Alligator season officially begins Wednesday in Texas, with hunters in the state’s core counties set to take part in one of the country’s most carefully managed wildlife harvests.
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), the 2025–2026 general season for alligators in core counties runs from September 10 through September 30. These counties, which include Jefferson, Chambers, Liberty, Galveston, and others along the Gulf Coast, are considered the prime historical habitat of the American alligator. For non-core counties, such as Dallas and Tarrant, the hunting season opens later, from April 1 to June 30, 2026.
Texas Parks and Wildlife claims that all counties in the state now have designated alligator seasons, although rules vary significantly depending on the location. In non-core counties, for example, hunters are limited to one alligator per person per license year, while in core counties, landowners receive CITES tags, an international tracking system for hides and meat, that regulates harvests on their property.
For landlocked North Texans, the opening of alligator season may seem like a distant matter. Yet sightings are not unheard of in Dallas-Fort Worth. In recent years, residents have reported alligators in Eagle Mountain Lake, Lake Worth, and even suburban neighborhoods.
The presence of these reptiles in Dallas-Fort Worth is part of a broader conservation story.
Once nearly wiped out, American alligators were listed as endangered in 1967. Texas banned hunting in 1969, and federal protection under the Endangered Species Act soon followed. TPWD’s website notes that “shortly after their protection began, alligators rapidly repopulated areas that were once heavily hunted.”
By 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the species fully recovered.
The rebound has allowed Texas to develop one of the most regulated hunting programs in the nation. In 2013, the department reported that an 18-year-old public hunter bagged a state-record 14-foot, 3-inch alligator weighing 800 pounds on Choke Canyon Reservoir. Biologists at the time said a specimen of that size could be 30 to 50 years old.
Still, officials caution that while the species has recovered, safety remains paramount for both hunters and the general public.
State rules ban intentionally feeding wild alligators, and TPWD advises people to stay at least 30 feet away from the animals if encountered. Alligators are capable of quick bursts of speed: up to 35 miles per hour on land.
For hunters, the 2025 season marks both a chance at an ancient pursuit and a reminder of how fragile the species once was. As TPWD’s website puts it, “The story of the American alligator is one of both drastic decline and successful recovery, a story of state and federal cooperation, and truly one of the prominent success stories of the nation’s endangered species program.”