For a 200 acre place 2 hours from DFW airport what hunting scenario would be the most profitable. 2-4 lease hunters set it and forget it. Day hunts? Build high fence and stock with quality game? Would have to build lodging to accompany.

If you own the land outright, just lease to 2 hunters max. Get some play money. Seems there is a HF place around every corner these days. We have one on our fence line that is 500 acres and that is small. Jmo. Of course I have a buddy who HFed 17 acres and we put black buck and axis in there for pets.

200 acres X $6000 per acre = $1,200,000 -------------- if you own the land sell it,, owner financed at 5% for 15 yrs = $9,500 a month === $114,000 a year.
If you are thinking of buying the land,,, take $114,000 a year ( which is what it will cost you) and subtract what you think the hunters will pay,,, you get to pay the rest.
Soooooooo if 2 hunters paid $4000 each, that would put you paying the taxes plus $116,000 per year.

There is no way to justify buying land for hunting income.

But these ungrateful land owners greedily charging so much for leases these days…


Is the $8000 for leasing about the best that can be done?

What is the deer density and buck to doe ratio? What other game on the ranch? Doves, quail, turkey, hogs, etc? What is the cover like?

How did to obtain this land? If you owner finance it you’re taxes are going to suck until it paid off. You can’t 1031 exchange the monthly payments, only the down payment, so every year you’re receiving monthly payments you’re basically receiving capital gains income.

Let’s use the scenario quoted above. Say you obtained the land for $300k. You’re selling at $1.2m. That’s a gain of $900k. If you sold it and the buyer either paid cash or got their own outside financing, then you would owe capital gains taxes on $900k, or 1031 exchange that into another land purchase.

If you owner finance that, and the buyer puts down $500k for a down payment, then you can 1031 exchange the $500k. The rest that you get every month will be taxable at capital gains tax rates. Those rates will eat into your profit. Best you can hope for is they default and you own the land again.

"2 hours from DFW airport"

Location or at least what direction from DFW airport?

Palo Pinto County.


No idea on the current game situation.

Only have experience with north Palo Pinto Co which was exclusively cedar breaks and improved grass pasture, or in other words, a desert for deer and other game. Can’t say much about the rest of the county.

High fence would be a waste of resources and time on a place that small IMO, especially given the already established competition. Unless you have consistent trophy quality game and above average lodging I don’t see you being able to call for premium lease prices on a small unknown hunting quality piece of land. Too many other quality places that distance from DFW. Price what you will, get one or two non headache hunters and enjoy the check

Any water, lakes, ponds, Brazos river? Is PK nearby? Anything interesting about the lay of the land? Near the new WMA?

Being that close to DFW, maybe you could put a couple cabins or tiny houses on it, a couple camper pads with hookups, and do the airbnb sort of thing. Without doing a hunting operation, you could just allow guests to hunt if they want, ride atvs, rockhound and arrowhead hunt, watch nature, etc. Especially if it is in close driving distance to one of the lakes. But if it is just flat barren land or all cedar, that probably would not work.

At $40 an acre that is extremely high priced for that area. Probably the most expensive.. We pay $11 an acre in the general area. There isn't a mature buck behind every tree. 200 acres there is only enough for 1 hunter out west generally depending on cover and surrounding ranches.

200 acres is tiny to consider for a commercial operation in that part of the state. I'm not a HF guy, but if I were, I would not pay to hunt a tiny property like that.

On 200 acres you will have to do all the above and put and take bird hunts(quail, chucker, pheasants etc)

Now another thing to consider instead of just selling hunts think about very few hunts and selling top end animals to auctions. Get a couple kudu’s etc.

You might make some money for 1 or 2 years selling hunts on 200 acres, but by year 3 and beyond you will lose money (because there won't be much to shoot at anymore)
You should just buy a fully loaded BOAT and have FUN

We just bought almost 200 acres and it is for me and our select friends to hunt. We don't shoot very much at all. We bought to manage and have FUN
We did not kill a deer on it this year (and yes, we have decent bucks, but we are letting them age to 5.5+, which means our neighbors may whack em at 4.5, but thats ok because we are giving them a chance)

We will are trapping raccoons, coyotes and hogs + feeding the deer 3x what most would spend to feed on 200 acres (protein, food plots and corn)

Anyways, 200 acres is not near enough land to make a net profit selling deer/hog/bird hunts. ***most Ranches don't make money regardless of land size. They try to make enough money to maybe break even.

Good luck with it.

I now own 200 Acres close by in Stephens Cty and I'm surrounded by a large well managed ranch, that said we aim to take 1 mature deer per year off this place. This year we took 2 management bucks only. That much land sure doesn't justify many mature deer.

High fence, raise Axis, sell massive rack hunts, and sell off the others for meat..... if you want to keep the land. It's going to be hard to keep small tracts within 1.5 to 2 hours of the metrolplex for long;

I know I know squat but here it is. On 200 acres to HF it and do the other improvements needed for a hunting business there is no way to raise say Axis as stated about and ever return a profit. For one there is not enough acres so a complete animal feeding program would have to be done. That being said to get one to "massive rack size" would not be profitable unless you had more land and would not have to feed completely. There have been a couple of people anound here that have tried it with Fallow. Cutting off antlers at a certain stage for the Chinese and butchering others for commercial meat selling. Neither are still in business. Besides the more you have to mess with animals the more help you are going to need. The only way I can see ever getting to the profitable stage is "put and take". You are letting someone else do the hard work. Even then there are way too many hunting organizations around with established credentials that you have to compete with. I raise Nubian Ibex. I do not especially like messing with hunters so I sell mine to other outfitters or hunting organizations and let them do the hunting part. They realize that it is more profitable for them to do it that way as opposed to raising the Ibex their selves. Also there seems to be a lot of opposition to hunting HF. So what do you think would be the reaction to hunting 200 acres HF? People get bad mouthed even if it is 2000 acres HF. But whatever you decide to do or not do good luck.

200 acres you would be far better off catering to the horse people.

I live in Palo Pinto County on not much more than what you are talking about (300 acres). I hope you already own the land because it has probably gone up since you started this post. Land prices here have skyrocketed, they just broke ground on a 450 house subdivision outside of Mineral Wells. People are moving out here to get out of the city at an insane rate. The City of MW just broke a record for how many meters they approved in a 3 month span. Next door property was just sold to a California guy and one behind me sold recently to a Dallas guy. Both sold for crazy amounts.

You need to get farther away from DFW IMO, land is just too high here now to turn any kind of profit from it. Land is high everywhere but go a little further West (Eastland, Erath, Callahan) and you can get it a hell of alot cheaper than it is here.