Texas · Rabbit · 2026 Edition
Texas Rabbit Season 2026: Dates & Bag Limits
01 — Seasons
| Season | Zone | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Rabbits and hares — no closed season | Private property, statewide | Jan 1 – Dec 31 |
02 — Bag limits
| Private property, statewide | No daily or possession limit — no closed season, any lawful means or methods |
|---|---|
| Public hunting lands (Annual Public Hunting program) | Same no-limit rule applies, but shooting hours are restricted to daylight only and open dates follow the specific public-hunting-unit schedule rather than year-round access — confirm the unit's own schedule before hunting public land |
03 — Shooting hours
No shooting-hours restriction — legal at any hour during the open season.
Rule: No shooting-hours restriction on private land - TPWD states rabbits may be taken at any time. This file models the statewide private-land rule. On public hunting lands in the Annual Public Hunting program, take is restricted to daylight hours only.
04 — License
Rabbit hunters in Texas need a Texas hunting license.
Where to hunt public land in Texas — WMAs by county & access rules →
05 — FAQ
When does rabbit season start in Texas?
Texas runs rabbit season year-round — there's no opening day to wait for.
When does rabbit season end in Texas?
It doesn't — Texas has no closed season on rabbit, per Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Is there a closed season on rabbit in Texas?
No — rabbit can be hunted in Texas every day of the year, subject to the bag limit and legal shooting hours above.
How many rabbits can you shoot in Texas per day?
2026 bag limits: Private property, statewide — No daily or possession limit — no closed season, any lawful means or methods. Public hunting lands (Annual Public Hunting program) — Same no-limit rule applies, but shooting hours are restricted to daylight only and open dates follow the specific public-hunting-unit schedule rather than year-round access — confirm the unit's own schedule before hunting public land. Limits are set per zone and per permit — check the agency's own regulations before you hunt.
What time can you start shooting rabbit in Texas?
There is no shooting-hours restriction — rabbit may legally be hunted at any hour during the open season in Texas. The rule is: No shooting-hours restriction on private land - TPWD states rabbits may be taken at any time. This file models the statewide private-land rule. On public hunting lands in the Annual Public Hunting program, take is restricted to daylight hours only.
Can I hunt rabbits on my own land in Texas without a license?
Texas requires a license for essentially all game even on your own land — the one landowner carve-out is feral hogs, which a resident landowner (or anyone with their consent) may take without a license. Deer, turkey, and everything else still need the usual license and tags.
Verified · Texas Parks and Wildlife Department · Last verified 2026-08-14
Publisher's note. Official TPWD 'Rabbits and Hares' Outdoor Annual regulations page, fetched directly, stating verbatim: 'There are no closed seasons, bag limits or possession limits; and, rabbits and hares may be hunted at any time by any lawful means or methods on private property.' Texas is confirmed as a true year-round, no-limit rabbit/hare state on private land — matching the prior-research flag for this batch. Dates below use a single calendar year (2026-01-01 to 2026-12-31) rather than a fall-to-spring window, since the state itself does not define a season window. One caveat found on TPWD's Annual Public Hunting (APH) program pages: on APH public hunting lands specifically, shooting hours for rabbits, hares and feral hogs are restricted to daylight hours only, and open dates follow the specific public-hunting-unit schedule rather than the private-land year-round rule — this file describes the private-land statewide rule only, which is what applies to the vast majority of Texas rabbit hunters. EXPLICIT shootingHours MARKER (2026-08-27): this file now carries shootingHours.unrestricted = true. Simply omitting the field did NOT work and had been silently wrong on the live page: the season templates read season.shootingHours ?? meta.shootingHours, so an absent block fell through to the state-level default in states.json and the page printed a computed sunrise/sunset window plus a rule the law does not impose - while the licence section right below it said the opposite. The templates now honour the marker and print the no-restriction sentence instead. The original reasoning stands: on private land Texas sets no shooting-hours restriction for rabbits at all ('at any time'), so any sunrise/sunset offset — including 0/0 — would state a limit the law does not impose. The absence of the field here is the correct answer, not a gap to be filled.