Lawful Access and Guide Accountability in Texas Hunting Law

Introduction

Texas regulates guides directly in defined contexts, as a person selling fishing-guide services must obtain a fishing-guide license, while a person operating a guided saltwater trip from a vessel must satisfy additional credentialing requirements tied to maritime operation.^[1] In that setting, the guide becomes the object of regulation because the legal requirement follows the public-facing business being offered, instead of resting only on the client’s independent obligation to obey fishing rules.^[2]

Texas hunting law follows a different structure, regulating the hunter who must hold the proper license and obey game laws, the landowner or agent who accepts paying hunters under a hunting lease, and the specialized commercial operations that fall within separate statutory categories.^[3] Those rules also reach commercial bird operations, field trials, game-bird breeding, trespass, owner or agent consent, baiting, unlawful take, and civil restitution, thereby protecting private property, wildlife, and the established order of hunting in a state where land access is fundamental.^[4]

That framework leaves a recurring question when the person selling the hunt is neither the landowner, nor clearly the landowner’s agent, nor simply the hunter-client, because Texas law does not clearly identify the regulated actor in that setting.^[5]

Compensated hunting services can create risks that sit uneasily within the categories Texas already uses, since a guide may advertise hunts, book clients, arrange access, supply equipment or dogs, call birds, transport hunters, make field decisions, and represent that the hunt is lawful.^[6] He may conduct hunts across several properties where his authority derives from another person’s ownership, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission, in a market where landowner permission, client reliance, migratory-bird rules, and wildlife enforcement intersect, leaving Texas able to prosecute trespass, unlawful taking, baiting, fraud-related conduct, or hunting without required landowner or authorized-agent consent when misconduct occurs.^[7] The unresolved question is whether Texas has a guide-specific accountability mechanism directed to the person selling guided hunting services to the public.^[8]

This Article contends that Texas should distinguish between access regulation and accountability for guidance, because hunting-lease law addresses who may sell access to hunt on land, while guide accountability concerns who may sell professional hunting services to the public.^[9] Those inquiries may overlap when guides operate under a landowner’s authority, yet they remain separate legal questions when serious wildlife misconduct, misrepresentation of authority, or failure to secure land permission arises from the guide’s own commercial role.^[10]

The argument is deliberately narrow because Texas hunting commerce is already subject to substantial regulation, and any sound proposal must begin from that fact rather than from an assumption that hunting services operate in a legal vacuum.^[11] Ranch hands, dog handlers, friends, family members, volunteers, ordinary employees, and landowners operating on their own property fall outside the problem this Article addresses, and the present record does not support a new occupational board or a comprehensive western outfitter model.^[12] Because Texas is a private-land hunting state with limited public access, a broad licensing regime could raise costs, reinforce the position of larger operators, and make lawful hunting harder for ordinary Texans to access.^[13]

A more measured approach would focus on the commercial service provider whose conduct creates the accountability problem, permitting Texas to adopt a property-centered rule for compensated hunting guides and outfitters who offer guided hunting services on private land where their authority to guide depends on another person’s ownership, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission.^[14] Such a rule might require basic identification, written or electronic proof of the landowner’s, leaseholder’s, or authorized agent’s permission to conduct the guided hunt, and public discipline, including denial or revocation of privileges, after serious wildlife or trespass misconduct.^[15] By tying accountability to the person selling the guided-hunt service, Texas could protect landowners, clients, wildlife, and legitimate operators without turning private hunting activity into a general licensing bureaucracy.^[16]

The Article proceeds in six parts. Part I maps the regulated actors in Texas hunting and fishing law. Part II explains the fishing-guide comparison and why it sharpens the hunting question. Part III develops the access, agency, and independent-guide problem in Texas hunting law. Part IV considers Texas’s institutional record, including the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Sunset materials and the 2023 rider requiring a study of illegal game-bird hunting and possible outfitter-guide licensing. Part V compares Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. Part VI addresses the principal counterarguments and proposes a limited Texas rule grounded in lawful access and guide accountability.

