Since it is apparent that me and Goat, can not play together civily on here, and stay on the same subject as everyone else, and I don't know how to set up a poll, can we try this. I don't know how many members we have now, but I think everyone that can should make a post.
What I would like to see, is how everyone on here feels about the cost of lease fees and hunting, and who they think the biggest culprit is.
Now I know that this probably is not the way to do this, but I think all of us need a wake-up call as to what is going on.
Since I don't know how to do a poll, I would appreciate anyones help in setting it up, don't tell me how, cause I am not that computer literate, just please straighten out my mess.
What I want to do is set-up a ranking system, from 1 to 4, with 1 being most responsible, and 4 being almost totally blameless.
Then I want the following groups ranked in this order, and I would like every member that can, to ennumerate the groups on their amount of involvement in causing things to be the way they are, in regards to the cost of leases and hunting in Texas today.
The groups, and the way they need to be listed are:
1. Hunters/Sportsmen. Leeseees.
2. Outdoor News Media/Organizations such as TTH, etc.
3. Leasing Agents/Guides/Outfitters.
4. Landowners.
5. Texas Parks and Wildlife.
Now if anyone sees anything wrong with this please explain it to me.
This is a subject that keeps cropping up, and I am tired of it.
No, nothing we do here is going to change the way things are, but maybe a few of us will realize that we are not each others enemy.

CHC, 'tis done! check it out & make sure it's what you wanted! I placed my vote! LOL

Post deleted by easton1025

Okay, this is not supposed to turn in to a personality contest, whether I agree with his opinion or not, it is his opinion and he is entitled to it. He has his reasons for feeling the way he does, and I have mine. I don't know that either of us is right or wrong, I just want to know how everybody else feels, regardless of the outcome.

that is how i meant it..Everyone is not from the same boat..I placed my vote...my cash gets placed in the landowners hand may 1st..so thats my opinion...its not his fault i cant afford his property..so i lease it...

SORRY, didn't mean to sound like I was getting on to you. This is just an issue that everyone has some strong opinions about, but that there is no reasonable solution for, it is just interesting to find out who people want to blame.

I could see where it could have been misinterpreted so thats why I deleted it..When you type things sometimes it comes out different than you mean it..Im interested in the results...

While to me hunting is a more emotional ...aka "Mental Health ... and in I can righteouly stand accused of not having any mental health from time to time! ... issue than a business issue the problems I have had in the past with leasing and landowners would in the normal course of a business relationship generate criminal offenses against the landowner or his representative for fraud, conversion, slander, theft of services, assualt and a bunch of other things...but they don't generally because of the "good ole boy" network in the small counties where elected law enforcement, judges and juries reside. The have an "Us against them furriners" attitude that is so pervasive in some of these small towns that I feel safer in one of the Zona Rosa's at times...we all understand what we are there for but I'd like to get out alive after the fun and games are over...

I have leased cars, trucks, houses, apartments, tools, showrooms, office equipment and computer software, retail sites, you name it except for airplanes it seems. Some or most of these Leases have been multi year agreements ...and ALL have been concluded without any course of legal action resulting from abuses either by me or the Lease owner.

In all of these Contracts there are stipulations that control who does what, when, is responsible for what, and the conditions under which the Contract is to operated. I pick and choose what I can afford for whatever the useage of the leased item is and expect that the Leaseowner will honor their side of the Contract as I am expected to honor my side. It has been my personal experience in 40 years of of hunting in Texas that this nationally accepted Uniform Code of Business will never happen with a hunting lease. So get over it and accept the fact that the non landowning participant is at the mercy of the Landowner no matter what the Contract says. Anything better than that is a bonus to be enjoyed for the moment and should not be expected as a reoccuring event no matter what the Contract says.

Who is is at fault? We hunters are. No doubt about it. We willingly allow these abuses to happen over and over without demanding lawful and complete execution of the full and complete terms of the Contract. So shame on us.

