I haven’t used a feeder on my place (365 acres in east TX) for years. Finally dawned on me just how much it was holding hogs on the place. Now it’s food plots, hunting trails, mast trees, funnels, etc. Frankly, I much prefer it without feeders, as it is a much better hunting experience. I doubt I will ever hunt over a feeder again. I am surrounded by National Forest with only one private neighbor which helps.

East Texas feeders probably help hunters the least. IME sometimes deer eat at them often times they don’t.

Move west where it’s drier it can certainly help but it’s not a guarantee. Where I live there are smaller tracts of land which combined make up some fair land holdings where there is no hunting pressure nor feeders. Deer just do the normal deer thing and come out and feed on the edges of fields and roads in pretty good numbers. Hunting would still not be very hard.

I agree that east TX is probably least conducive to feeders. On my place I almost never saw a mature deer come to a feeder, but the hope was that one would come to check out the does or follow a hot doe as she came to eat. I’m pretty sure the smartest bucks avoided them like the plague because they associated them with hunting. I have watched mature deer eating out of my food plot. It’s not a regular thing, but it does happen. Most big deer at my place are killed cruising or chasing a doe.

Our families hunted in central Texas from the mid-50s through the 90s. Like most everyone else, we hunted over feeders the entire time for the most part, with an occasional drive or stillhunt thrown in.

Saw a homemade, laminated "looking for deer lease" sign on the window at the local hardware store yesterday. Never seen one like it, it had a weird area code listed for the phone number so wife looked it up. Kansas City....

Yes ban bait it will turn into food plots. Same difference. I think it would be a real bad idea to ban bait in Texas for sure.

East Texas would probably be ok. It is probably the richest/most dense habitat. If it were not for all the poachers in East Texas it would be amazing, haha.

Yes, corn feeders are the exact reason the high demand for leases. I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the population boom of Texas and couple that with the demand of outside activities since the China flu...I'm sure it's corn feeders.

How can anyone believe this dribble? Y'all are being WAY to nice to our resident troll and flag disposal expert.

[quote=Judd]Yes, corn feeders are the exact reason the high demand for leases. I'm sure it has NOTHING to do with the population boom of Texas and couple that with the demand of outside activities since the China flu...I'm sure it's corn feeders.

I’m not blaming feeders for the cost of a deer lease. Just pointing something else out, and probably contributing to the derailment of the thread. Sorry about that. The very specific point I’m trying to make is putting out feeders in Texas is not giving you some type of advantage over every other piece of property in the state. It’s not like any other place.

Missouri on the other hand, is already loaded with soybean fields and corn fields but feeders are not allowed. So you better plant something, or have a place in the edge of a dense forest or something. Or just hunt the public.

In some areas the private land deer in the Midwest have more hunting pressure than the public. People still rather hunt private so they can use their ATV’s, etc. Its crazy.

A little over 300 acres next to me has been divided up and sold. No more leasing there. X amount of hunters wanting to lease and X amount of used to be leased places off the market. What do you think that equals? Right Higher cost to lease the remaining places.

There it is. Supply and demand, most modern families don’t hunt. As people pass on and land is inherited it’s mostly sold and subdivided.

Fixed your quote...my comments were not directed at you at all. Thought it was pretty obvious who I was talking about.

Corn feeders, yep that's why there is such a high demand for leases...I'm still

Mybad

If that landowner willfully pays prices for day to day things far exceeding what he did 30 years ago, he shouldn't be surprised at all about lease fees increasing, if the rules of baiting haven't changed. To your question around whether I would pay the same if no baiting were allowed...................I probably would, considering what I lay out for feed in a year. My strategy would need to change, I'd likely see fewer animals but I'd be paying considerably less without the feed / feeder maintenance expenses, extra trips during the year to add feed, cleaning feed pens, etc.

You have high demand for leases, and high costs, because there is so little public land in Texas.

It is to bad that deer can not live unless they are eating under or from a feeder. Stupid deer will forget how to eat once they are trained to eating from a feeder.

It has nothing to do with better quality of animals or management on private land either....