I. The Regulated Actor in Texas Hunting and Fishing Law

The Texas framework is best understood by asking which actor the law regulates, because the answer differs across the hunting and fishing codes, and those differences explain why the hunting-guide question persists.^[17]

For fishing, Texas regulates the guide as a guide through a statutory structure that treats compensated fishing assistance as a distinct commercial service, requiring a person who engages in business as a fishing guide to hold the proper license.^[18] When the service involves a guided saltwater trip from a vessel, the state adds a further credentialing layer tied to vessel operation, making the guide’s business and the client’s angling conduct separate objects of legal attention.^[19]

The hunting structure begins elsewhere by regulating the hunter-client through ordinary hunting licenses, stamps, endorsements, hunter-education requirements, seasons, bag limits, and method-of-take rules, while leaving the hunter responsible for compliance even when he hires assistance.^[20] If he takes wildlife unlawfully, hunts over bait, lacks proper permission, or violates game laws, the state may proceed against him directly under the rules governing his own conduct in the field.^[21]

Texas also regulates access to land by prohibiting a person from taking wildlife on another’s property without consent and by attaching separate consequences to entry onto land for hunting without consent.^[22] Those rules reflect the private-property foundation of Texas hunting, under which a landowner may grant permission, impose conditions, charge for access subject to applicable hunting-lease requirements, revoke permission, or refuse entry, and hunting opportunity rests heavily on private authority.^[23]

The hunting-lease statute fits this property-centered structure because it regulates the owner of a hunting lease or the landowner’s agent who receives paying hunters, thereby addressing the transaction through which access to land is monetized.^[24] In that setting, the law asks whether the person selling access to hunt on land holds the required lease license, making the access seller the regulated actor.^[25]

Texas also regulates specialized commercial hunting activities through separate rules for private bird-hunting areas, field trials, hunting cooperatives, commercial game-bird breeders, and similar arrangements that serve defined statutory purposes.^[26] Those categories regulate a place, an event, a breeding operation, or a specialized commercial activity, although they do not create a general statewide accountability mechanism for compensated hunting guides across species, properties, and business forms.^[27]

This actor map reveals the structural gap because Texas directly regulates the fishing guide, the hunter-client, the consent requirement and trespass, the hunting-lease owner or landowner’s agent, and specialized bird and field-trial operations.^[28] The uncertain actor is the independent compensated hunting guide who sells services to the public, conducts hunts on private land where his authority derives from another person’s land rights, may not clearly act as the landowner’s agent, and falls outside the specialized commercial categories.^[29]

The point is one of fit, since Texas has many laws that reach hunting misconduct and may reach a guide who trespasses, assists in an illegal take, baits a field, deceives clients, or guides without required landowner or authorized-agent consent.^[30] What appears to be missing is a public, guide-specific consequence tied to the person’s continued ability to market and sell guided hunting services, since Texas may punish the act while leaving no guide credential to deny, suspend, or revoke.^[31] The state may treat the person as hunter, trespasser, accomplice, or criminal defendant, while leaving no administrative record attached to his commercial role as a guide.^[32]

That mismatch matters because Texas has substantial rules for hunting conduct and access, while its general law appears to lack a corresponding rule aimed at guide accountability as such.^[33]

II. Fishing Guides and the Logic of Commercial Responsibility

The fishing-guide comparison is useful because it shows that Texas already recognizes direct regulation of compensated outdoor guidance when the service relationship creates risks beyond the client’s own license obligations.^[34]

A fishing guide sells more than a day on the water, since he also sells knowledge, assistance, transportation, judgment, and a representation that the trip can be conducted lawfully.^[35] The client may still need his own license and remains responsible for his own conduct, although the guide controls much of the operative setting by selecting the water, operating the vessel when it is used, reading the weather, managing equipment, and directing much of the client’s experience.^[36] Texas responds to that relationship by placing an accountability gate on the guide’s compensated service.^[37]

That gate becomes more demanding in coastal waters because vessel operation creates additional risks, and the maritime credentialing layer exists because carrying paying clients on the water presents safety and operational concerns.^[38] Texas uses that credential as part of its fishing-guide framework, thereby connecting the commercial service provider to a larger system of qualifications and discipline, even though captain licensing does not exist to enforce fishing limits.^[39]

The analogy to hunting should be used carefully because a land-based hunt does not present the same maritime hazards as a coastal fishing trip, and different hunting settings create different operational demands.^[40] A quail guide in the Panhandle, a duck guide on rice fields, a deer guide in South Texas, and a nilgai guide near the coast do not operate under identical conditions, which means the fishing-guide model cannot justify importing vessel credentials or maritime rules into hunting.^[41] It proves the narrower point that Texas already knows how to regulate the person selling outdoor guide services when the state concludes that client responsibility alone is incomplete.^[42]

