 10, the county's ducks fall under the North Zone, and regular duck season there waits until November 14. On the rice prairie toward Eagle Lake, a deer stand and a duck blind share one opening day.
That shared Saturday is the most crowded date on the fall calendar, and it is the last date this season when all three open together. By early January they split apart, and the open months that follow belong to a prairie whose birds have changed.
The shared opener happened last year too, just a week earlier. TPWD sets the general deer season in North Zone counties like Colorado to open on the first Saturday in November. In 2025 that was November 1, the same day the waterfowl seasons opened. TPWD's March 26, 2026 commission agenda prints the old and new dates side by side.
| Season | 2025-26 | 2026-27 |
|---|---|---|
| South Zone regular duck | Nov. 1–30, Dec. 13–Jan. 25 | Nov. 7–29, Dec. 12–Jan. 31 |
| Eastern Zone dark geese | Nov. 1–Jan. 25 | Nov. 7–Jan. 31 |
| Eastern Zone light geese | Nov. 1–Feb. 15 | Nov. 7–Feb. 19 |
Most of the change comes from the calendar moving, not from a new policy. The commission proposal says migratory bird season structure and bag limits carry over from the prior year, with dates adjusted to fit the calendar. Counting both end dates, the South Zone duck season runs 74 days in each year. The light-goose season comes out two days shorter, 105 days against 107. Both openers moved six days later, and both closing dates moved later into the winter.
Bag limits are also the same as last year. The regular duck limit is six in aggregate. Within that six you can take no more than five mallards, of which only two may be hens. The other caps are three wood ducks, three pintails, two redheads, two canvasbacks, one scaup and one "dusky" duck. In the Eastern Zone the daily limit is five dark geese, with no more than two white-fronted geese, and five light geese. Possession limits are three times the daily bag.
The shared dates start a week before the opener. Colorado County's early youth-only deer season runs Friday, October 30 through Sunday, November 1. The South Zone youth-only duck days fall on October 31 and November 1. Those same two days are also set aside for veterans and active-duty military. For a family with a young hunter, that weekend can mean a Saturday morning on the water and an evening in a deer stand.
Archery-only deer season, open since October 3, closes Friday, November 6, the night before the general opener. Quail opens November 1, so it is already running by the time the larger openers arrive. The county's second dove segment comes later. Colorado County lies in two dove zones split by IH 10, and neither second segment starts before December.
After November 7 the seasons separate one date at a time.
Deer hunting gets the larger share of November. January mostly belongs to waterfowl, and the four extra weeks of duck season after the deer general season ends are longer than they were last year. That puts the weight on the rice prairie around Eagle Lake and the birds that winter there.
The county deer rules have one feature that comes up every season. The bag limit is four deer, with no more than two bucks and no more than two antlerless. A legal buck must have at least one unbranched antler or an inside spread of 13 inches or more, and only one of the two bucks may measure 13 inches or wider. On the waterfowl side, TPWD requires a Migratory Game Bird Endorsement, HIP certification and a federal duck stamp.
For about 40 years starting in the 1960s, Eagle Lake was known for geese. Wildfowl's March 2025 history of the town, written by R.K. Sawyer, traces how the town got there. Ducks came first. Rice arrived on the Eagle Lake prairie in the 1890s. When native prairie ponds disappeared, guide Jimmy Reel and businessman David Wintermann used rice irrigation to flood harvested fields as roost ponds. Geese followed the roost ponds. Marvin Tyler worked out how to decoy them over the "Texas rag spread," and in 1969 he guided Andy Griffith and Sam Snead on a hunt filmed for ABC's American Sportsman. The Eagle Lake Headlight then began promoting the town as the "Goose Capital of the World."
The geese did not stay. Wildfowl reports that Texas wintered as many as 1.1 million snow geese at the 1996 peak. Within the past 15 years the light-goose population has dropped as low as about 100,000. Over the same years, Texas rice fell from a historic high of 700,000 acres to below 200,000 every year since 2012. Part of the cause was the 2011 drought year, when the Lower Colorado River Authority cut off agricultural water for the first time.
Sawyer's description of the recent seasons is the part that matters for this winter:
"True, the mallards and mottled ducks are mostly gone, but teal, pintails, and gadwalls are the new kings of the prairie."
The same piece credits a new generation of local operators. They drill wells to reduce their reliance on river water and build managed wetland units planted with native seed grasses, instead of flooding harvested rice and hoping birds find it. One of the article's photos shows ducks covering a managed unit belonging to Pintail Hunting Lodge on the Eagle Lake prairie in 2024.
This history explains the duck bag. Pintails and gadwalls are the birds Sawyer describes filling the prairie sky now. Under the current limits you can take three pintails a day. Gadwalls have no separate cap, so they count only toward the six-bird total.
Rice still shapes the prairie, and 2026 set a record low for it. The July 2026 Rice Extension Agronomy Newsletter from Texas A&M AgriLife cites the June 30 USDA Acreage Report. That report estimated about 113,000 acres of rice planted in Texas this year, down from about 142,000 in 2025, with about 108,000 expected to be harvested. That is the lowest Texas rice acreage since official records began in 1929. The newsletter's own measurements come from the Wintermann Station at Eagle Lake, which recorded about five inches of rain in the week of July 13 as harvest was getting started.
With fewer acres of rice stubble, the privately managed wetlands Wildfowl describes make up a larger share of the prairie's winter habitat.
The birds heading south come from a breeding population that held about steady. Ducks Unlimited's summary of the 2026 breeding survey puts the traditional survey area at 33.4 million breeding ducks, similar to 2025 and 6% below the long-term average. Mallards fell 11% from 2025 to 5.9 million. May pond counts rose 14% to 4.8 million, though they stayed 9% below average. These are continental figures from the breeding grounds, not a forecast for Colorado County. Even so, a drop in mallards fits a prairie that Wildfowl already describes as running mostly on teal, pintails and gadwalls.
South of IH 10, November 7 is the one day this fall when deer, duck and goose seasons all open, with the youth weekend leading into it. After that the calendar separates them. Deer season has its antlerless days in late November and closes January 3. Ducks take a December split and return for a second segment that runs to January 31. Light geese stay open until February 19.
At Big Easy Ranch, the sporting calendar is part of ownership, from wingshooting and hunting on the property to fishing and lodge dinners after a morning in the field. If you are planning this season or your next one around the ranch, request the Dream Book and schedule a private consultation with our team.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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