Texas Hunter Education Instructors Association

Texas Hunter Education Instructors Association The purpose of this association will be to work with, support and help improve the Texas Parks and Wildlife Hunter Education Program.

Message from the THEIA PresidentDoug DuBois, Jr., Austin, TexasTPWD Hunter Education Instructor TYHP HuntmasterTHEIA Lif...
06/11/2026

Message from the THEIA President

Doug DuBois, Jr., Austin, Texas
TPWD Hunter Education Instructor
TYHP Huntmaster
THEIA Lifetime Member
TSRA Life Member
NRA Endowment Member

Hello, for those of you who do not know me, my name is Doug DuBois, Jr. and I’m honored to have been elected President of the Texas Hunter Education Instructors Association (THEIA) during THEIA 2026 in Lueders, Texas. We had a good weekend of Train the Trainer seminars on Teaching Multi-Generational Classes, How to Teach: Stop the Bleed, How to Teach: Gun Cleaning 101 and How to Teach: Muzzle Loading 101, as well as a timely update on the threat to livestock and wildlife from New World Screwworm and information from the Rolling Plains Bobwhite Quail Foundation.

I’m certain there will be more in Target Talk about the conference and the recipients of incentive awards and awards for volunteer instructors. We are looking forward to hosting THEIA 2027, April 9 – 11, 2027 at Camp Buckner, outside of Burnet, Texas, near Inks Lake State Park and Longhorn Caverns. Plan now to attend.

About me: I’ve been a TYHP Huntmaster since 2003 and through TYHP became a TPWD Hunter Education Instructor in 2009. My childhood memories are full of hunting adventures with my dad and his friends and their sons/daughters across the state and my earliest exposure to Firearm Safety was an NRA Gun Safety Course in 1966 at the 1 in 100 Gun Club outside my hometown of Beaumont. Firearm Safety and Hunter Education are the backbone of the Texas Youth Hunting Program and I’m excited to assist Instructors across the state to train more safe hunters and fi****ms enthusiasts. I’m a Past President of the Austin Woods & Waters Club (2010-2011) and received their Jack Lyons Sportsman of the Year award in 2008, 2018 and 2022. I’ve also served as the Chairman of the TYHP Advisory Committee through the Texas Wildlife Association from 2010 – 2014, along with serving on several other committees within TWA. I also served as Executive Director of the Texas State Rifle Association (TSRA) from 2014 – 2017.

As Hunter Education Program Director, Matt Smith pointed out during our conference, the hunter education student profile is changing and interest in fi****ms is well represented outside of the hunting community in target shooters and personal defense interests. We look forward to working with Matt, and our Hunter Education Training Specialists Randy Spradlin, Brock Minton, Venessa Wallace and Chris Mitchell, who are expertly assisted in the office by Kevin Vo, our multi-talented Administrative Assistant, to adapt the Hunter Education curriculum and teaching methods to reach as broad an audience as possible.

Stay in touch with THEIA through our website www.txheia.org and our page. Let us know how we can assist you.

Award Photos from the 2026 Conference
06/04/2026

Award Photos from the 2026 Conference

What a great conference we had. Great to see everyone, including some new faces. Changes to the website will be done to ...
05/21/2026

What a great conference we had. Great to see everyone, including some new faces. Changes to the website will be done to reflect new directors and more. Let's look forward to what is coming this next year.

If you would like to pay your regsitration fee on site at conference, please use the discount code PayAt
04/09/2026

If you would like to pay your regsitration fee on site at conference, please use the discount code PayAt

Current agenda for conference. Subject to change, except for the Hunter Education Course
04/08/2026

Current agenda for conference. Subject to change, except for the Hunter Education Course

03/10/2026

That deer standing at the edge of your yard just stomped its front hoof and locked eyes with you. That wasn't nervousness. It was a direct challenge.