That narrower point sharpens the hunting question because Texas directs the fishing-guide license requirement to the person selling the guide service, while hunting regulation often addresses the hunter, the landowner, the landowner’s agent, or the specialized commercial operator.^[43] The compensated guide may stand between those legal categories, even while exercising practical control over the hunt.^[44]

The distinction is especially important when a client relies on the guide’s representation that the hunt is lawful, because a guided hunter may reasonably assume that the guide has arranged lawful access, selected a legal field, avoided baiting problems, understood species limits, and obtained any necessary permission from the landowner or leaseholder.^[45] Although the hunter remains legally responsible for his conduct, the commercial arrangement places unusual practical influence in the guide, and a legal structure that regulates only the client, the landowner, or the access seller may fail to account for that influence.^[46]

The fishing-guide regime therefore frames the question without dictating the answer, since Texas may decide that hunting is sufficiently different to rely on consent requirements, trespass law, hunting licenses, and ordinary wildlife enforcement.^[47] Even so, the state’s direct regulation of fishing guides makes the hunting arrangement harder to dismiss as a nonissue, because a paid guide-service relationship that warrants direct accountability in one outdoor context raises the question why a comparable relationship in hunting is handled only through surrounding categories.^[48]

III. Access, Agency, and the Independent Hunting Guide

The missing actor is the compensated hunting guide who sells services to the public while standing outside the clearest categories of landowner, landowner’s agent, specialized operator, and hunter-client.^[49]

The difficulty originates from ordinary hunting arrangements in which a landowner may sell access directly, subject to applicable hunting-lease requirements when the transaction is for pay or other consideration, while a ranch may use employees to help guests and a waterfowl guide may move among fields depending on birds, crops, weather, and landowner relationships.^[50] A guide may book clients online, collect payment, arrange lodging, provide dogs or decoys, transport hunters, and direct the hunt from start to finish, while the source of his permission or access authority may be obvious in some cases and opaque in others.^[51] That uncertainty can make his legal role difficult for clients to understand and difficult for enforcement officers to assess in the field.^[52]

If the guide is truly the landowner’s agent and receives paying hunters in that capacity, the hunting-lease structure may already reach him, while a landowner who sells the hunting opportunity directly may be governed by the lease rule.^[53] If the hunt occurs in a licensed private bird-hunting area, the specialized commercial framework may apply.^[54] The harder case arises when an independent guide sells the guided experience, operates across properties, and relies on permission or access authority derived from another person’s land rights.^[55]

Those cases are legally significant because the harm is frequently tied to the guide’s commercial role, as a guide who takes clients onto property without valid landowner, leaseholder, or authorized-agent permission creates a landowner problem before any paperwork problem appears.^[56] A guide who places clients in a baited field creates a wildlife-enforcement problem that may expose both the client and the guide, while a guide who repeatedly misrepresents access or legal conditions creates a market-integrity problem for landowners, clients, and legitimate operators.^[57] In each case, the guide’s sale of the service is central to the risk.^[58]

Existing law can often punish the immediate wrong through trespass, unlawful take, baiting, fraud-related offenses, and other charges when the facts support them, although the missing piece concerns business continuity after serious misconduct.^[59] Without a guide-specific credential or public discipline mechanism, Texas may have no simple way to prevent the same person from continuing to sell guided hunts under another name, through another entity, or in another location.^[60] Criminal liability and hunting-license consequences may address the offense, yet they do not necessarily address the person’s ongoing presence in the guided-hunt market.^[61]

Guide accountability addresses that separate problem by asking whether the person who sells guided hunting services to the public should be identifiable, able to prove lawful permission or access authority when operating on private land, and subject to guide-specific consequences after serious wildlife, trespass, or fraud-related misconduct.^[62] A narrow accountability mechanism would leave criminal law, trespass law, and hunting-license rules in place, while connecting those rules to the commercial actor when his conduct shows that he should no longer be trusted to sell guided hunts.^[63]

The public record supports that narrower inquiry through repeated concern with land-permission failures, game-bird baiting, guide-side compliance problems, and illegal or unethical guide conduct, although it does not prove that guide misconduct is widespread across the entire Texas hunting market.^[64] That evidence does not justify a sweeping claim that Texas hunting commerce is lawless, but it does support the more modest conclusion that the current framework may leave the guide as guide without a clear regulatory accountability track, even as the surrounding actors are already regulated.^[65]