Landowners are responding to the "laissez faire" anything goes market added value attitude of the Court system, and I personally know of a situation where even a Texas Ranger was involved in the investigation of a particular incident with false and fraudulent charges brought by a known bad actor landowner from an adjacent property. The Lease Owner landowner allowed the charges to stand even though they were complicit in violating their Lease Agreement with the Hunter, and the Austin based Texas Ranger advised the hunter to plead out the case because the deal was rigged against the out of town resident. That excercise in the "fair and equal" application of West Texas justice cost well over 6 figures in defense lawyers fees and resulted in a life changing result for that family of hunters. So don't think for a moment that a hunter with a legal dispute will get an even shake at the county courthouse in the Landowners county.

We hunters are not doing enough due diligence and excercising caveat emptor at all...and then whining about it when we get bent over without even a kiss.

I refuse to spend the big bucks for a "trophy" lease in Texas and will take my trophy dollars elsewhere...but I will continue to lease and understand the "rules" as written in every Lease Contract I have ever seen are subject to change at the whims and vagaries of the Landowner and that I have NO RECOURSE. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west...and nothing will change either of those events. Just remember the Aesop's Fable about the scorpion and the frog...and the result.

Every Lease Contract, except one, I have ever had has been violated by the landowner or his representative. The only landowner I have ever dealt with that I didn't have to keep one hand on my wallet and count my fingers after I shook hands and learned to trust 100% of his word was Ronny Mittle in Schleicher County. Ronny and his family are as fine a Christian family in every facet of that description as I have ever met and I enjoyed my time on his place even though I was not personally very successful. I would like to believe that I am wrong and that there other honest Landowners but I've not done business with any.

The QUESTION CHC posed was where is the problem coming from... so understand that I am not addressing the Contract abuses by Hunters, and I know plenty about that subject too, as I have kicked my fellow hunters off leases and turned in plenty of bad apples to the point of damaging relations in my immediate family with people losing six figure jobs over the garbage they pulled or orchestrated.

A Lease Contract is a just that... a legal Contract. So either accept the terms and conditions or don't...but make both sides of the Contract perform all the duties of the Contract and we eventually will all be better off for it.

Ya'll asked and thats my Honest Opinion.
Ron

CHC, with all due respect it seems like you are the one that keeps bringing this beating of a topic up and I don't believe it is going to change, at least not for the better. JMO!

where would overcrowing fit in that pole?- too many people and too little land available.

You can also throw out the argument that lease prices have risen in conjunction with rising real estate prices. You are renting a piece of real estate when you lease land to hunt. The land value has risen through the years so the landowner is going to raise his prices along with the appreciation. If he sells, all he has is cash and he must go find somewhere else to live but it will probably take all of his money to buy a new place. If he raises lease prices, he still has the real estate and he has more cash in his pocket and feels good that he his earning a bigger return for his land that he owns.

If prices of real estate were the same as the were in 1970, you can bet we would be paying those old prices still or we would just go out and buy every bit of land we could. But also due to the demand to buy the land since it would be so cheap, the prices would rise dramatically.

I don't see how you can just blame the hunter in the rise in prices. Just becuase you can make the argument the hunter is willing the pay it means nothing becuase you have to look at all other factor such as peoples income from their jobs, inflation, real estate prices. Blame corporate America for paying employees today more money so they have more to spend.

Here is another point for rising lease prices that is related directly to rising real estate prices:

http://www.texas-wildlife.org/PDFs/Take%20Action.pdf

I live in the city of Dallas near downtown so you can't blame me for urban sprawl. I have never lived outside of 635 and don't plan to if I can help it.

No Sir, I am sorry, if you will look back at JP's post about forum topics, you will clearly see that GOAT fired the first shot in this present round. All I have been saying all along, is that is a bad situation, with no way to change it.

I guess I just looked at the original poster on this topic. I just think we are beating a dead horse, and then beating it some more. I guess it is my decision to open these topics or not so I have only my self to blame, kinda like anyone who pays for a lease and then bitches about the price of hunting these days.

No need to apologize. There is not much else to do in the off season when not at the lease so why not talk about hunting. Whether we agree or not, I think it is fun to discuss stuff.

Great replies, to all 3 of you, Curtis, Taz, and Txduckman. These topics are fun to discuss, and a lot of times it is really hard not to take something in a post personal. We all are affected by these things differently, and because of our ages and the ways we were raised, we are going to re-act differently. But wouldn't this world be ONE HELL OF A BORING PLACE, if we all thought the same way.

