How much land is enough for two people. Want to put a trailer on and for deer, hog hunting?

The most you can afford.

And it still won't be 'enough'.

We’re looking for a minimum of 30 to buy depending on the area. Minimum of 100 if way out southwest. Still not sure that’s enough but It will have to be for us! Not looking to kill a lot of deer. Just have a place to be in the outdoors.

It really depends on what you want in return.......nature, deer, hogs etc......but no need for a mature buck every year....50 acres should do for 2 hunters.......and deer density in the area is a MAJOR factor.....

Wooded or open.

Concur with these guys. The smaller your property, the more chance for there to be problems.

Let's say that you buy the 30 acres cbump suggests as a possible minimum. His number isn't unreasonable. You will find people who want to hunt deer on 5-10 acres, LOL. Depending on the resources, you may have a few deer live their and some transients. Unless you have some heavy woods, you aren't likely to have hogs living there and even if you do, it will be temporary. If you are wanting to get that big buck, it probably doesn't live on your land and if you want to shoot hogs regularly, you are going to be relying on the resources of your neighbors...and this is where a lot of landowners get really pissed off after buying land. The smaller the property, the easier to over hunt it.

With a minimalist parcel of land, you are hugely dependent and influenced by what goes on with your neighbors. Here it is the first morning of deer season and your neighbor's 12 year old kid is out jumping his dirt bike not 200 yards where you have your best deer stand set up on YOUR property. You become outraged because he is scaring away all "your" deer and want to know why, of all days of the year, does he need to ride his dirt bike that morning? Or maybe your neighbor is driving his cattle feeder truck and hitting the horn to call the cattle. Here, I am not talking about malicious neighbors, but neighbors who have their own lives, own land, and are using it for something different that you. With 30 acres, you have no real buffer with your neighbors and their activities. These are actually problems people have mentioned previously on this forum either from owning small parcels or having a small parcel of a lease that adjoins a neighbor property.

Maybe you get lucky and buy 30 acres and have like minded neighbors. Your 30 acres is surrounded by excellent habitat on your neighbors' properties. Then your neighbor dies and the heir does something different with the property that is no longer conducive to your hunting. Maybe he develops it for residences. Maybe he puts in a gun range. Maybe he bulldozes everything and puts in dirt track because he is a weekend midget or spring car racer and wants a place to tune his cars and practice driving.

Maybe your neighbor sells off a small parcel right on the property line to the local old and gas company and they decide to put in a compressor station that runs 24/7 and is always illuminated (this happened to a buddy of mine)

All of these things described are all 100% legal, but you won't likely be happy about them. I know of examples where all of these things have happened. In one case, I am the bad guy. I put a gun range on my property. My next door neighbor owns 25 acres. He is an absentee landowner who only shows up to hunt deer or hay the property was not happy about the activity on my property. He thought I scared away all the deer after I put in a gun range and ruined his hunting. No, I wasn't shooting on opening day at my range, but I certainly didn't abandon shooting on my gun range for more than 2 months of the year.

Now the down side from your neighbor's perspective (see posted on this forum). If you have a small property and shoot a big buck or you and your partners tag out, your neighbors will feel like you are stealing from them because you are hunting more resources than your property probably carries. Therefore, you are perceived as a bad person, unethical hunter, bad neighbor, and general all around jerk (even though you may be 100% legal in what you are doing).

Bottom line, the smaller your hunting property, the more of an influence (good or bad) your neighboring properties will have on you. If you are too successful on your property and your neighbors are also hunters, you may be seen as a parasite.

Will any of this happen to you? Probably not. It can and does happen, however.

What will likely happen to you is that you will lose prey across the fence. You are going to lung shoot that big, healthy, trophy buck you have always wanted and it is going manage to run 100 yards and leap the fence before expiring on your neighbor's property who may not give you permission to trespass. You will think he is a jerk, and maybe he is, but maybe that is how he sees your endeavors. The bigger your property, the less likely your prey won't make it off the property.

Then there is the issue of safety. The smaller your property, the more likely you are to have one of your shots leave your property. With 30 acres, square, you are never more than 190 yards from your neighbor's property. If you are on a flat property, hunting from a chair in a ground blind, and miss a deer, a shot from a centerfire rifle is apt to exit your property. Elevated blinds would be an extremely prudent consideration or hunting with a shotgun or bow setup instead of centerfire rifle.

Maybe you set up a blind (God forbid) on the edge of your property so that you can shoot inward, increasing your safe shooting distance. Great! Now you are that much closer to the neighbor who may not be as safe. Also, based on responses on this forum, you are a terrible human being if you set up a blind near the property line on your side of the fence because the neighbors apparently assume you will be poaching over the fence. Why else would you have a bind there?

So the larger your property, the more buffer you have from your neighbors, but also the more buffer they have from you (increases safety, privacy, and reduces potential conflict). Add to that the fact that with more property, often comes more and more varied habitat. The bigger the property, the more likely you are to have water resources on it, changes in elevation, prairie and forest.

If you buy 30 acres, the chances are everyone around you has 30-50 acres --------- You can put 4 hunters on 30 acres, if you are lucky you can kill one deer every 4 or 5 yrs. ( not one deer per hunter, just one deer) . I'd put 3 feeders on the 30 acres to increase your chances.

I would add that the three most important factors when looking at real estate are

1) Location
2) Location
3) Location

If the area where you buy has a sizeable deer population, then taking deer off of it is no problem. Other places, not so much. Small acreage would reduce your chances of taking a 140+ buck to a once every 20 year proposition, it just depends on what is important to you.

I bought as much land as I could afford in 2019. If I bought in the same area in 2021, I could only get half of what I got now. The cost of land is skyrocketing.

