Lease Hunting is Depressing

It is depressing when you leave a lease and decide to step up and pay big money(for us anyway) but still cannot find what you are looking for.

Add us to the queue of lookers.....

Wanting something around the San Saba area 2 hunters and looking to pay around $3,000 per gun.

Would like to be able to take my wife to hunt off my quota.

Not looking for one hunter per 50-100 acres. So many leases are soooooooo crowded.

Look at that concan area lease on here. Looks pretty good

I inquired about it but there are around 30 members and that is a lot of personalities to work with. It seemed like a headache I did not want to endure.

Depressing, stressful, and frustrating. But it will come together.

This year I took the leap to get off my old lease with no other lease lined up. Looking for a lease became an obsession. It was always on my mind. I created a folder in my iPhone with tons of websites I kept an eye on and I looked multiple times a day. I would spend my lunch breaks at the computer, calling landowners, and constantly searching. It took months but I eventually found a place that met my all of my goals: within my budget, a reasonable driving distance, not too crowded, and lots of free range exotics (my Holy Grail).

The trick is to be the first person to contact the LO when a lease or spot is posted. You have to be vigilant. You need to have cash in hand and be ready to go inspect the place at a moment's notice. Do this and you will find something. But you may want to open up your desired area to the Hill Country rather than only San Saba County. I hunted San Saba for over a decade two leases ago and loved it. I tried really hard to find a place there but they are HARD to come by.

If you think lease hunting is depressing, don’t ever try being a landowner & try finding good leasees. They are all doing you a favor by wanting to crowd all their a-hole buddies on, for cheap, & shoot up your whole place for you. Most of them think the landowner should be paying them.......

Why don’t you stop whining or stop leasing? Like I told you a few years ago I wouldn’t hunt on your place if you did pay me.

We are not set on only San Saba county.......just looking around that general area.

Mexico would fit your requirements!! Besides the San Saba thing. We hunt 1333 ac per man on my lease. The ranch is 8000 ac total.

http://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/7191663/Deer_lease_opening#Post7191663

Jump on this one

I would do that in a heartbeat but he only has one opening.

& I see your still butt-hurt, after all these years........

There’s one on TBH in Knox county that looks really good

I possibly know of one in Archer County. Call me 940-452-4449

Still looking.

Open to more areas.

I doubt I can help you since at best we have only one spot and its out of your price range but I want to comment on your pricing comment. We lease a large place west of DFW and we keep a real low number of hunters per the acreage so it drives the price up to about $5000 a man including all feed etc. From what I have learned about the pricing in our area is that a lot of folks pay in the 2000 to 2500 range so I think you going up to 3000 does put you in a competitive range for many leases. I think that holds true in the hill country as well. Of course most folks know that South Texas has gone nuts and is in the 10000 a man range. Keep in mind(in my opinion) most landowners price their property at a fairly similar price per acre(compared to others in the area per what you get.) THE MAIN DRIVING FORCE behind the PRICE PER MAN is how many hunters there are per the acreage. Of course the more hunters, the more dead bucks so less mature bucks in the older age class so its difficult to maintain consistent Trophy quality over the long haul. Even the landowners and hunters that understand/agree/appreciate this concept it usually doesn't matter cause the price per acre has gotten so high that hunters are understandably unwilling or unable to pay the higher price per man that's required to keep the hunter numbers down. Sorry, I didn't intend to ramble so much so ill sum up by saying your 3000 should be enough money to get you a place and I wish you luck.

Nice one posted today - $3000 a gun - 1200 acres and two guns

I don’t mind paying more but my dad has a hard time convincing himself to spend any more than that.

We don’t have too many years left together so I am sticking with his preferences. So I have to have at least spots for him and me.

Fingers crossed and we are constantly looking.

That's funny, I was gonna say just the opposite a while back, but refrained as I didn't want to seem inflammatory. IMHO, 3000/pp for a "good" lease is way too cheap.

3000/pp will get a decent lease, but a good lease is gonna be higher and a great lease is gonna be much higher than 3000/pp. (and I know my opinion isn't worth much).

JROD has a lease opening that looks very good

Yep....it would have been gone a while ago but I have to have a spot for my dad and myself.

Plus my wife hunts and I have a youngster that will be hunting before long.

JROD only has one opening

Only being able to spend $3000 is limiting so we may very well be without a lease. If that is the case.... I will save the money and go hunt Nilgai or Aoudad.

I read it as two openings - sorry - it looked like it fit

Hang in there Redman. You can find something. As Texas Buckeye said "3000 may not get you a good lease and certainly not a great one" but I still think 3000 will get you a place to hunt for sure. IM not for sure about Hill Country but theres lots of popular country west of dfw that guys pay 2500 to 3000 for--at that price they almost have to put way too many hunters on it but its a place to hunt. Txhuntr2 posted on this thread he knew of "tons" of websites to use to find a lease so maybe he will repost and tell you(and the rest of us) what they are. I only know of leasehunter.com that's any good so be sure and check it out. Good luck.