This distinction should frame the Article because Texas already regulates the hunting relationship in many respects, while leaving the commercial guide who sells, directs, and profits from the hunt less clearly accountable than the landowner, agent, specialized operator, or hunter.^[66]

IV. Texas’s Own Institutional Record

The institutional record in Texas highlights the significance of the issue, which arose through public agency discussion, the Sunset process, and a legislative rider directing the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to examine illegal game-bird hunting and possible guide or outfitter licensing.^[67]

The Sunset materials show the agency’s awareness of the asymmetry, recognizing that fishing guides must be licensed and must satisfy eligibility requirements, while hunting guides may operate without comparable qualifications or documentation.^[68] That observation came from the agency charged with administering the state’s wildlife laws, and it identifies the same actor mismatch that the statutory map reveals.^[69]

Public Commission materials show a similar concern because, before the legislative rider, guides and agency officials discussed the absence of a hunting-guide analog to the fishing-guide licensing system in practical terms.^[70] Some comments focused on illegal or unethical behavior by guides, while others focused on landowner relationships, insurance, and the difficulty of fitting mobile game-bird operations into a lease structure designed around land access.^[71] Those discussions locate the problem in the field, where guides, landowners, clients, and wardens encounter the consequences of unclear authority.^[72]

The 2023 rider narrowed the institutional focus by requiring the department to study illegal game-bird hunting, historical levels of violations, game-bird license requirements, and related laws, while also allowing recommendations that could extend to outfitter and guide licensing.^[73] That language frames licensing as one possible statutory response to illegal game-bird hunting, rather than as a generalized occupation-regulation project.^[74]

The public record also imposes limits because the rider-required report itself has not surfaced in the public materials reviewed, although the public trail shows that the study was ordered and that the department later represented the study and report would be completed on schedule.^[75] Because that trail does not reveal the department’s final recommendations, it would be inaccurate to say that Texas officially recommended or rejected guide licensing, or that guides caused a statewide game-bird crisis.^[76] The official record demonstrates institutional concern and an agency representation that the study and report would be completed on schedule, while leaving the final policy judgment undisclosed in the public materials reviewed.^[77]

That posture strengthens the Article while narrowing its claim, since Texas itself placed illegal game-bird hunting and possible guide or outfitter licensing into the policy stream after agency materials and public testimony had already identified the absence of a hunting-guide analog and the recurring complaint of unethical conduct by guides.^[78] At the same time, the official record points toward a targeted game-bird, land-authority, and enforcement-visibility concern, rather than a broad professional-licensing theory.^[79]

The institutional record therefore supports a restrained Texas-centered proposal, under which Texas, if it acts, should begin with the setting where the record is strongest.^[80] That setting is compensated guided hunting on private land, especially in game-bird markets where land permission, migratory-bird rules, and commercial service arrangements intersect, and any proposal must account for Texas’s private-land structure and high access costs.^[81] The official record makes the problem real enough to study, although it does not make the solution obvious.^[82]

V. State Comparators and the Lessons of Restraint

Other states help clarify the choices available to Texas, although they do not supply a model that Texas should adopt wholesale, because each comparator reflects a different judgment about private land, wildlife enforcement, guide services, and market accountability.^[83]

Oklahoma offers the closest modern comparator because its new law focuses on compensated waterfowl and crane guiding and outfitting, requiring covered guides and outfitters to obtain a license and carry written landowner permission.^[84] The statute includes insurance requirements, landowner and agricultural-lessee exemptions, and revocation periods following covered violations, making it species-specific and closely tied to the kind of mobile private-land guiding that has raised concern in Texas.^[85]

That approach usefully separates the guide-accountability question from a broad occupational model because Oklahoma chose to focus on a defined market where land permission and migratory game-bird enforcement create recurring difficulties.^[86] It did so without creating an all-species licensing board for every person who helps with a hunt, which makes the model particularly relevant for Texas, where the strongest institutional record is also game-bird centered.^[87]

Oklahoma also shows the value of precision because some informal descriptions of the statute have suggested a lifetime ban, while the enrolled law, as reflected in the materials reviewed, uses term revocation periods.^[88] The accurate lesson is that Oklahoma created a species-limited licensing and discipline regime with written-permission and insurance requirements, along with substantial but time-limited revocation consequences, making it a serious accountability tool without supporting an inflated account of its effect.^[89]