Bottom line, thinking that you need 300 acres to kill deer is going to freeze out (financially speaking) most regular guys unless you consider deer density for the area and the specifics of the parcel you are considering.

had over 5,000acres ta hunt...
🦌 deer 🐗 hogs archery only needed 30-40yrds..
🐗 hog only, any legal means, wondered about the woods...

As every one has mentioned lots of variables...
Hunting presure from surrounding areas & your set up
tis a biggy...
A rifle hunter usually will want more land.
Were archery, a good set up needs way less...

Just gotta find what will meet your goals...

Best wish's...

Depends on what area you’re talking about and what is going on on surrounding properties.
Some areas of the state may take as little as 20 - 40 acres per hunter, other parts of the state maybe as much as 400 - 600 acres per hunter.
In an area of the hill country with severe deer over population it is possible to find a spot where 40 acres might be okayish for 2 reasonable hunters.

you can put a trailer on and "hunt' deer and hogs on 30 acres....whether or not you will enjoy hunting on it is another matter completely.

It also depends greatly on the location and neighbor situation.

I have sold smaller tracts of land where there was great hunting because the similar sized neighbors only hunted rarely or often not at all. But you may get bored of it after a few season if all you use it for is hunting.

I've sold bigger ranches in areas where the neighbors had bigger type country but they also had a lot of indiscriminate lease hunters and hunting was poor. And in some areas deer populations are not that great to begin with.

Good hunting is going to be where you find it. When i was looking for a ranch I originally wanted 250-300 ish acres in the Hill Country. Wife found us the perfect spot but it was a little bit over 100 acres....but checked all the boxes: driving distance was great, was priced right and turn key ready so we jumped on it. Deer population is very high, and the family can hunt, take a mature buck off it a year along with several does plus hogs and exotics, and everyone is happy. So our area we accomplished our goals on a little over 100 acres, some areas could accomplish it on 50 acres and other areas it may take 300 acres to get us there.

IMO you will reach a level of diminishing returns and that seems to be in that Sub-50 acre range. My buddy however has a small 48 acre farm in Colorado County his family has owned for 30 years, has a nice tank, pasture and some woods. Every year they take a deer or two, have a great time out there and now his mom lives out there. It worked for them. I know others who own small tracts they never go to because after the 1st season it wasn't fun anymore to go sit and watch the same 2 feeders and game was not what they had hoped for.


In the end, you have to take an honest look at your goals, your location and tolerance for driving distance and ultimately your budget and decide if what you can or are willing to afford will offer you the level of satisfaction you are expecting in a property.

85 and Ought Ought have provided some very good things to think about. Ought Ought obviously had some time to think about it. Good thoughts in all.

This says it all.

Big places require a big commitment in both time and money. Fact is a lot of people like owning a place but don’t want to take care of thousands or even hundreds of acres.

Sold a lot of ranches to people downsizing

When I was in high school the place I hunted was 60 acres. It was excellent hunting. It was in a very high deer density area and was in the middle of no where surrounded by properties that were mostly over 5,000 acres. There were no other small properties for miles and miles.

The problem with many smaller tracts is what often happens is someone buys say 300 acres and then breaks it up into ten 30 acre tracts and sells them off for a profit. Now you have ten separate landowners with thirty acres each side by side trying do some hunting on the land and it results in a tremendous amount of hunting pressure and drives the game from the area.

When it comes to the suitability of hunting on a small tract it is all about the neighbors.

It all depends on different factors, mostly neighbors. I own 133 acres South of Bowie. It is long and skinny, one mile from front to back.

I have some anti hunting neighbors who shoot, off and on, all day Saturday and Sunday during bow and rifle season. I found that he is anti hunting by trying to talk to him about it. I can get far enough away so it doesn’t keep deer from feeding but can’t hunt part of my land on weekends. No problem for me. I’m retired but it does affect my grown Grandsons weekend hunting.

As much as you can afford is good advice. Also location,location,location. If you can get it a few miles from the nearest 2 lane highway. Think it all out carefully.

The land Im getting is in Rattan OK, 20acers and maybe buy more in the next few years. Something for me and the family to get away on but only two of us hunt . Figured we would just bow hunt since it's 20 acers and each license you buy is $300 for out of state. But I don't have to worry about the land owners telling me that their daughter/son/grand children's has decided to hunt and not I have to leave.

I have 20 acre between College Station and Waco. The best advice I can give you is "make it as attractive to deer as possible". I bought the land 12 years ago, I guess. The first 3 years we saw only a few deer. The 4th year the deer found us. Here are some pics of our success and some we hope to succeed at on 20 acres with 3 stands and lots of patience. PM if you have questions.

Those are some great Pics. 20 acers and three stands seems like the right combination. Way to go on all the work and looks like it paid off. Did you plant a food plot?

Hook n line you are doing good!

The one picture with my son and the 3 point (his first buck) was on a strip of milo. The other big buck he took was in the same strip the next year.

Thanks.

As was said previously, it is LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.

We had 200 acres, but couldn't hunt more than 2 hunters; the deer quality and quantity was poor; hunted only the 200 for 7 seasons. I leased the neighbor's 800 acres on Season 8 of owning our land and we had deer for days and took some really good bucks right off the fence between our leased and owned acreage. Have taken my three biggest bucks within 200 yards of that fenceline. We missed buying deer Mecca by 1/8 of a mile.

Here are the other 2 stands and my favorite chair that's in my popup that is now permanent. I will go and spray it with camp dry /UV protection tomorrow. and then again in September. Makes the last longer. You can see my homemade lean to in the right side of the first pic. I upgraded to a boxblind so my dad (76) doesn't have to climb 15'