Saw this over on Texas Bowhunter - looks like a good place


2 spots Coke county lease
have a 650 acre lease in Coke county. 4 spots total and I have two of them. The wife and I. She might hunt 3-4 days out of the year. 6 stock ponds scattered about. Year round lease with water and electric. Rv hookups. Deer,turkey,quail,dove,hogs and yotes. Also one mile away from Oak creek lake as the crow flys for summer fishing. 2500.00 per gun. This will be my third season managing this lease. It was myself and wife and a business partner and his wife. They have suddenly decided to retire and move to Arkansas. This was an all the sudden move on my buddies part and very unexpected. Anyway, if your looking for a place let's talk.

Deer lease opening
I have a paper company lease that is 6 miles north of corrigan. Its a new place and we currently have a couple of openings. This is a family lease.

Another one on Texasbowhunter forum

1100acres
2 stands per member( most guys just have one)
1 buck 13" spread +4.5 years old
1 cull via tpwd description +2 years old
1 doe
Unlimited hogs/varmits
1650 per gun which includes spouse and children 18 and under. They hunt with you and off your allotment.

There is a big chance we will have electricity and you will also need an atv or sidexside to get around on the property.

PM sent about Coke county

I can’t do anything in east Texas. I’d be hesitant to hunt there for free....for extended periods of time.

Did that for several years and methheads can’t leave anything alone.

For whatever reason....east Texas has a greater concentration of methheads, poachers, and thieves.

I agree with you, but you're gonna get some blowback on this one.

Sad to say, but 3 grand/gun doesn't buy much of a lease anymore if your interested in quality, # of hunters, etc...

I know it is an uphill battle. Just working within our parameters.

OK, here comes the blow back...Sure glad ya'll have the opinion you do of East Texas...keeps you high minded rich folks out of our way so we can get some hunting done...I had a first time member on one of my leases kill a 145 10 pt. last year- being a 10 he should have scored more but had short tines. Oh, and by the way, the lease cost was $850. In my 10 years or so of managing leases in east Texas I have had one feeder and two ladder stands stolen off one lease when a pipeline was being put thru and I am talking about managing four different leases.

My biggest issue with hunting east Texas (IMO) is the cost relative to the size of the property and quality of deer. I know several guys that hunt timber co land and clubs and they pay south of 2 grand but they hunt 1 gun per 100-200 acres (maybe more or less, but not much) or less and out of 20 guys. When your first rule on the deer lease is "no stands withing 300 yards of another members stand" it might be too crowded. That being said, to each his/her own. This type of hunting/comradary is all some guys want and that's OK.

I ask this question again....What is the concern about # acres/hunter? Is it safety or you would all be hunting the same deer. If it is safety, you couldn't be 150 yards from the next hunter in most east Texas timberland leases and shoot the next guy. If it concern about hunting the same deer, well unless your lease is 2000 or so acres and above you are all hunting the same deer. And if your concerned about too many folks at the lease at the same time...I have been doing this for a long time and I have never seen all member of a lease at the lease on the same weekend at the same time and that includes opening weekend and Thanksgiving weekend. Anyway that is my take on that.

My main concern with hunters per acre is when there are too many hunters....trophy bucks seem to get smaller and smaller.

Russ79 on your question of # acres per hunter being too many I had a comment earlier on this thread and ill comment again. I don't claim to know it all and everyone can have different priorities of what they want out of a lease but for those that want a reasonable opportunity to hunt a mature buck then "too many" hunters per the acreage can hurt those chances. Of course in extreme examples then safety could be a concern but usually when serious deer manager/hunters are talking about acres per hunter I think they are usually concerned with the longterm potential of managing for as many bucks in the older age classes as they can get. Everything can be sight specific but no matter how high the deer density may be then theoretically if there are a high number of hunters then at some point there would likely be too large a harvest of mature bucks and over time there just wouldn't hardly be any at all. However, costs to hunt has increasingly gotten higher so many people are just unwilling or unable to pay the price to have a high acreage per hunter ratio and that is fine. For those that can afford it and appreciate the value then IMO the ratio of acres to hunters is THE most important ingredient in evaluating a lease. I have hunted all over Texas and for many years have settled in West and North West Texas and out there most professional(and self taught) deer managers seem to agree that to maximize Trophy potential, as a rule of thumb, you try to kill about a mature buck per 1000 acres. We have about 700/800 acres per Trophy hunter but are very selective so we end up killing close to that 1000ac per guy number. Yes, we pay a little more, but that wasn't your question. If you want a shorter answer than mine, then Redman(just above) summed it up nicely.

Just sent you a PM 5Redman8

Good reply, freerange. You pretty much summed it up IMO.

San Angelo lease just came up on leasehunter.com that's in your price range.

I have had a lease in North East Texas for 4 years now. Have never had an issue with theft or damage by a "human". hogs are another story. 2 travel trailers, 2 four wheelers, 1 tractor, 12 cameras, and 8 feeders, never an issue. I have had 1 camera stolen off of the gate area by a logger when they were taking more trucks out of the place than they were reporting but other than that no issues.