Does anyone lease seasonally without exclusive hunting rights, meaning either landowner and/or family and/or lease broker retain some limited hunting rights? When I say limited, I mean they can/may hunt on rare occasion. We had this arrangement with LO down in South Texas for 35+ years and was never an issue 1 as they rarely did, maybe 1-2 short hunts annually and there were always more than enough animals and deer to go around. Also feel that mutual trust and understanding is something that helped keep our lease costs below market. Does anyone have such an arrangement and how has it worked, pros and cons? Thanks

Yep - our LO runs management hunts during the season. Our lease members always get first choice on stands.

His management hunters are always sitting with him or a guide and they help take the load off of our lease members by helping shoot doe, culls, and management deer. Otherwise we would have to spend half our time culling.

The LO has the right to shoot one trophy per season and in 13 years I have been here he has never shot one. We obviously trust him - I know for sure he has been offered a load of $$ by a management hunter to shoot one of our trophies and he will not allow it.

That's an interesting one for sure with the commercial management hunts, new one for me but sounds like a win win all around. Anyone else more the LO, LO family or lease broker retaining any limited hunt rights?

for me I would never trust a lease broker to do hunts while I was leasing - been there and it was a mess - IMO a LO doing it is an entirely different story -

One of my leases we have exclusive rights. The other is a big place and we hunt a portion of it. The landowner and family very lightly hunt the rest of the Ranch. I have told them they could hunt on our part if they wanted but they have declined. He has offered to let us hunt a few times on his part.
If LO were going to share in the hunting it would likely be best to spell out what/when and then trust has to be involved for any sharing to work. However, I dont see it as any different than spelling things out and then trusting your own lease mates to kill only what they are supposed to. Maybe trust is assumed between lease mates and thats easy on a small lease with family or tight friends but a large lease it can be real work to insure everyone is like minded and trustworthy.

About twenty years ago I had about 15k acres leased for waterfowl hunting. One of the larger landowners was big on upland hunting and reserved those rights. Every single time he went hunting he called me first to make sure he wasn’t going to interfere with us. It can certainly work there just has to be good communication, respect, and understanding.

We had a lease at Priddy near Tator Hill where the landowner would hunt a little bit. He always filled his feeder and sat one or two times a year. I never knew of him killing anything, he just liked sitting in the woods and hanging out at deer camp a little bit. The only problem I had with the owner was he would drive thru the lease when it was the best hunting times and totally ruin your hunt. Most of the times he was just driving around and drinking beer. He let his daughters boyfriend hunt a few years but he ran him off after he would not pay. He said he was a lazy free loader. We only paid 3-4 hundred dollars so I wasn`t going to complain at all.

When we leased the family place we retained hunting rights but it was for us to shoot does/culls. We did retain 1 trophy but only filled the tag once. It was not a season lease per say they got to hunt 14 or 21 days out of the season...I cannot remember. Out of state guys so that's about all they could hunt anyway and it worked out good.

The place I'm on now, The landowner is allowed to put up 1 blind and feeder in one area of the property and shoot a doe and a spike....to my knowledge he has not done it in 3 years. There is a guy living in a home on the property and last time I was out there, i found pieces of taillight plastic underneath my feeder, which means someone backed up to the feeder for some reason.....guess what the most likely reason is because i know the feeder hadn't been filled up and my taillights are fine. I fully trust the landowner but don't know the housing tenant from Adam so that was a bit suspicious .

so the short answer is it depends ............... on the LO - are they trustworthy or not? Only way to find out is to go there and see - good luck

We had a lease for over 30 years. It was always agreed to be exclusive but towards the end of our tenure the LO asked if his grandson could hunt. We reluctantly said yes (as it was really more telling us his grandson was going to hunt). Then one opening day the grandson shot a nice buck as it was making its way towards one of our hunters. That always left a bad taste in my mouth.

I don’t lease anymore, but I wouldn’t do another lease unless it was agreed that we had exclusive deer hunting rights.

Failing that, at least try to get it limited in scope (this area, these days only, etc.) or at the very least get a detailed understanding of where/when someone else will be hunting.

I have always felt like if you pay for hunting rights they should be exclusive unless it is helping with management as outlined above. In other words, I never liked the idea that I was writing a nice check to a LO but he/his family could still end up shooting a big deer off the place. Just my 2 cents everyone is different I reckon.

I should probably add that LO was pretty old and grandson was about 25.

I actually hunted hogs on a place like that. The deer hunters only leased Sept through January. I killed hog during the other months for the landowner.

What you are describing is a shared seasonal lease where the landowner simply has one of the shares.

Had a lease where the land owners son-in-law could come hunt one weekend a year. Usually around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Wasn't a big deal and he usually just shot a doe or spike for their freezer.