Hunting Leases

[Orion_70]

How many people here are members of a hunting lease, and what are your average dues?

I know here in Fl. lease dues are getting very high. Most leases start at 1200 or so per member and that's up near Ga. several more are 2k - 5k per member. It's hard to justify putting out that kind of money. Me and a few others are trying to find a small piece of ground to lease ourselves as our current club is in question at the moment. I sure don't want to be scrambling later to find a place to hunt, and definitely don't want to have to hunt the public forest.

[Texan_Til_I_Die]

7000 acres that we manage as we see fit (within the law, of course) - $25,000 annual and that includes an old ranch house with water and electricity. We could probably hunt 30 people there, but we intentionally limit it to 10 hunters and we all know each other very well. Actually, only about 5 of us hunt. The rest just like to sit around the fire and drink lots of whiskey. And I can't really say that I blame them. If I had to live in a city and work in their jobs, I'd probably be happy to pay good money to sit in the country by a big fire and drink whiskey too...

[okiedog]

Lease 1400 acres for $7000. 10 friends @$700 each.

[camoman1]

We dont have anything on paper, but my family has an agreement with a friend that we pay some of his property taxes and we can hunt his 300 some acres. He helps out with food plots too, as he has tractors and such..plus there are always crop fields too.

That and a little work around the farm and we call it even.

[camoman1]

We dont have anything on paper, but my family has an agreement with a friend that we pay some of his property taxes and we can hunt his 300 some acres. He helps out with food plots too, as he has tractors and such..plus there are always crop fields too.

That and a little work around the farm and we call it even.

[Wobbly_Alaska]

WOW!

[ildrhntr]

varies here but most goes from $10 -$20 per acre

[sskybnd]

around north east texas, south west ark, its getting to where if you dont have a lease to hunt you dont get to hunt, there is some public land around but its always crowded with others, we however do have avalable lease land threw the paper mills around here every year,the one thing about leasing threw the paper companies is that if you are a day late on your dues your lease go's to a bid, and any one can bid on it, the highest bidder gets the lease. the down side on the paper lease land is they tell you that, there busniess is trees and dont have any problume clearing your lease before or there after season is done, and becouse of that i have 3 lease right now

1: is a 129 acre lease, 3 people $202.00 a year per person

2; is a 40 acre lease, 3 people $76.00 a year per person

3: is a 59 acer lease, 3 people $118.00 a year per person

its getting to the point that most have to pay a large price to get to go hunting, and deer are getting a pretty heathly price tag.

[Orion_70]

The timber companies know that people will have to pay to find a place to hunt, unless you own your own land. Plum Creek just went up 20% this year. I think it's around 12 -15 an acre. I understand it from a business perspective, but it's getting ridiculous.

[Doc]

It was within my lifetime when a hunter would never consider paying for hunting priviledges. In fact, it was absolutely rare and even weird to see a posted sign back in the early days of my life. You could hunt as far as your legs would carry you and never cross a posted line. How things have changed.

As I read over the replies on this thread, I am struck with how far toward the european style of hunting we have come where hunting has become a pastime of the more wealthy people. It's a shame, but it just keeps on marching toward that style of hunting access. And we continue to see hunter numbers declining as hunting struggles its way toward the end. It's a real shame. However I must say that if I had to pay what some are paying to hunt, I probably would be gone from the sport myself.

Doc

[redkneck]

It was within my lifetime when a hunter would never consider paying for hunting priviledges. In fact, it was absolutely rare and even weird to see a posted sign back in the early days of my life. You could hunt as far as your legs would carry you and never cross a posted line. How things have changed.

As I read over the replies on this thread, I am struck with how far toward the european style of hunting we have come where hunting has become a pastime of the more wealthy people. It's a shame, but it just keeps on marching toward that style of hunting access. And we continue to see hunter numbers declining as hunting struggles its way toward the end. It's a real shame. However I must say that if I had to pay what some are paying to hunt, I probably would be gone from the sport myself.

Doc

You make some good points, but...... My dad was about 15 when he saw his first deer crossing the road, he thought it was a goat for a minute or two, there just weren't any deer to speak of in a lot of areas here, and surely nobody would dare pay to lease land to hunt them. I'm not quite 40, but have seen the same changes everyone else has, but it's just a natural progression with some unfortunate consequences. If nothing else it has surely been commercialized to the max over the last 15 years or so. I guess my point is the posted signs are up, the leases are up, but the deer population and quality is way up as well.

Back to the original question: Most land in my neck of the woods is in the sub $10/acre mark depending on location/acreage/management history. Move to some river bottomland like along the MS river and that price will more than double. We have about 1500 acres that we pay around 8K for, but have an excellent and long history with a private land owner and he likes to be able to drive anywhere on his property, so we keep the roads in good shape and keep the beavers out as well. Only about 8 members, only about 4-5 that hunt with any frequency.

[Doc]

You make some good points, but...... My dad was about 15 when he saw his first deer crossing the road, he thought it was a goat for a minute or two, there just weren't any deer to speak of in a lot of areas here, and surely nobody would dare pay to lease land to hunt them. I'm not quite 40, but have seen the same changes everyone else has, but it's just a natural progression with some unfortunate consequences. If nothing else it has surely been commercialized to the max over the last 15 years or so. I guess my point is the posted signs are up, the leases are up, but the deer population and quality is way up as well.

Actually, I don't think today's big leasing craze has as much to do with deer populations as it does with just the growing attitudes that everything has to be some kind of money source. There definitely is a different attitude today than there was back then. We had deer, and it sure seems that we had plenty of hunters. If landowners had wanted to back then, they could have charged people for access to their land. They just chose not to, or more to the point, the notion never even entered their minds. What a much different world of hunting might have been today if it had. Perhaps we would have been talking about the vanishing hunter numbers 40 or 50 years ago if things had been locked up as tight as it is today.

Doc

[mallard_drake85]

I'm fortunate here in Southern IL not to have to pay for a lease...A knock on a door and a FIRM handshake gain my brother and I nearly exclusive access to just under 10,000 acres (the cumulative total of the farms we have access to across 3 counties). But in our part of the world, lease prices have risen dramatically with the increase of larger deer and implementation of QDM on private properties.

One of the properties we use to have access to the LO up and told my brother and I that if we wanted to hunt on his property any more it would cost us $3000 a year ($25 an ac for 120 acres). He still granted us permission to trap free of charge but hunting privledges were refused, up until he sold the property a few years back. Now I don't know the owner but supposedly he's attempting to start a hunt club for some MO guys.

I'll have a hard time if I ever have to pay to hunt on someones property. We are fortunate enough to have friends with land and to have built up a good relationship with multiple landowner throughout the years. Often times we repay the LO back with picking up trash, mending fences, etc on their property.

[Goinghuntin]

I'm fortunate here in Southern IL not to have to pay for a lease...A knock on a door and a FIRM handshake gain my brother and I nearly exclusive access to just under 10,000 acres (the cumulative total of the farms we have access to across 3 counties).

That's pretty much how it is here too. Though we don't often get exclusive access.

Nathan

[Rhino]

Around my neck of the woods right now the price ranges from $15 to $20 per acre just for the lease. It keeps going up every year too.