Short answer
When does deer season start in Texas in 2026?
Per TPWD's Outdoor Annual, the archery-only season opens October 3, 2026 and runs through November 6. The North Zone general season, which covers every county we serve, runs November 7, 2026 through January 3, 2027. Licenses go on sale August 15, and your county's listing in the Outdoor Annual has the doe days and antler restrictions that apply to your lease.
Haul-Off Cost Estimator
How much does it cost to get rid of my junk?
Tell us what you have got. You will see a price range to have us take it, and what the nearest dump would charge if you hauled it yourself. No contact details needed.
Send us the details or call (936) 259-3200 and we will price it for you.
The window for deer lease cleanup in East Texas is August through early October, after licenses go on sale and before archery season opens on October 3, 2026. That is when leases around here hold their workdays, and a workday goes a whole lot faster when a dump trailer shows up for everything the camp has been stepping around since January: the box blind that lost a leg, the feeder the raccoons finally beat, the trailer that quit being a camp trailer during the Obama administration.
County Line Junk Disposal is based in Trinity, and lease country is our backyard. We run a 2024 Ram 2500, a Big Tex hydraulic dump trailer, and a Mahindra tractor on land jobs from Groveton and Apple Springs out toward Crockett, and we have seen what three or four seasons of deferred camp maintenance looks like.
Here is how to time the cleanup, what to haul first, who actually owns that ladder stand the guy who quit the lease left on the fence line, and what the haul-off costs.
When does deer season open in Texas for 2026-27?
Per TPWD's Outdoor Annual, the 2026-27 archery-only season runs October 3 through November 6, 2026, and the North Zone general season runs November 7, 2026 through January 3, 2027. If there are kids on the lease, the youth-only weekend lands earlier, October 30 through November 1. Every county in our service area is North Zone. Hunting licenses go on sale August 15.
Those dates come from TPWD's Outdoor Annual, and that is also where you check your specific county's listing for doe days and antler restrictions, because both vary county by county and both catch somebody on every lease every year. Read your county's page before you plan the season, and make the new guy read it too.
Work backward from whichever of those dates your camp actually cares about. Archery on October 3, the youth weekend on October 30, or the general opener on November 7. The weekends in front of it go to filling feeders, hanging cameras, checking stands for rot, and arguing about the corn budget. None of that leaves room for loading a trailer.
So the deadline that matters is our schedule rather than the season. Call or text by mid-October and we can usually get a camp cleared before opening weekend. Past that you are sharing the same handful of dry weekends with everybody else who left it, and the pile sits another year. That cycle repeats on the same properties, and the pile only grows.
What actually piles up at a hunting camp?
The usual haul: collapsed box blinds, rusted-out feeders, a dead camp trailer, ladder stands nobody claims, and a season's worth of feed bags and target trash. Most camps clear out in one dump trailer trip during the workday weekend.
- Box blinds and shooting houses past saving, legs rotted or wind-flipped
- Feeders with rusted barrels, dead motors, or hog damage beyond repair
- The camp trailer or camper that has not rolled in years and never will again
- Ladder stands and climbing sticks left by hunters who moved on
- Feed bags, mineral tubs, shot-up targets, and the bunkhouse mattress everybody refuses to sleep on
- Camp house appliances that quit years ago: the bunkhouse fridge, a dead window unit, the stove nobody got around to replacing
- Rolled-up net wire and T-posts pulled out of a fence line that moved
- Brush and blowdown around the camp, blinds, and shooting lanes
Plenty of lease camps also have an old barn or shed working as a catch-all, and clearing one of those is its own project; our barn and shed cleanout guide covers what that job looks like. And when the camp itself has gone to yaupon, the tractor work runs the same as our overgrown lot clearing jobs: knock it down, pile it, load it, gone.
Who owns the stands and feeders when a lease changes hands?
The lease contract and the landowner set the rules on stands and feeders. TPWD has no regulation covering gear left on private leases, so everything comes down to what the paperwork says and what the landowner will put up with. In practice, gear stays only as long as the hunter who owns it keeps renewing.
Every lease handles it a little differently, but the common pattern is simple: pay your spot, keep your gear. When a hunter drops out, most leases give him a deadline to come get his stands and feeders, and after that the stuff either becomes camp property or becomes the landowner's problem. Smart leases put that deadline in writing and make everybody label their equipment, because "whose ladder stand is this" arguments are a workday tradition nobody enjoys.
The calls we get usually come after a turnover. New group takes the lease, walks the property in August, and finds three generations of homemade blinds, a feeder graveyard behind the pens, and a camper with a pine limb through the roof. The landowner wants it gone before the new contracts get signed. That is a morning's work with a tractor and a dump trailer, and the new group starts their first season with a clean camp instead of somebody else's leftovers.
Can you burn the brush pile at the lease?
