2013 was the first hunting lease I've been involved with, but I am in the lease with 6 other family members who have been in several prior to this one. We are all responsible, courteous, law abiding hunters. We paid our money and the lease runs calendar year. I killed a nice turkey in the spring and we then focused our attention in preparing the land for deer season. We put in a lot of work. Here's where we encountered problems. We heard by word of mouth from the locals in late summer that the timber rights on our lease had been sold and a logging operation would commence as soon as they finished with a farm down the road. Sure enough, the logging operation commenced in the first or second week of December, right before the rutt kicks in. Long story short, out of 7 hunters we have seen 3-4 deer on a 700 acre piece of property that were crawling with deer in the spring. By the way, the property borders about 15,000 acres of unhunted land in the form of a state park and a federal wildlife reserve. When I approached the owner about our concerns I was told that the timber operation shouldn't affect our deer hunting and that harvesting the timber was part of the farming/land management operation. The place is a mess and if we had known he was going to log the timber, we wouldn't have entered into the lease. Has this guy violated the lease or were we just naive and a victim of poor timing?

Nope nothing you can do... but this will be a good thing in the future... with that kind of property bordering you let me know when you get off the lease so I can get me a spot

Unless your lease agreement stipulates sole and exclusive use of the land, you're probably out of luck as he granted you the hunting rights and nothing else.

poor timing. but logging is a beneficial form of habitat enhancement. the deer will come back.

did they log the whole 700 acres?

imo the landowner should have informed you the property was going to be logged, however.

whats the landowner phone number. How much were you paying?

Yes, he is logging 100% of the timber down to 16". Since posting this, I talked with a real estate attorney friend of mine and he said that a legal term called "quiet enjoyment" most likely applies to situations like this. Plainly speaking, it means that we leased the property to hunt it uninterrupted by things like logging operations. By logging the property, he interfered greatly with our ability to use the land for the purposes stated in the lease.

I kinda look at it like this, if he leased the farm ground to a farmer then decides to log it and the logging operation destroys some row crop, the farmer would have a case against him for breach of the agreement.

I'm no lawyer, but I don't want to take this sitting down. The guy knew when he leased it to us that he was going to log it this year and he knew that if we, or anyone else had known that, we wouldn't have entered into the hunting lease.

I hate being taken advantage of.

I promise the LO is getting more $$$$$ from the logging than he is getting from the hunters. Who do you think he is going to run off first? There's only a couple of weeks of season laft, so I would just write that off. However, being on a couple of timber leases myself, I can tell you 1st hand that the property will be PRIME for next year.

You're going to spend more on legal fees than you're going to be able to recover.

And I personally don't think you have a very strong case unless your lease specifically states that you have sole use of the land and not just hunting rights. The "quiet enjoyment" is going to be a very weak argument in Texas where oil & gas activities occur frequently and trump hunting leases 100% of the time.

In other words, the hunters getting pissed on by superior activities is probably the norm, not the exception.

Now if he specifically lied to you and said logging would not occur, you might have somewhere to start.

That is unfortunate. We went through a similar situation in that our LO decide to clear all the cedar on the property after we leased it. Fortunately we were still able to see some good deer, but it completely changed the look of the property. How was it prior to the first or second week of December? If you only saw 3-4 deer the entire season and hunted for a month prior to the logging starting I would think you may have other issues going on as well. Good luck!!

Sounds like the same lease I am on. Same acreage but more hunters where I am. Lease manager knew about the logging ahead of time but didn't bother to tell anyone, started about third week of gun season. I have some beautiful pictures of a logging machine on my game camera. b

Just another reason i will never hunt East Texas..

I would have figured the fact that you live in Abilene to be the main reason

isnt "oilfield traffic" roughly the same issue out where you are? my cousin hunted somewhere out near abilene a few years ago and said the traffic through his lease was ridiculous all hours of the day...

we are barely getting by over here anyway with all the poaching and antler restrictions and all, i wouldnt hunt over here if i didnt have to either.

yup and the next 4 or 5 years after that too.

I would like his number also.

the clear cut is the best to hunt. You can also get you tractor out and make some kick butt food plots that will pull in all of the deer. Trust me on this, you might feal burned this year. But next year or the year that follows will be killer hunting.

i wonder if the last group got off because they knew what was coming?

I would shoot at the deer you think you see in your daydreams. know what i mean it works both ways!!

?

He's cutting down every tree on the 700 acres?

I don't see how that is beneficial to deer. If he wanted to help he would have 20 acre sections cut with about 40 acres in between the 20.

Sucks he wasn't up front with you before you leased the property. Think you're in your rights to ask for some money back.

He's cutting trees down to 16 inches in trunk diameter and leaving those that are smaller.

Not every tree. Every sizeable tree.

I feel your pain. We had almost all 600 acres of our lease burn up in East Texas a few summers ago. We cleaned up as much as we could and replaced feeders and stands. We skipped opening weekend and we out a couple times just to kill some time and my Brother in law shot the biggest deer we have seen out there to date. We hunted it every weekend after that until the season ended and sure enough, the deer started coming back in. A year almost to the day it burned, the paper company(land owners) brought in a crew to log the land. If you stay with it, the deer will come back.

Gotcha. It still, IMO, would be better to cut sections and not the entire thing. Certainly its the landowners call, but he still should have been forth coming about his plans.

I think the best way to answer this question is to put yourself in the landowners position and pretend to be him..

If YOU were about to log 700 acres of timber and turn a forest into a harvesting operation.....do you think YOU would be acting in a 100% forthright fashion if you forgot to mention this to the guy you are surface leasing the SAME land to for the purposes of hunting it, or doing whatever he plans to do with it....

I think this character question will guide your answer.

As to your recourse.....I would walk away. Suing is a lose-lose unless there are a LOT of "0's" in the deal and you have the pockets deep enough to go the distance and not bleed out....or have an attorney on a contingent fee basis....which you won't find one worth his salt for a case like this......

Sorry bro.. Go elsewhere and now you're armed with more experience and perhaps more questions for the next lessor..

No oil on the property i am on.. None on the neighboring properties. None on my way to town, I am 12 miles outside of town.. There are alot around Abilene but i am 49 miles south of Abilene.

I agree with sucking it up and going another year. The regrowth is a deer magnet.