I thought we hashed this out about a month ago, oh well here we go.
I don't think you can single out just one reason for this, it is a mixture of all.
I really don't care how all this happened, the question is how do you fix it. I don't know if it can be fixed, it has grown to a multi-millon dollar business in Texas, and we all know the old saying money talks, and bulls**t walks.
It's like calling a plumber to fix something, you can't fix, they charge "around" the same price per hour. The question you have to ask yourself is do I pay this high price, or leave it broke?
The only way to get anyones attention is to hold on to your money, are you willing to sit out a year or 2, maybe if enough of us does this, then maybe some people will get the message.
The problem is you can't get enough people together to make a diffrence, because someone is willing to pick up where you left off.

Spanky

FIRST let me say I don't expect things to change. So...the culprits for high lease prices?


1. Hunters/Sportsmen. Leeseees.
2. Landowners
3. Leasing Agents/Guides/Outfitters.
4. Media
5. Texas Parks and Wildlife.

The hunters fall into a few categories though from what I can tell. Like most of us, I live in the Dallas area where I see plenty of people that are willing to pay ridiculous money (because they have the $$) to go hunt a place 1 or 2 times and bust a huge deer just to put on the wall for braggin'. These guys aren't really hunters for the HUNTING aspect. Then there are the KILLERS. A lot of these guys have the money to pay high prices and feel they deserve to shoot anything that moves because they paid GOOD MONEY and they're gonna kill SOMETHIN' no matter what. Both of the above types come from the 'instant gratification' crowd. Truthfully a lot of these guys are over-achievers to begin with and have done very well for themselves. Alas, they're usually a horrible pain to be around...but I digress! The next group of hunters are the guys who just want to hunt and love it so much that they'll pony up the money and grumble later-I think that's most of us, since we're talking about lease prices and we've all been there!

My perspective on the landowners... A lot of 'em have been burned by hunters coming out and trashing their place and raping the wildlife. I've run into many of these guys who are 'hardened' by having to deal with (usually) the instant gratification crowd or the slobs. They have come to realize that they have a precious commodity and they're gonna make it worth their time to be dealing with arsewipes from the big city! Some have become greedy. The greedy ones are the guys who stuff way to many hunters per square acre. These guys don't seem to care what critters get shot and care even less about kicking somebody off at a whim because there's another guy to replace him probably even before season is out.

Leasing agents, guides and outfitters exist because of the above issues. The money is there, and if the landowner can make mucho dinero to let one guy he trusts manage a bunch of guys that he DOESN'T trust then where's the downside? Plus, the landowner doesn't have to put up with people coming and going at their pleasure and putting up camps and trash dumps, etc.

SOOOOOO....WE AS HUNTERS ARE **BOTH** THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION!

Ok, almost 7 O'clock, time to go home, looong day!!

WHY DON'T WE FESS UP TO THE REAL PROBLEM!! MY DEER IS BIGGER THAN YOUR DEER!!! OH AND I DONATED THE MEAT CAUSE I DON'T LIKE THE WAY IT TASTES!! I JUST CAN'T LET MY BUDDY BE BETTER THAN ME!! THAT IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS! IT AUGHT TO BE AGAINST THE LAW TO SHOOT ANYTHING IF YOU AIN'T GONNA EAT IT!! BRAGGIN RIGHTS IS ALL IT AMOUNTS TO. LANDOWNERS ARE JUST CATERING TO THE FOOLS WITH THE MOST MONEY. MY .02

Yours is the best and most truthful reply yet.

I am new to Texas hunting, and am having a tough time. I was transferred here from North Dakota. It had endless public land, and you could hunt private land if there was no "posted sign". I get down here, and see that you've gotta pay. I understand this, because of the population. San Antonio has more people than the entire state of ND. The rules have to be different to keep everything from being run-off, killed, or land torn up. However, this seems to have turned into a business. I may seem hypocritical in saying this, because I am paying to go on a hog hunt in two weeks at a hunting ranch, but I NEED to get back in the woods. Last year was the first year I ever remember not hunting. I used to go every week, but I guess I have to do what it takes.

First of all welcome to the forum. Second get ready to pay. Public land here is very min. and sometime over populated. There is alot of information here to help get going and some information you don't want to hear.