Only if no burn ban is active in that county on the day you burn. Bans are declared county by county and change week to week, so check the Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map the morning of the workday. A months-old blog post is the wrong place to learn today's status, so we will never print it here.
The Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map shows the live status of every county in the state and takes about thirty seconds to check. The full rules on what a landowner can legally burn are in our brush burning guide, and the short version matters at a lease: vegetation that grew on the property, outside city limits, daylight hours, no ban.
The rest of the workday pile, the feed bags, the treated lumber off the old blind, the bunkhouse mattress, is illegal to burn anywhere in Texas and belongs in a trailer.
One more lease-specific point: the burn decision usually belongs to the landowner anyway. Plenty of landowners around here flat refuse open fire on their timber, ban or no ban, and their word settles it. When the fire option is off the table, the pile rides out in our trailer with everything else.
What does a hunting camp cleanout cost?
We price by the space your stuff fills in the trailer: a single item is $95, a quarter load $175, a half load $325, three-quarters $475, and a full load $650. Travel is free within 25 miles of Trinity; past that, out to our 50-mile edge, a small trip fee of about $2 per mile, always quoted upfront.
You get a firm number on site before we lift anything, and you are free to walk if you do not like it. The number we say is the number you pay, cash, check, or Cash App when the job is done. A couple of add-ons worth knowing for lease work: each mattress runs +$30, and if the dead camp fridge still has freon in it, that is +$35 for proper handling.
Lease roads do not scare us. The Ram 2500 and the dump trailer handle gate-to-camp two-track fine, and when a blind sits back in the timber where no truck belongs, the Mahindra drags it out to where the trailer can reach. Text a few photos of the pile to (936) 259-3200 and we will text you a ballpark today, then set a time that lines up with your workday weekend so the whole camp only has to gather once.
Can you clear the camp if we cannot be there?
Yes, and on lease work that is most of it. Send a gate code or leave a key, send photos of what is going, and keep one phone answering. We text a firm price back before anything gets loaded.
Plenty of the camps around here belong to people who live in Houston or Conroe and come up on weekends. Burning a Saturday driving two hours to stand in a pasture and watch a trailer get loaded is a poor trade, and it is not one we ask anybody to make.
What we need is the gate code or a key, a few photos of the piles, and a note on anything that stays. The blind by the tank that still gets hunted, the good feeder behind the barn, the lumber somebody is saving for a reason. Tell us what is off limits and it stays exactly where it is.
If three or four members share the lease, pick one to be the phone. It saves the round of calls about whether the ladder stand on the fence line was staying, and it means the price we send back is a price somebody can say yes to.
Photos of the cleared camp come back the same day, so whoever could not make it can still see what the trailer took. Lease country around Groveton, Apple Springs, Lovelady and Crockett is a normal week for us.
Book the haul-off before opening day
The workdays are the price of the season, and the junk pile does not have to see another one. Get a free quote by call or text at (936) 259-3200, 7 days a week, 8 AM to 6 PM. We answer our own phone, we show up when we say we will, and if your lease sits anywhere around Trinity, odds are good you are inside our free 25-mile travel zone.
Questions we hear a lot
Per TPWD's Outdoor Annual, the archery-only season opens October 3, 2026 and runs through November 6. The North Zone general season, which covers every county we serve, runs November 7, 2026 through January 3, 2027. Licenses go on sale August 15, and your county's listing in the Outdoor Annual has the doe days and antler restrictions that apply to your lease.
Only if no burn ban is active in that county on the day you burn, and only for vegetation that grew on the property, outside city limits, during daylight hours. Bans change week to week, so check the Texas A&M Forest Service burn ban map that morning. Feed bags, old lumber, and camp junk are illegal to burn anywhere in Texas; we haul that instead.
We do. A single item like one blind or feeder is $95, and a bigger camp cleanup prices by the space it fills in the trailer, up to $650 for a full load. The Mahindra tractor drags blinds out of the timber to where the trailer can reach, and we can time the haul-off to your lease workday weekend. Text photos to (936) 259-3200 for a ballpark today.
The lease contract and the landowner decide; TPWD has no rule covering gear left on private leases. Most leases let gear stay as long as the owner keeps renewing, set a pickup deadline when somebody drops out, and treat whatever remains as camp property after that. We regularly clear out the leftover blinds and feeders when a new group takes over.
Yes. The 2024 Ram 2500 and the Big Tex dump trailer handle typical gate-to-camp lease roads fine, and the tractor covers anything set back in the timber. Travel is free within 25 miles of Trinity; farther out, to our 50-mile edge, it is about $2 per mile, quoted upfront before we commit to anything.
Yes. A gate code or a key, a few photos of the piles and one member on the phone is enough, and we text a firm price back before anything gets loaded. Tell us what stays and it stays. Most lease work around here gets booked that way, because the members live in town and the camp does not.