Need Shooting Lanes Cut Before Deer Season

How do I clear shooting lanes before deer season?

Shooting lanes cut before deer season in Southeast Texas should be laid out from the stand and the deer sign, run north to south where the brush allows, and mulched with feathered edges months before opening day, and TRP Land Clearing & Excavation cuts them on hunting and recreational tracts across Jefferson, Hardin and Orange counties and up into the Big Thicket from Beaumont. Before a lane is cut, its far end is checked so it does not point at a road, a house, a neighbor's stand or a property line without a backstop, and any pipeline easement or power line on the tract is located with Texas811 first. Spring through early summer is the window. Estimates are free and done on the tract.

Why this happens in Southeast Texas

Hunting ground in this corner of Texas runs from the pine and hardwood country of Hardin County, up Highway 69 and Highway 96 through Lumberton, Silsbee and Kountze into the Big Thicket, across the Neches bottoms and the Village Creek drainage, to the low tallow thickets of Orange County toward the Sabine and Cow Bayou, and down through the Jefferson County prairie toward Taylor Bayou. Each one hunts differently. The bottoms along Village Creek and Pine Island Bayou grow lanes shut fastest and have the wettest corners, which are worth leaving as bedding rather than fighting into a plot. The sandier Big Thicket ground holds a plot better and drains. Access is the common problem across all of it: a gate off a county road, a long two-track and a wet crossing somewhere in the middle, and on a fair number of tracts the first job is making that access good enough to bring the equipment in, which the owner then keeps.

When to call a dirt contractor

Call in late winter or spring, when the season is over and the ground has months to settle before the next one. That is when the layout can be done from last season's sign, the lanes can be cut and feathered, and any plot ground can be cleared, stumped and shaped in time for lime to act and a late summer planting to establish. Call when the old lanes have closed in enough that the stand is useless, when you have a new tract and no idea where the deer move on it, or when the access to the back of the property has gotten so bad a lowboy could not reach the work. If it is already October, call anyway and we will tell you honestly what can still be done this year and what should wait for spring.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a wider lane a better lane?
Usually the opposite. A lane only needs to give a clean shot from the stand it was cut for, and for most setups that is somewhere between ten and twenty feet wide depending on the weapon and the distance. Past that it reads as a clearing, and a mature buck crosses a clearing at a trot rather than feeding down it. Length works the same way. The thing to spend on is direction: a shorter lane running north to south, out of the sunrise and sunset, hunts better than a long one into the glare.
Can you cut lanes across a pipeline easement?
Often, but only after the operator has located the line and Texas811 has marked it, and only within whatever the easement allows. A drum mulcher over an unmarked shallow line is not a risk worth taking for a shooting lane, so the marker gets found on the walk and the call gets made before the machine comes off the trailer.
How often do the lanes need to be cut again?
Every couple of years on most tracts, sooner in the bottoms. Tallow, yaupon, privet and greenbrier start pinching a lane within a season, and along Village Creek and the Neches bottoms a lane left alone for three seasons is gone. A mulching pass over the existing lanes and plot edges before they close is a short job. Reclaiming lanes that have grown shut is a new layout and a new cut.
The only open ground I have is the wet corner. Can that be a plot?
It can be cleared, but it will not be much of a plot. A cool season planting in ground that holds water through a wet fall drowns out most years, and this region has a wet fall more often than not. The better use of that corner is usually as bedding and water, which a hunting tract needs anyway, with the plot sited on the nearest ground that drains. We will say that on the walk rather than clear it and let the first wet October make the point.
TRP Land Clearing & Excavation

Need shooting lanes before deer season

TRP Land Clearing & Excavation works across Southeast Texas. Call 409-554-2287 or request a callback.

Get Your Free EstimateCall 409-554-2287

Karl Gillihan, Owner

TRP Land Clearing & Excavation

Updated September 2026