Colorado provides a more extensive model built around the distinction between land access and outfitting services, treating a person who merely owns or leases land differently from a person who sells outfitting services to the public.^[90] That distinction is directly relevant to Texas because a landowner may authorize hunting on his own property, while a commercial outfitter who sells services to clients occupies a different role.^[91] Colorado’s framework ties that role to registration, insurance, bonding, written permission, and discipline for misrepresentation or wildlife-law violations.^[92]

Wyoming represents a more comprehensive western outfitter-and-guide model governed by a big-game context, including licensure, guide-outfitter relationships, insurance requirements, and disciplinary authority for fraud, safety issues, contract breaches, and wildlife violations.^[93] Wyoming demonstrates how a state can regulate guides as a distinct commercial class, although Texas’s hunting market, private-land structure, and access concerns make it a less direct template for Texas.^[94]

Nebraska helps from the other direction because its voluntary hunting and fishing guide and outfitter database shows that a state can recognize guides and outfitters as a category while stopping short of mandatory licensing.^[95] That approach does not create a true accountability gate, although it provides a control example for states that rely mainly on ordinary hunting law, consent requirements, and market ordering while offering a voluntary public information mechanism.^[96]

These comparators reveal a spectrum in which Texas could leave the current framework in place, create a voluntary database, adopt a narrow game-bird or private-land guide registration rule tied to written permission and discipline, or adopt a broader outfitter-guide licensing system.^[97] The record gathered so far points away from the broadest options and toward a narrow accountability rule, if Texas chooses to act.^[98]

That conclusion fits the Article’s central distinction because the key question is whether Texas should identify and discipline the commercial guide-service actor in a targeted way when that actor sells hunts on private land where his authority depends on another person’s property right, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission, and later engages in serious misconduct, rather than whether Texas should copy another state’s licensing system.^[99]

VI. A Limited Rule for Lawful Access and Guide Accountability

The strongest counterargument is that Texas already has enough law, since hunters must hold licenses and comply with game laws, owner or agent consent is required, trespass is punishable under existing statutes, and hunting leases and specialized commercial operations are regulated by additional rules.^[100] Wildlife offenses can trigger criminal penalties, civil restitution, and license consequences, while a guide who violates the law can be charged as a principal or accomplice when the facts support it.^[101] From that perspective, a new guide rule risks duplicating existing law and converting field enforcement into paperwork enforcement.^[102]

This argument deserves weight, and any serious proposal must begin by acknowledging that Texas hunting commerce is already regulated, while asking whether Texas’s existing tools are aimed at the correct actor when the person selling the guided hunt creates the risk.^[103] Existing law can punish trespass, baiting, and unlawful take, although it may leave Texas without a public way to identify, track, and discipline the commercial service provider whose conduct shows a serious failure of trust.^[104]

Another counterargument centers on hunting access, given Texas’s heavy reliance on private land for hunting opportunity and the limited availability of public access.^[105] A broad licensing requirement could raise costs, burden seasonal or small-scale operators, favor established outfitters, and reduce lawful hunting opportunities, which matters because the Article’s proposed rule should serve landowners, hunters, and wildlife without protecting incumbents.^[106]

To address that objection, any Texas rule should remain carefully defined and avoid reaching landowners guiding on their own property, unpaid companions, family members, friends, ordinary ranch employees acting under a landowner’s direction, or dog handlers who do not hold themselves out as selling guided hunting services to the public.^[107] The rule should focus on compensated guide-service providers who market or sell guided hunts on private land where their authority depends on another person’s property right, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission.^[108]

A further counterargument concerns administrability because the term guide can sweep too broadly if left undefined, reaching persons who scout, drive, call birds, handle dogs, clean game, arrange introductions, coordinate lodging, or book hunts without exercising the same authority over land access and field conduct.^[109] A sound statute would need to define covered conduct with care, using compensation, public marketing, field assistance, and operational control as limiting principles instead of relying on a vague reference to helping with a hunt.^[110]

Another counterargument relates to proof, since the public record contains recurring examples and institutional concern while lacking a comprehensive complaint database or quantified measure of guide misconduct.^[111] That evidentiary limit matters for the remedy, because a broad all-species licensing system would require a stronger record, while a narrower rule tied to written proof of permission or access authority and serious misconduct better fits the evidence now available.^[112]