White-tailed deer have a full vocabulary built from ear positions, tail signals, and deliberate sounds. A single front-hoof stomp means "I see something suspicious — identify yourself." The deer is giving a potential threat one chance to reveal itself before deciding to flee or stand ground.

When the tail rises straight up, exposing the bright white underside, it's a visual alarm broadcast to every deer in the area. Fawns follow the white flash through dense brush without needing to see where they're going. The mother's tail becomes a beacon during a sprint.

Ears pinned flat against the neck signal aggression — usually between bucks during rut, but does use it too when defending fawns. Ears rotating independently like satellite dishes mean the deer is scanning — it's picking up sounds from multiple directions and building a threat map in real time.

A snort — that sharp, explosive exhale — is a confirmation alert. The deer has verified the threat is real and is telling every animal in earshot. A snort followed by a foot stomp is the highest alert level: confirmed danger, location marked.

A deer standing still with its tail down, ears relaxed, and head lowered to graze is the rarest signal in suburban yards. It means genuine calm — and it takes repeated, predictable human behavior for a deer to reach that state near homes.

🦌 How to read the deer at your tree line:
- Stomp and stare — it knows you're there but hasn't classified you as dangerous yet. Stay still and it usually relaxes within 30 seconds
- Tail flash while running — it's not scared of you specifically, it's broadcasting to the group. Watch for fawns following the white signal
- Ears rotating while body stays frozen — it heard something it can't see. It's triangulating sound before choosing a direction
- Relaxed grazing with occasional head lifts — it's doing routine safety checks. Every 8-10 seconds of feeding ends with a scan, and that rhythm is hardwired

That deer at your tree line has been sending signals all season. Now you know the language 🌿

03/10/2026

The White-tailed Deer buck standing at the edge of your tree line has two raw circles on his skull where his antlers were a week ago.

He's not injured. He's reloading.

Antlers are not horns. Horns are permanent. Antlers are solid bone grown from scratch every year and then shed. The rack he dropped in your yard last week took about four months to build. He'll start growing a new one within days — and by late summer he'll carry a full set larger than last year's.

Growing antlers costs him. His body redirects calcium from his own skeleton to fuel the growth. His ribs and skull temporarily weaken while the antlers build. For months he was structurally less sound so he could carry a weapon on his head.

During peak growth in June, antler bone grows faster than almost any tissue in the mammal world. The antlers are covered in velvet — living skin rich with blood vessels that supplies the minerals for growth. By late summer the velvet dries, he rubs it off against trees, and the bare bone underneath is the finished rack.

The shed antler on the ground isn't waste. Mice, squirrels, porcupines, foxes, and even other deer chew shed antlers for calcium and phosphorus. A shed antler disappears within a year, consumed entirely by the forest floor community.

The rack itself is used for fighting — but the actual fights last seconds. The rest of the year, the antlers are a broadcast signal. Size, symmetry, and mass tell every other deer in the area how healthy he is, how well he fed, and how strong his genetics are. The antlers are a résumé he carries on his head.

🦌 If you find a shed antler this month:

- March is prime shed-hunting season — bucks drop antlers between late February and mid-March across most of the US
- Look along deer trails, fence crossings, and bedding areas at the edges of fields and woods — the jolt of jumping a fence often knocks a loose antler free
- If you find one, the matching side is usually within a few hundred yards — bucks often drop both within a day or two
- Leave shed antlers you don't collect — they're a critical mineral source for rodents and other wildlife that chew them down to nothing over the following months
- A buck with raw pedicles on his skull in March is healthy and on schedule. By mid-April he'll already have visible new growth wrapped in velvet

He's standing at the edge of your tree line with nothing on his head. In five months he'll carry a full rack that doesn't exist yet 🌿

Interested in becoming an Instructor, we have a class all day on Saturday at Conference for this
03/09/2026

Interested in becoming an Instructor, we have a class all day on Saturday at Conference for this

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Ladonia, TX
78748

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