Does your land qualify?

Hunting can continue - recreational use and wildlife management coexist, and a lease doesn’t disqualify you. Your practices must target indigenous wild animals (whitetail, turkey, songbirds, quail…), so a high-fence axis operation alone won’t qualify, but native-focused management alongside exotics can.

Beekeeping is its own 1-d-1 agricultural use (5–20 acres, with hive minimums) - a different route than wildlife management, and a good one for small tracts. If you’re between the two, our eligibility check compares them for your acreage.

No - the application is normally a one-time filing, unless ownership changes or the chief appraiser asks you to confirm you still qualify. Once approved, the valuation continues year after year as long as the land stays in qualifying wildlife management use. A sale is the common trigger for a new application: the buyer files their own. A transfer to a surviving spouse is not treated as a change of ownership under Tax Code §23.54(e‑1), so no new application is required there. What recurs regardless is the work and the proof: at least 3 of the 7 practices every year, documented, plus a PWD‑888 annual report whenever the chief appraiser requests one - so the honest way to think about it is that you re-earn the valuation annually even though you rarely re-file it.

You can still file late - with a penalty. Appraisal districts accept a late application until the appraisal roll is certified (typically mid-July), and the cost is a 10% penalty on the tax savings the valuation produces for that year. Miss the certification too and you wait for the next tax year at market value, which on open-space acreage is the expensive outcome. If the calendar is tight, file the Form 50‑129 and PWD‑885 you have rather than the perfect one you don’t.

With both appraisal districts. Texas appraisal districts are county-based, and each one appraises only the acreage inside its own county - so a tract crossing a county line needs its own application and plan on file in each district. The two can reach different conclusions, and their adopted wildlife-use figures can differ, so treat them as two filings that happen to describe one property. Both of your county pages are worth reading before you start.

The owner files. The application for a 1-d-1 valuation is made by the person claiming it for the property, so a hunting lessee or a grazing tenant cannot put the land into wildlife management use on their own. They can absolutely do the work - plenty of owners have a lessee, a neighbor, or a co-op running the practices - but the owner signs the application, and the owner carries the consequences if the practices lapse. Land held in an LLC, a trust, or by several heirs is filed under the entity or the co-owners who hold title.

The chief appraiser reviews your application and plan and can ask questions or request changes. Approval is the norm when the plan matches TPWD’s ecoregion guidelines and the paperwork is complete and on time - which is exactly what we generate.

Technically it’s a special appraisal (1-d-1 open-space valuation on the basis of wildlife management use), not an exemption. Everyone - including appraisal districts - says “wildlife exemption” anyway. We do too.