Hypothetical question: Lets say you found a deer lease that was everything you could possibly hope for. Everybody looks for different things but I am asking each of you to decide what is perfect for YOU and then how much would you pay. Not a package hunt but a season lease for WT and just access and no expenses. Not just a one year deal but a long term commitment. Huge 170 to 200" deer, great location, great rules, likeminded members, longterm relationship with great owners etc etc. This is an exercise in economics and NOT a discussion of what you want in a lease. I heard just today that a lease is getting 20000 a gun and I know of others that pay 1000. Your replies will not necessarily show your economic well being cause some folks have tons of money and chose not to spend much on a lease and there are others that have little money but spend all they got on a lease.
Im thinking parameters like 2000 or less, 3000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 10000, or more than 10000.
What about it THF, how high would you go?

I've paid $6k before. Aside from the deer population is was a great lease. I'd do it again but doubt I'd go higher since I'm close to the end of hunting deer. Moving on to other hunting.

muh granddaddy used to poach everywhere for free. I ain’t paying nuthin for a deer lease, I should be able to shoot them anywhere I wanna for free, they are pests. I ain’t payin no farmer or rancher to help with their problems, they should be payin me. I only need about 5 acres to shoot my 5 deer every year. Gotta fill muh freezer.

For me 3000 to 3500 is my max. Prefer the 2000 range.

Well I can't speculate the future but here is what we have. 2 hours from house, $1,700 a hunter x 6 includes 1,100 acres, secluded camp with electricity and water. Year round and very private with no one living there or near us. Deer, turkey, pigs, dove, ducks, preds. A little fishing that used to be really good. Arrowheads. Lots of snakes and crap that sticks you. Only 2 of us go outside deer season. Nice town 6 miles away. Would be hard to replicate. If it ended my options are way more expensive but way bigger. About same distance and amenities.

Freerange - you already know my answer! lol

$15000! I want another 180"+ deer! But I have my parameters, feeders, pens and stand in place and fed. Nice lodging with separate rooms and access to shower and bathroom. I will bring my own SxS. No community stands and I will provide cameras. Then all I have to do is walk out there like a Big White Dog and climb in my stand!!

What I see as value will differ greatly over what others see...

Mine is perfect for me. I lease a little over 200 acres with deer, hog, turkey, dove & raccoons. I like the peacefulness by the campfire and listening to the coyotes and birds as the sun sets and rises. The best (and worst) part is I'm the only one there. At my age, I always need help with the taller feeder so I bring one of my healthier buddies along. I stopped shooting deer if I was alone because cleaning them is no longer easy for me. Maybe I need to adopt a hunting son or grandson. I have to haul water and use a generator for electricity but I have a septic tank. All this joy for $2500 a year.

I'll be selling my travel trailer and Polaris Ranger once I get my RV and Jeep set up to my satisfaction.

I forgot to add most important requirement NO HIGH FENCES!!

Txduckman--thanks, this is the kind of response im curious about. Your entire situation I am betting would be very good for the VAST MAJORITY of hunters.
However, I know for a fact that there are a lot of hunters that would not want that at all-at least based on what you've said. IMO for some hunters they want the opportunity for large bucks and IMO 1100 acres would be hard to manage for Trophy deer unless you had a bunch of good neighbors. Also, at a hunter to acre ratio of 183 acres a man if everyone killed a buck that would "normally" be way too many bucks to allow many to grow old enough to get big.
Once again I am sure you are happy with your setup and many many many would be and should be. Im just curious about the other end of the spectrum as well. For some one that wants a real big place with a large number of acres per hunter and hunters that are willing to manage for trophies then im curious what the high end would be to pay for that. Thanks Txduckman, that really got us rolling.

Snakeoil--thanks for the reply. You definitely are at the other end of the spectrum. That may be out of my price range but im curious about others. Also, some of your parameters I wouldn't care for, but like it said, I want to know what is perfect for YOU. Thanks. So we got 1700 and 15000-big swing.

tlk--yeah, I pretty much know about your setup and you don't count. But im glad to know youre out there listening.

dang Pitch-- I really hoped for a serious response from you. Ive read enough of your posts to know about what you pay and I know your Ranch and some about that part of the world. I assume you are very pleased with what you have there and many others would im sure. Everyone perceives value differently and that's a big part of what im trying to figure out through this thread so im hoping you will enlighten us with your perception of value.
I completely understand if any of yall wouldn't want to answer these type questions but what if they kept going up, at what point would you say too much. Or if you lost your spot and could find exactly the same thing elsewhere but the deer were much bigger then how much would you pay. All just hypothetical. Thanks for your response.

just my 2 cents. For me depends on where you are in life.

My first lease (other than hunting on leases my Dad was on) was in 1980 on 200 acres - it is now a subdivision. It cost around $300 which was a load of money for me at the time. We literally slept in the bed of our trucks with a sleeping bag and cooked on a coleman stove. Just getting a chance at a deer was beyond compare. It was pretty crude set up but we loved every minute of it.

When I had kids I graduated to a better lease in Junction. Could take family and see some deer. In that day and time a 140 inch deer was considered a trophy of a lifetime. Think it ran around $1000 bucks a gun. At the time that was my perfect lease.

As my kids grew up and went on their own I moved South. Started with a couple of package hunts on the Junco and was hooked. Got on several leases in South Texas - was good country but the LO or lease rules were strange. Paid around $3-4 K. These leases were "pre-protein" days. But these ranches were part of my learning curve with South Texas.

For the past 12 years I have hunted an awesome ranch in South Texas. Not inexpensive but I would not trade it nor do I think I could duplicate it anywhere else. It is my year round hobby so I justify the money because I get my money's worth.

