How do yall feel about lease prices? I fiqure with the economy, rising fuel prices, and rising feed prices prices that they would come down. I have been on the phone all day with land owners and that is not the case.

Look at it from the landowner side of the fence. Increased prices in fuel, feed, taxes, not to mention cost of living expenses such as food and clothing. Why would they be lowering lease prices? They are hurting also.

they are charging waht people are willing to pay.

You dont raise taxes in a depression and so why raise hunting prices if you need the money.

I know of one $45,000 trophy lease that went un-hunted this year. But the landowner really doesn't need the money.

I have not seen any leases (yet) where the price has dropped significantly. But on the other hand, prices don't seem to be going up every other year like they have in the past.

Every one I talked to today wanted 3,000 a gun and wanted a person every 100 acres or so.

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Look at it this way, chances are, they'll get their asking price

dang! where are you looking at? we only pay about 1000 a gun.

You can find better places at better prices if you take your time. Late spring into early summer is when you start seeing more leases coming available.

For $3000 you should be seeing some pretty healthy bucks.

I wish I had that

I pay $3,000 per gun for 8 guns in TransPecos for mule deer. We have to stay in town and drive back and forth also. I expect it will go up this year also.

I hunt central texas now for 1850 a gun. It has been fair but it is a wide open place and the deer are very nocturnal. I would like to find a thicker place and I dont mind paying for it. I just dont want to watch the same deer as the other guys do from across the ranch.

There is a reason they even have something available then! B/c no one wants it and no one probably even leased it this year. Wait until Feb/Mar to summer to look. We pay $10 an acre and are less than 2 hours from NW Dallas.

It is supply and demand. Increasing lease price to match the fluctuation of prices (happens with all products) is not the equivalence of raising tax rates. If prices are raised and the demand still meets the supply price then it in no manner resembles taxation rates in economics. Lease prices are not self lowering in relation to fuel prices. In fact there is a justification of increasing prices if something as simple as feed prices are rising when most leasers are operating ranches.

I pay 3250, in return I get things like cows, horses, a bedding area cleared, the biologist demanding we feed peas, neighbors acting like idiots, it Is the greatest deal ever. I can't write the next check quick enough. I just hope we get some goats put on the place and some more oil field traffic. That would make it perfect

I've seen a number of leases in the TX Panhandle, that aren't overcrowded by any means, for $1500-$2500 a gun.

The problem is that so many leases now days are leased by businesses, large and small. So they can take a few clients out or some employees and write it off. It just takes a few or those and a few people that do have money and that are willing to spend it, to get the land owners to expect the prices to stay high in any economy. Usually the economy effects people like us more than it does people that have money anyway.

Lease prices won't go down.

Lease prices won't go down


I was on a lease in Bandera TX for around 15 years with my father and we worked out a deal where we would hunt for free as long as we did all the labor around the Ranch. The ranch wasn't big (less than 500 acres) and had a total of 3 hunters. The deer population was poor when we first started hunting but got better as we implemented out management program. In 2004 the owner got into debt and wanted to start charging us to lease it. We were ok with paying because we knew it was bound to happen one day. Needless to say we didn't stay when he asked for 3k a gun each. The next day my father and I went out and picked up all of our stuff as it wasn't worth it.

For about 4 years we looked for a place to hunt and until 2008 didn't get on a lease. Most leases we found wanted too much for a little piece of land or didn't allow guest to hunt off your tags (which was big for us). We're on a good lease now in Cuero TX thanks to a good friend of mine and we couldn't be happier price wise and lease wise

I guess to make this long story short there are good leases out there at a fair price you just have to keep looking for them

going into this last hunting season it actually seemed it was much less of a sellers market than it had been in the past, i'd expect that trend to continue into this year. and btw, $3000 for 100 acres in TX is beyond ludicrous. not only on a $/acre basis but from a game mgt standpoint in 95% of the state...

Have you seen how many people are already posting that they are looking for a lease for 2011? The demand is high so the prices are also going to be high...

You have to keep in mind that the Panhandle has very little cover. So while you might be able to get away with a gun per 100 acres in most parts of the state you can not in the Panhandle. "Overcrowded" in that part of the state is completely different than "overcrowded" in the rest of the state. If you are going to lease in that area you should try to keep it to one gun per 1,000 acres IMO.

I see a lot of people talking about price per gun.... are you guys sitting down and figuring out how much you're paying per acre?

price per gun is irrelevent...the only way to know what the going rate is, is to break it down per acre....

if you have 1000 acres at $15 an acre... that'st 15K for the place.... then figure out how many people it can support.

What blows me away is the number of hunters they are putting on some of these places. I've seen 100 acre leases wanting 4 hunters, 1000 acre leases wanting 10-15 hunters. That's insane.

Hunter numbers should reflect the deer density numbers. For instance, on our lease the helicopter survey shows we have one deer to every 20 acres average. That's 5 deer to every 100 acres. Now if you're trying to take only mature bucks what are the chances of that if you're hunting ratio is one man to every 100 acres? Not very good, I'd say.

No wonder much of the state is devoid of mature deer. Don't even get me started on the day lease operations.

You are correct. It is all about the money to the landowners. Very few care at all about the deer herd. It is a shame.