I have a Land Owner here in the Breckenridge area that has a 16 acre lake and is thinking of selling Day Duck Hunts this year and he asked me about pricing. I have no idea what to charge but figured some of yall would know. 16 acre lake no guiding , bring your own decoys and no lodging, lake has a couple of boats on it. Shallow lake, lots of reeds. He would meet hunters at the gate and and show them to the lake. Not wanting to over hunt it, probably a week between hunts.

So, what are yall thinking a good day price would be? He says it's covered in ducks in the winter. Best guess I can come up with is $100-$125 per person per day?

100 to 150 but you can blow a lake like that out pretty fast you might only get 3 to 5 hunts a year off that lake unless it is extremely cold up north

I don't think anyone is going to pay more than $50/day to hunt it. I would think $25-$35/day per gun would be fair.

May be looking at a lease deal. I know he won't sell day hunts that cheap.

The question is how many ducks is lake holding, and species, this would dictate price per gun and number of guns..

A guided duck hunt is $200 or so per hunt per gun. The expectation is that the guide scouted, and you should get a limit. If land owner scouted spot and spot is holding 100 ducks, that should be good for a 4 man limit, he should sell at a discount to a guided hunt, but more than $50 or a dove hunt. $30 a gun would be appropriate if you are not expecting to see a lot of ducks. But if there are no ducks, you can't give that away. If owner posted a pick of his lake loaded with mallards, there are guys that would pay top dollar to hunt it.

So again, price depends quantity and quality of ducks.

He told me late season it's covered in Mallards. Most of what's out here is Teal, Widgeon and Gadwall with a few
Hooded Merganser, and Shoveler and Mallards late...and Ringnecks of course.

He told me the Duck Commander guys did a video on this lake back in the 80's or 90's. He said he thought he still had the VHS tape of it somewhere.

If he has ducks , I bet he can easily get 125.00 a gun to day hunt it.

He'd be better off leasing this to a reputable guided outfit that won't over hunt it, and won't leave anything behind except footprints.

If he tries to day lease this, he'll have hulls all over the place, and guys complaining and wanting money back because they didn't get a limit.

Talk to Jeff Elder at Silver Creek. Besides his own ranch, Jeff leases several properties and can probably explain a standard duck lease agreement.

I guess I didn't realize the demand for a place to duck hunt was so high in that area of Texas.

Yea, lots of Ducks out this way.

Thanks for all the info guys, I'll tell him what I've learned and let him decide what he wants to do. I know he's leaning towards leasing it if he decides to do anything.

IMO, he'd be better off leasing the whole thing for the season. There's what, 11-12 weeks in big duck season? If he's only hunting it once a week, he'll need to make at least $450/wk to get the minimum he could get by leasing the whole thing for, let's say, $5000 (probably on the low end for a lake that size).

I also think it'd be hard to fill spots each week. I personally wouldn't pay to hunt a pond, sight unseen, and un-guided. If I was going to do that, I'd just hunt public land.

we do duck hunts at $50 per gun two guns required weekends

I think he is gonna have a hard time leasing one lake for $5000 in that area.

You can lease a 100 acre flooded rice field in SETX for $5000 and the demand is much higher down here than up there.

completely depends on the pond. at 16 acres if it actually holds large numbers of ducks, it can be hunted 1-2 times per week if there is a solid food supply. throw mallards in there and the price went way up. not sure what the landowner is trying to do exactly but I would assume make some pocket change. would be a lot easier on him to lease it out for the season, or let an outfitter run hunts and he gets a cut. a lot smaller bodies of water closer to DFW will bring 3-4000, so IF it holds big numbers of ducks 4-5000 is or possibly more depending on the ducks is not out of the question. I would advise him to throw the self guided day hunt idea outta the window. As far as comparing to rice fields or other hunting areas, there is not really a "set price" on duck leases as they are all so different. The hunters also have a lot of different preferences.

You've not been around the Dallas duck hunter. A fool and his money!

Im sure a couple of outfitters that i know off will be contacting you very shortly

Dont get fooled and think the numbers of ducks arnt in this area cause we have no problem killing 4 man limits of a 1 acre tank several times a year. See hundreds of ducks each hunt. So if u can find a hunter it will bring a premium price

No need to contact me, I'm not sure the guy is going to do anything with it. He just asked about pricing IF he decided to hunt it.

I appreciate it though.