I just moved to texas from Arkansas.

My cousin and I are looking for a small family friendly Hunting lease. We both live and work in spring tx area and would like to find a location within 3 hours. We are currently maintaining my lease in Arkansas however, I am not able to give it the proper amount of attention it needs not to mention it is 7 hours away.

We are both outdoorsman and not just meat hunters. We are looking for a year round location to not only hunt but just get away from city life, IE Camping working the land and such. I have a RV, 4 wheeler and an Argo so if the location has a place for this even better.

Archery only is fine too.

We are not looking for pay per hunt, guides or anything of the sort. We are looking for a group of people or land owners that are looking for hard working guys that want to be maintain a good healthy wildlife population.

Please PM me if you have any ideas or suggestions of where else I might be able to look.

First of all welcome to the forum!! You said you wanted to be pm'd with comments--since you are new on here I just wanted to make SURE you don't want guys to comment directly on here. I think you will get a lot more advice if you let them respond on here or by pm. If a guy has a particular property available they will likely be more apt to pm. But lots of guys on here can offer you a lot of generic advice on how to go about your search. What really drives the success of this forum is that when someone offers advice to the OP then everyone reading it can benefit from it. Also every new post on the thread has a chance to kind of perpetuate itself so it can keep alive and thus allow more opportunities for new comments. Once again, if pm is what you want that's fine, but with you being new I just thought I would offer my 2cents.

Yeah reply is fine sorry. I just found that the second something becomes available it gets snatched up lol. Some land owners are more apt to post in private too.

Thank you for correcting that. What I should have said reply with any suggestions or insights and pm me if you have something that is ready for immediate action 😀

ok, got that cleared up. Ill offer a bunch of scattershot info that you may already know but I have no way of knowing that.
Its not real hard to find a place to hunt but it can be very hard to find a GOOD lease. Almost always true that you get what you pay for and a quality lease can be very expensive. It would help if you post on here about what your budget may be and what type quality of deer you are expecting/wanting. If you just want to get in the woods that's fine and may be cheap but if you want the chance at quality size deer year in and year out then that's entirely different. Based on the distance you are limiting yourself to I would look more West and South than North and East. That's just me though. Depending on what you are looking for your best bet could very well be the opposite direction.
As far as specific advise I always recommend looking at leasehunter.com. The website is just one tool in your lease search tool box so beat the bushes everywhere else you can. This forum is a good spot for sure. You can go back and look at older threads in this forum and may find leads. I suggest you pm "Russ79" on this forum. I don't know him but he seems very knowledgeable about East Tx leases.
One last thing about posting your budget. Anyone with a quality lease that costs a good bit of money is used to the majority of hunters not wanting to pay the price. They've run into this with hunters so often that they may not even reach out to you. IF IF you are willing to spend a good bit of money then you may get more interest. Good luck.

Thanks FreeRange for the info.

In Arkansas there are 2 kinds of leases, Those that run dogs (many cases year round illegally), and those that have feeders right next to each other and they only run them during deer season. Also note that in Arkansas you have a 3 point rule not a spread rule. Meaning 99% of the deer you see are less then 3 years old I can go out and sit on a stump or walk up on 3-5 deer a day. once in 5 years you will finds a buck older then 3.5 years.

I don't like either method.

I enjoy spot and stalk hunting and scrap hunting. Many times I just walk and scout then i put up cameras on scrapes and decide what scrap I'm going to hunt. Below is the largest deer i have killed so this will let you know my expectations are not very high...All I want to do is kill older smarter deer, rabbits and hogs. When I talk kids with me I want to make sure they get a chance to see deer.

In Arkansas the farmers like the hogs because they provide good meat (game and fish hates them) this means the farmers usually castrate the hogs and release them. As long as there are hogs I usually only kill 1-2 deer every few years mostly because they are always so young... However, I do hunt hog year round.

I am looking for a property that will let me scout and spot and stalk. I prefer woods over open plains and I prefer (bow or muzzle loader) over rifle

I would prefer to find a land owner that wants a bit of help maintaining the land and watching over it. My cousin and I will help build up the land and hunt it. Else I would like to find a small group of like minded people that are looking for some hard working guys.


As far as cost. I currently pay 1600 for 5000 acres with a 1500 sq ft bunk house a spot for my Camper and I pay 1200 for a storage unit I keep all my equipment and ATVs. I think I can do up to 3-4k annually as long as I have a spot for my Camper or a bed to sleep in.

Razorback, based on how you described what you are used to you should be able to find something in Texas. A place just got posted today in the Deer Hunting section on this forum. I know nothing about it but on surface it seems to fit most of what youre looking for. I would advise you to proceed with caution when following up on ANY lease.
Also, theres another thread on here just posted the other day offering some good generic advice on looking for a lease.

I have a lease in Center Texas. Looking for 3 Hunters. I just posted on this site. Shelby co. East Texas. It is three hours from Houston.

Thank You
Joe