Same here, my dad and his uncle and a cousin started on the White ranch in the late 60s and paid $15 for a two week season. We moved to his sisters place when I started in 74 and it was $25 for the month. Bad thing was we got a month of hunting and had to pull everything off after Thanksgiving. His thought is if we couldn't shoot 4 or 5 deer each in a month, a other month wouldn't help. Finally got off that pasture in the mid 80- camp split up because of one of the cousins and another, to the back pasturewhere we stayed till 2007, when we got a full season for $800.
Great place lots of deer, awesome view of the Blue Mountain in the evenings.

I got sick of leasing in 1998, that's when I bought the ranch. Before that I only had one lease in Menard that was pretty good and I left it to go hunt big deer in south Texas and Mexico. That was ok but the drive was a killer so I found another place up here on the Brazos with a Lake Fork fishing guide. Turns out he was a poacher and sold day hunts on the place during the week, that's when I said to heck with leasing and bought my own.

I never got kicked off a place but I had a couple of guys double their price on me and basically forced me to leave.

Lost 2 because the owners passed away

Yep - I tell our hunters that we will not endanger our entire lease with the LO over one guy not following the rules. Have had to enforce that several times -

Have never been on a lease until a few years ago and have always hunted on family or in-law property.

I can honestly say the best case for leasing a place is from a loaded landowner who doesn't need the money and only cares that land and wildlife are taken care of.

Great advice. Don't fix the place up too much.

Same here.

If there is one thing you can count on in life it's change. Sometimes it turns into an opportunity, sometimes not.

The last one I lost was bought out from under me. Turned out to be the best thing that's happened to my hunting experience. I ended up on the Pitchfork. That was ten years ago and I'm going into my eleventh year.

The only people it won't happen to are the landowners themselves. It can be a big undertaking when you have several years of equipment spread out over thousands of acres. That's when you count it down; start thinking of worse things you could be dealing with and get it done.