Now I want to buy a tract in Bandera ...

You can buy this one. $10,000 an acre.

There are a whole bunch you can buy for 10k an acre.

Actually that is not that bad a price for only 2 miles out of town.

Ohh. Got to sell a kidney first.

As someone that talks with landowners, hunters, and outfitters every day, I can give you my general take..

Most of the talk about free market economics is on-point in this thread. The only thing is that the lease market is super inefficient and slow at moving their prices to match the supply & demand.

Here are the biggest trends I've seen...

1. Oil does play a big part here in Texas. LOs are, for the most part, just looking to monetize their land to help pay taxes and make some money on the side (big hunting ranches aside). So if the LO has to choose, oil is a reasonable, profitable substitute with a much greater upside to leasing out for hunters. When the oil prices dry up, they're looking to get as much as that income back as possible, thus you have a slower moving downward trend on prices. The problem is, since it's a seasonal business, the lease prices don't adjust in time for the real market fluctuations.

2. Bad comparisons. There's no industry standard on how to price a lease. You could say $/acre, but what about the health of the wildlife on a property? What about the proximity to water? etc. Landowner "A" tries to price it like real estate "comps" and looks at his neighbor, Landowner "B" getting $30,000 for his lease. Then "A" decides that's what he'll charge too. Unfortunately, some poor sap from New York will pay this price and anchor Landowner B's prices for years to come.

3. Not living in reality. I used to be on a 5,000 acre lease being charged $1,000-$1,500 a year with a handfull of other hunters. The thing was... the LO was an elderly couple that had their same pricing structure from the 80's. (These probably do still exist, but you'll never be able to access them. They don't show up on the internet for more than 5 minutes) What happens most of the time, is elderly LO's pass away and their kids inherit the land. They see $$ signs and often leads to a land sale requiring kicking off the hunters until the deal is done. The price goes up 3X and now you have 20 or so hunters, not living in reality, looking for a unicorn that they'll never find.

It sucks. I didn't even go into to the corruption and fraud piece of a lot of deals, but I'm hoping we can start to make a difference by bringing more transparency to the industry.

slept in a jungle hammic their was old trailor full of rat's slept in a few times... Had a big family tent, for whin we did family camping.. Wife decided she & kids wanted ta go to lease. She took income tax money found old used camper... Defenition of good times, ya cant put a price on it... Shoot experts say our house only worth $10,000.oo... This year dought can aford hunting & fishing licence, had to scrap just ta get the $48.00 WMA permit... Will hunt for have gun will travel , price of eaten going up.. Dont do no good ta complain, tried that... i apolagize can't aford ta help out landowners....