A final objection centers on private ordering, since landowners can choose reputable guides, clients can ask for references, and contracts can allocate responsibility, leaving the state with no reason to convert every private risk into a licensing program.^[113] That argument is strongest for ordinary business disputes, although it weakens when the guide’s conduct implicates owner-or-agent consent, wildlife law, criminal exposure for clients, and public resources.^[114] A hunter who hires a guide may learn too late that the field is baited or that permission or access authority is unclear, a landowner may learn too late that his property has been used, and wildlife damage or unlawful take cannot be undone by a bad online review.^[115]

A limited rule that supports private ordering could provide a better answer by creating a low-cost registration and discipline mechanism for compensated hunting guides who offer services to the public on private land where their authority depends on another person’s property right, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission.^[116] The registration would identify the guide, business names used, contact information, and serious wildlife, fraud, or trespass history, while the guide would carry written or electronic proof of permission or access authority when operating on private land.^[117] The department could deny, suspend, or revoke the registration after specified serious misconduct, including hunting without required landowner or authorized-agent consent, criminal trespass connected to hunting, baiting or knowing participation in baiting, serious state or federal wildlife convictions, fraud related to guided hunts, and false statements in registration materials.^[118]

Procedural safeguards are essential, including notice, an opportunity to respond, and a written decision for any denial, suspension, or revocation, because the goal is lawful accountability rather than informal punishment.^[119] The rule should also include public notice, since a searchable registry and discipline record would help landowners, clients, wardens, and legitimate operators identify who is selling guided hunting services and whether that person has been disciplined for serious misconduct.^[120]

One option is to begin even more narrowly with a pilot rule that applies only to migratory game birds or game-bird guiding on private land, then sunsets after a defined period unless the Legislature renews it.^[121] The Legislature could also require the department to report complaints, enforcement contacts, disciplinary actions, costs, and effects on hunting access, allowing Texas to match the institutional record, which is strongest in game-bird settings, while developing evidence before expanding any regulatory mechanism.^[122]

This approach would preserve the private-land character of Texas hunting by allowing a landowner to remain free to sell access subject to applicable hunting-lease requirements, guide guests on his own property, impose conditions, and exclude others.^[123] A hunting-lease rule would continue to govern the sale of access, while the new rule would address the separate actor who sells guided hunting services to the public while relying on permission or access authority derived from another person’s land rights.^[124]

Conclusion

Texas hunting law regulates a wide range of actors, including hunters, landowners, landowners’ agents, access sellers, private bird hunting areas, field trials, game-bird breeders, trespassers, and wildlife-law violators, while also regulating fishing guides directly.^[125] The uncertain actor is narrower because the compensated hunting guide sells services to the public while standing outside the clearest categories already addressed by Texas law.^[126]

This mismatch should define the inquiry by shifting the focus from whether Texas hunting commerce is unregulated to whether the law regulates the right actor when the person selling the hunt creates land-permission, wildlife-compliance, and client-reliance risks.^[127] Existing law can punish trespass, baiting, unlawful take, and fraud-related conduct, while still failing to provide a guide-specific accountability mechanism that follows the commercial actor after serious misconduct and gives landowners, clients, wardens, and legitimate guides a reliable public reference point.^[128]

The public record supports caution and further consideration because it shows recurring land-permission and game-bird problems, together with Texas’s own institutional concern about the absence of a hunting-guide analog to fishing-guide licensing.^[129] It does not establish a quantified statewide crisis, nor does it reveal a final department recommendation from the rider-required study, while Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska confirm that states can choose different points along the regulatory spectrum.^[130] Texas should choose carefully, with its private-land structure and access costs in view.^[131]

A narrow solution offers Texas the best approach because a low-cost registration and discipline rule for compensated hunting guides operating on private land where their authority depends on another person’s property right, leasehold, agency relationship, or permission would address the missing actor without creating a broad occupational regime.^[132] Written proof of permission or access authority would protect owners, public discipline would protect clients and legitimate operators, revocation after serious wildlife or trespass misconduct would protect the resource, and careful exemptions would protect ordinary rural arrangements.^[133]

Texas should keep access regulation and guide accountability in their proper places, with hunting-lease law governing the sale of access to land and a guide-accountability rule governing the sale of professional hunting services after serious misconduct.^[134] Texas law already answers the first question.^[135] It should now consider whether the second requires an answer.^[136]

Notes