So for me I have been lucky to have hunted on a "perfect lease" for the last 40 years.

Well, tlk had a good way to approach this so I will follow suit.
>>I started out in the Hill Country when a young pup with my Dad in the 60s and it was close to home. Free for me and Dad likely paid a couple hundred,??? Looking back it was probably "perfect" at the time cause it was DEER hunting. Me and my BB gun were well known in the neighborhood so graduating to deer im sure made the old lady with the Martin houses behind us very happy. Besides I killed just about all the high end B&C pigeons off the top of the grainery behind Greenways on Austin Ave so at 12 I was ready to upgrade.
>>Dads heart stopped on him at the roadside park between Llano and Mason while pulling a RV to our new lease in Ft Stockton on Thanksgiving Day. I was on my own to hunt our new Trans Pecos extended family lease. I came and went out there 20ish years as career and kids got in the way. That country is beautiful and we had WT and Mule and I never stopped walking and glassing. My fondest hunting memories ever(perfect at the time). I think the old LO Mr Owens went up over $450 a man and we all about died. I got lucky in the 80s and killed a big buck about the time the Trophy craze and Deer management craze kicked in and I had more money so I went to South TX.
>>I had several "perfect" leases in South TX but I had the big buck bug bad so I kept up grading to a little more perfect South TX lease. The last one in early 90s was $3500 and could easily be called perfect by most standards.
>>I tired of looking down a sendero and I missed the topography and spot and stalk style of the Trans Pecos. Ernie Davis told me I could have big deer and that style of hunting in the Albany Throckmorton area so I moved again to my next series of "perfect" leases. I ended up moving around Albany and the lower Panhandle and ended up in between and I just call it NW Tx. Ive spent a lifetime networking and developing connections in the deer hunting community so I always find a more perfect lease without even looking. Invariably they just come to me. Sometimes the leases were lost and sometimes I moved on but always ended up with a better lease.
>>My current lease of 13 years is close to $5K and as close to perfect as I ever imagined. I routinely pass up mature 140 to 150 bucks. Everything else is as close to perfect as would be realistic. My only issue is I have little desire to shoot the high end of what is available and I have rationalized that managing the lease and taking pictures and putting others on the deer of their lifetime is "good enough".
>>Now, out of the blue I have stumbled onto two separate opportunities that would REALLY be perfect. 160 to 200" LF deer and just about everything else within reason that a person would want. NEITHER WILL BE INEXPENSIVE AT ALL.
So even though I have asked yall to tell me how much you would pay, I am struggling with that decision myself. Anyway, that was a fun trip down memory lane for me. Thanks tlk.

Memories are all that hunting should be about IMO - the only reason I mount an animal is so when I look at it on the wall I can remember the entire experience - older I get the better the memories are!

I see your point. But I hunt for the experience today not for the memories of tomorrow. I hunt because I have a passion for the outdoors and getting outside and being with friends and family. Memories are great but I like to live in the present. We are not promised tomorrow.

Today... I don't need much more right now.

Only 4 of us really deer hunt the 1,100 acres. Only take 1 to 3 bucks a year max. Just saw place next to us that sold at $1,850 an acre listing price is breaking it up into ranchettes going for $4K an acre with hill country views for miles. That place has zero cover. Lol. We are near the Red River idiots it isn't the hill country!!

You know Freerange I've thought about this for a while and I think I'm backing off to $10,000. I know this is still not cheap, I want to save any big fees for a big mule deer hunt. Either one of these would blow my entire hunting budget for a couple of years so I'm not well off by any means!

This is it for me also. Basically the money is not nearly as important as the lease location, size of the property, amount of hunters on the lease and then having more than one mature buck per year in that class to hunt. The big if for me is, this is if I were going to get back on a lease for whitetails.
For the OP's criteria....I want a place that is not far from where I live (so I can hunt as often as I want), very large in size(10,000+ acres with large neighbors), one hunter per 1500-2000 acres and then several bucks of all age classes that are 160-200" every year. I want to be able to pick 1 or 2 specific bucks to hunt and then hunt for them only. I would not want to see any over-crowding of hunters so the quality of bucks stay great every year. I can also see this criteria changing from lease to lease around the state.
At this point in my life I am okay hunting bucks from 130"-145" on my own land and then maybe paying for 1 or 2 hunts per year with an outfitter to have a chance at a much larger buck. I can hunt the same place here at home every year and move to new outfitter locations yearly if I choose. The money spent might be the same at the end of the year and I hunt as much and where I want to hunt. I would not have to deal with any of the ups and downs that seem to come with leasing today.
With all that said, if I were going to spend a large amount of money for a lease next year then I would put the money into a great MLD mule deer lease in Texas. Finding a MLD place with both quality whitetail and mule deer would be the icing on the cake.

Ok...... I have to have a large amount of acreage to start with at least 5000. High fence or low fence matters not to me on this size of property...... I also have to have year round access and guest privileges for both family and friends......MLD as well so nobody gets antsy pulling the trigger..... I need to believe their are both white tail and mule deer that have trophy potential........ I currently pay just under 5k a year for this arrangement........and I provide my own lodging, electricity and water. This is a good deal for what I want.........the ability to use it like I own it without the cost and upkeep.

Just to answer your question. $2,500 is the most I would pay. But then my wife hunts with me, so I would be paying $5,000.

Price per acre on a lease is more important to me. I know guys paying $20 per acre and that's double my preferred range.

the $$$ answer would be different for me if it was just me not counting my wife's input on the cost