Last season we enrolled our family ranch in Brazos county,"Harvest Option", simple, beneficial, did the required reporting. Our account only addresses last season.

Trying to enroll for the upcoming season, just a deadend. Local P&W office was clueless, the contact # at the bottom of the MLD site was a recording.
Anyone tried signing up for the 2026-2027 season?

When I did it in Brazos county, years ago, it was with the local biologist. Might have to ask a GW or TPW office who that is now.

Within the past few weeks, I was able to renew our Harvest Option for the 2026-2027 season on the TPWD Land Management Assistance website with no issues. This will be our second year in the program.

You should be working with your local TPWD biologist on your programs to get maximum benefit unless you are a wildlife biologist yourself that they have worked with…then they will let you do some things with documentation without hovering over you.

My harvest option on 2 parcels has always been quick and easy. 5 minutes online and youre done. Something different?

Do you have your information to sign into the LMA site? It's actually very easy through the site but if you can't get in, definitely reach out to your local tpwd biologist and they can help you.

https://lma.tpwd.texas.gov/

All: The TX P&W tech in Austin called me, said on the page displaying the property, to click on "Properties"....which opened up an enrollment page. Might be the only tab I didn't click on, since I was already looking at the property map
Done.

Gunny456 said:

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You should be working with your local TPWD biologist on your programs to get maximum benefit unless you are a wildlife biologist yourself that they have worked with…then they will let you do some things with documentation without hovering over you.

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The MLDP "Harvest" option is very low key, the biologist involvement last year (1st time) was a phone call, actually asked "so, you have a lot of deer..I think you do". My reply of "Yes", his response was "I'll plug in 8 anterless permits..unless you want 10".
So not a lot of biologist involvement, this year the system defaulted to 8 permits. Which we are currently okay with that number.

Roger that.

Even if you go Conservation Option, you get the same amount of biologist involvement.

I was under the impression that Harvest Option permit issuance for a particular property was dependent upon two things. 1) The biologist's fall survey line for that county and 2) your acreage.
Is there not a county wide consistent formula for permits on Harvest?

We have been on harvest option for four separate properties for 15 years. It takes me a total of about 20 min to report harvest and secure permits for the upcoming season. Report harvest end of Feb, apply for new permits first of May. I already have this coming seasons permits printed.

The " harvest or conservation options" were not implemented into the MLDP program until 2017-2018 deer seasons.
The conservation option is very similar to the original program started in the late 90's that actually required landowners to complete requirements (like requiring three actual deer census annually, and other management requirements and actions to manage their deer herds.)
We were on the MLDP program since its inception in 1996…a great comprehensive management tool that, if managed correctly,
had a tremendous positive effect on improving your deer herds.
The "harvest option" available now is basically just a broad general easy program based upon regional population data that TPWD uses to issue permits for extended seasons for harvest in return for the landowner sending in harvest data.
Its success in actually improving individual deer herds is very dependent on the particular locale or area of population dynamics.

GSS:
With that many permits in Brazos county, do y'all have over 800 ac ?

580 acres

Please don't be insulted with this, but I've been in MLDP for a good many years. Had troubles one year and ultimately found out that the web browser your computer/cell phone/ etc utilizes makes a difference. I'm not much of a techy so hopefully this makes sense. I think the site has a note on it about this subject…but you have to be looking for it. Feel free to PM if problems persist. I can potentially help. Good luck