I live in Rhode Island and have access to a 220 acre family owned property in Bandera. Around home I hunt on private property in RI and state owned land in MA and RI. Depending on zones in RI and MA I can shoot up to six deer in RI and two in MA. I am retired and hunt a lot. If I wanted I could limit out almost every year but I am picky and have a chance at shooting a buck in low 130s every year. On a few occasions I have seen deer, a long way off, that clearly were over 140.

Some of my hunting spots are less than a 10 minute drive. Others no more than an hour.

In TX siting in a blind over a feeder is fun and shooting hogs is an exotic experience but it amazes me what you folks have to pay to hunt.

I hunt a lot of public in many states, including Texas and public a
Land doesn't affect lease prices, quality(animal and experience) affects lease prices.

If public land affected private land that much, you wouldnt find $15k plus private land elk, mulie deer and even pronghorn hunts across the west.

In Texas it is more about supply and demand for quality hunting spots. Quality is a self definition of what I or you or we would expect from a place. Texas population is 29.2 million(that are legally here and probably way low at this very time) so even with low % of that being hunters it puts a large strain on hunting land. Many places are over hunted to keep prices down. You pay for what you get and what you want from a lease. The more it offers the more it cost to own and maintain that type ranch or farm. Texans like to hunt and it has been like that for as long as I have been alive. It is a game rich state that offers lengthy hunting season and bag limits. First day of archery till the end of late doe/spike season....almost 4 months in many places. MLD is 5 months. Many landowners are land rich and cash poor. Hunting leases saved many a family ranch or farm over the past 40 yrs. They make more from hunting leases than they do from livestock many years. It keeps them from selling out or subdividing land off to sell just to survive. The closer to a metro armpit city the higher the leases will be for no very good hunting. They want to be closer to home and still have a place to just hunt and get outdoors. Landowners have to repair, replace or build areas/items/buildings/roads/etc with the long season use of a ranch. Road maintenance alone is expensive. Taxes, insurance, water wells, fences, etc all factor into the landowners year and hunters will use some or all of those factors. Same goes for pubic land...you pay to use it just not directly to the state/government who owns the land...you pay in taxes and license fees. We all pay for that use even if we still own private land and never set foot on public land.

I used to let people hunt on my place (free) but one bad apple screwed it up for the rest.

Absolutely, the law of supply and demand is strongly tilted towards Texas landowners. However, I remain convinced that if baiting were not legal, there would be a significant drop in demand from those hunters willing to pay top dollar.

This was not meant to be an anti-baiting discussion but simply an attempt to bring into question if baiting helps drive up prices.

Define "baiting"? Deer still eat whether it be acorns, forbs, mast crops, browse, natural mineral licks, farm crops, etc. What about water and hunting over it? What about hunting the rut? You want to stop that also? What about hunting a grain field planted for harvest or small grain field planted for livestock? So you going to ask a LO to stop or remove all of those from the equation? Deer are going to be deer and not that hard to figure out how to hunt them in a natural setting or man made one. Deer are still going to eat and drink every day from the day they are born till the day they die. All it takes is common sense, time in the field and effort to hunt deer. How you choose to hunt is up to you. There are still many hunters who hunt without aid of food plots(feeder in a bag), ag crops or feeders.

You bring up a good point. If the same laws were applied to deer that are currently applied to migratory game birds, who knows how far the price of the average deer lease might drop.

When you think about it, such a change could make many private leases only slightly more attractive for hunting than public land. No question the ones who put feeders next to their neighbor's fence sure wouldn't like it.

Private leases will always be in high demand and pricey. Better management, controlled pressure and no competition inside the fence. Your ranch/lease -your rules....pretty simple. Public land you as a hunter control nothing but whether you shoot or pass...if it ever got to that point at all. Leases would not drop in price. To many hunters for the amount of acreage available..period.

You mean like flooding a 280 Bushell an acre corn field just to hunt ducks? So essentially a $1300 plus an acre lease.......

Short of a widespread CWD outbreak, it's a question where we'll never know the answer. But then, a much smaller outbreak that creates rules changes at the county level would seem far more likely.