Campbell just starting posting tracts to bid on for lease. Go to www.cglease.com.

Thanks for sharing. I'm looking for a new lease but I may get a few small leases around my house and see how it goes..

How does the bidding usually go? does it escalate quick?
Also, are these long term, or year to year?

It doesn’t escalate at all, it’s a sealed bid. Place a bid and a few weeks from now they will contact you and let you know if you won.

It is a year to year bid, but they don’t always go with the highest bid. If you’re already on a lease and you bid a few cents more than you did last year you will probably get to keep it.. unless someone bids double what you bid..

So, what does one usually go for per acre?

I mean, some of them were priced at $750 currently, am I going to be outbid if I bid $1000?

OK guys, here is how it goes. Everyone that is interested in a particular tract will send in their bid- nobody know what the other bids are. Generally the tract will go to the highest bidder, but they do give preference to folks that either already lease from them or live close to the property. You will be notified if you won the bid- since I have never lost a bid I am not sure if they contact you if you are not the winning bidder. Then sometime in the spring, end of March/first part of April time frame, you will have a contract sent to you and there will be an invoice telling you how much you owe. Generally the contract will be for three years and you will see the cost per acre on the contract for each of those three years. During the life of that three year contract you will be getting an invoice for the coming year (once again in the spring) for you to pay by the due date. Once that three year contract is up, unless you do something that either breaks the law and they find out about it or you screw something up like cut down some pines, you will get another three year contract. That is what I like about leasing from Campbell verses private property- you can have it for pretty much as long as you want it and not have to worry about someone leasing it out from under you or the landowner dieing and the kids selling the property. The one piece of advice I will give about what to bid- get your group together and discuss how much each of you would be willing to spend for that year for the lease. Come up with a total figure, divide it by the number of acres that the tract consists of, and there is your bid. If you don't get it then it probably would have taken more than what you were willing to pay anyway. I bid on my first tract with nobody in mind but myself, although I knew I would have to get folks on it with me. That particular tract was less than a mile from my house so I probably bid more than I needed to, but I didn't want to lose it over 25 or 30 cents per acre. Remember, the price they are showing per acre on each tract is the minimum to start with. I will tell you that each of the three tracts that I currently lease cost me $8.50/acre but I expect them to go up a little this next time.

Another piece of advice- go check it out before you bid on it. I know this should go without saying, but I know folks that have bid on a tract and then when the went and looked at it they weren't real happy. Make sure the roads are good, that there is easy access to the property- I have looked at properties that had no good or easy access. Campbell encourages you to do things to improve habitat, like food plots, so look for areas that you can do things like this. You have to work with the property as it is and be aware that their primary business is growing trees and selling timber. They will do whatever they plan on doing on their time table, not yours- plant, cut, spray, etc. The first tract I got they were spraying with a helicopter while I was bowhunting. Just work with them and the cutting crews are generally pretty good about watching out for stand and feeders.

Something else you can do if you have a bunch of hunters that want to stay together. Look at a county you might be interested in and see if there are two or more tracts either close to each other or that are adjoining. For instance, in Orange county there are two tracts that adjoin each other- if you were to win the bid on both tracts you would have just over 5000 acres to hunt.

Thanks for the advise. Can we bring rv and leave in tracts? Thanks

You are allowed to have a camper or travel trailer out there. If you just have it out there during the season it costs nothing to have it out there. If you leave it all year it costs $100/year for any structure that remains out there.