We all know and have experienced escalating hunting lease prices over the past 3 decades or so; especially in last decade plus. With rural property values now escalating 20%+ annually, what impacts do you think this will have on TX hunting lease prices, in short, 1-3 years and longer term, 3-10 years? What avg. price per gun will be "inelastic" economically speaking in the marketplace? Curious as to what TX hunters think on how these impacts may play out.

Lease prices have never come down. I can't see them following the steep curve of land values this past year, but yes they are going to jump.

Yelp, lease prices are operational offsetting funds for most Land owners. Inflation effects all of this also. So as operational costs go up so will lease prices

What may end up happening is that with increasing land/lease costs and the shrinking dollar (spendable income due to inflation) some leases may have to rethink their 1 gun/x number of acres philosophy. Where a large 10,000 acre lease in south or west Texas may only have 10 members (1 per 1,000 acres) at $5,000 a pop may have to go to 12 or even 15 members to be able to afford that particular lease. Of course my opinion has always been that if you can afford $5,000 annually to be on a deer lease another $500-$1000 is probably no big deal.

I will follow up my previous post with this- I got into leasing timber company land because it was the "cheapest" way to hunt that I could find. When I would lease a property I would figure out what I could afford to pay and use that as my base to figure number of hunters that would work out to. My goal was to provide affordable hunting for those like me that live payday to payday. Many on here (and especially on TBH) will say that I have too many hunters on my leases. My question to them is do they disagree with the numbers due to safety or the fact you may all be hunting the same deer. The answer would be, IMHO, that unless you are leasing more than say 1500 acres we are all hunting the same deer. And as far as safety...in east Texas you couldn't shoot the hunter in the next spot over if you tried. Also, I always ask my staying members when one decides to leave if they want to absorb the cost and not fill or refill the spot- they always say refill the spot.

Most landowners know the value of well managed land and leases, I wouldn’t expect spots to increase.

What I see happening especially around here is that the number of places that were leased is going down due to the fact that large tracts of land are being subdivided. A couple of places that border me have sold and divided into 20 acres. Now about half of those have put up feeders and are hunting them. Now the number of deer in that original property has been reduced significantly. So I would imagine supply and demand for leases will go up as well as the price.

With the jump in land prices, I think a lot of the families of old family places are deciding it's time to come together and cash out. Sometimes the place is subdivided, sometimes it isn't. Either way, I think the number of places available for lease is shrinking.

And if any LO is thinking about selling, and wants to defer capital gains with a 1031 and buy another place, I'd pull that trigger in the next few months. I don't think they could get it done before mid-terms, but Joe's handlers want to cap that at $1/2M.

Well how do you think they are gonna pay for that student loan forgiveness?

For many the price of ranch land is too tempting to pass up. If you are on inherited or cheaply bought land, you can either cash out or lease out for a nominal fee comparative to the land value. Many of that times it’s just enough to offset taxes and operation costs. End users are not real keen on allowing a traditional lease situation on land they just spent a premium on to purchase,but may lease to outfitters short term to offset some cost.

The one caveat is people buying land solely as an investment ( and there are a lot ) and have no active interest in the day to day activities of the ranch. They are the most likely to continue to lease and/or negotiate new leases.


But the fact is that a lot of lease hunters are not respectful of property and trash out the land and Mis-manage the resource and the landowners just don’t want the headache. I know of probably tens of thousands of acres of unhunted land that the owners just don’t want the headache of dealing with annual lease hunters.


I see the evolution of most lease hunting going away from the typical season type leases and moving towards properties being leased to outfitters who they can trust and package hunts taking their place.

I'm not getting any less annoyed when I stop to pick up an old Bud Light or Miller Lite can. I'll be picking them up the rest of my life. What a bunch of slobs. I have yet to tackle the little dump behind the house. It's mostly old Bic lighters and Reddi Whip cans. But that's from the previous owner. PWT.

I personally think the casual minded ranch owners or recent inheritees of ranch land that don't want to be highly involved in ranching will start to sell more ranchland, thus decreasing the supply of hunting lease land. For those not selling and still interested in leasing, I think it's inevitable that those leasing prices will continue to rise in the near future and likely at escalating rates.
Nice to own a little land right now for this and other reasons.

Another thing to consider, is that just because land ceases to be leased, doesn’t mean it’s being hunted any less.

Friends, clients, guests take the place of paid lease hunters in most cases.

I think some might say “enough” and drop their lease. Could open up some great opportunities for those willing to pay.

I actually think the land, especially around here is getting hunted more. One of the places next to me was around 150 acres. At one time it was leased to 2 hunters. Now that same place is divided into 6. There are 3 of the 6 places that I know of for sure that hunt now. Since season ended this year I have only seen deer once while driving by it. They seem to have taken the deer population down considerably.

Supply and demand = higher prices regardless of inflation…..until there are more leases than hunters the price doesn’t drop…

With the heavy rise in land values/taxes/expenses/inflation, I expect leasing should get more expensive.

However, salaries aren’t rising at the same rate and I think we will have an interesting dilemma for both parties.

People freak out when they find out we hunt four people on 150acres. What they don't realize is in the last 10yrs we've averaged 2 deer per year killed off the place. That's not due to a lack of opportunity either. So hunters per acre doesn't always tell the story. A couple of them hunt opening and thanksgiving weekends, so that helps a lot as well. Now if everyone is trying to tag out every year, or all of us start showing up every weekend, there's no freaking way a ratio like ours is practical. The worst ratio I ever hunted on a lease was a hunter per 150acres in the hill country, and we didn't ever feel crowded. But in those scenarios the average (whatever it was) was about the same per hunter on our lease, the next place, the next, and pretty much for a several mile radius. So somebody else was most likely seeing/hunting the same deer we were anyway, we just might not know it.

Your hunting 4 shooters on 150 acres, but the worst ratio you’ve hunted was 1 hunter per 150, in the hill country, that has the highest deer density in the state. That makes absolutely zero sense!

When we were kids we hunted 100 acres in east Texas that about 5 of us hunted. We didnt all get a deer every year but we dang sure all tried. From what understand that was a typical scenario for the area.

I think most years 1-2 bucks got taken. This was before AR’s