old self made man that i worked for owned fairly good size ranches locally, but hunted the calahan for many years, he always said never let the landowner see a big deer,and never talk much about where you hunt or what you pay, pretty smart guy.

Loose lips sink ships

I own my own small 133 acre place North of Fort Worth. The hunters are young men that I’ve known all their life. One of their wives also hunt. I don’t charge them. They pass on legal but immature deer. The wife took a nice buck last year. My grandson also hunts some but rarely shoots.

The nice thing is that they look around for things that need to be done that the old guy doesn’t get done.

Probably will sell the place soon. Arthritis kicking my butt and limits what I can do. Having to pay someone to build fence. I hate that.

^^^ I agree with this. Pros and cons of owning vs leasing for hunting has been talked to death on here many times and its off topic on this thread.

Turkeyhunter, with all due respect, I dont know how this is a legitimate question. I feel I am a very ethical person but I see no issue with either of your examples being unethical. This seems proven out because almost everyone has agreed. As others have said, theres a more kindly way to handle it but bottom line its a business deal. Certainly, it may be a bad business deal but not an unethical one.
I guess if I knew the thread you referred to it would shed some light on why its thread worthy.

How about the land owners expectations? That annual lease goes 2 ways. There is nothing binding on the hunters to come back the next year.

Currently, inflation is hitting both parties to the business deal. The landowner is getting a hefty tax increase due to land values increasing. The customer is also getting hammered by everyday expenses.

Unfortunately for hunters, some may disagree, but today’s hunting is sport hunting...not subsistence hunting. Money talks and bs keeps walking. Owners lease their land because they want the money, if they didn’t want it they’d let their buddies nephew from church hunt for free like they used to. Essentially for the most part the lease will end up with the highest bidder, owner may regret it later or he may not care. It’s simple business ethics at the end of the day, as that’s what it’s become

X100

It's really a discussion topic in the form of a couple of questions. The topic is based on observations of the THF over the years.

As pappy once said : The more money ya have the more Freedom ya have.
Ethic's has nothing ta do with it.

First got ta Texas, (83), twas first, heard of deer leases. Everyone was doing it.
Had small place ta hunt. In-laws hunted a 1,100acer lease, it had few hogs on it
With 24-7-365 hog hunting, got on it, $200.00 yr round.
Wife found small camper, we did tent camping @ camp grounds, family thing.
i had slept in jungle hamic/ army cot on river fishing/frog gigging.
We were young couple, bought house ta move, with part of 401 plan @ foundry.
Had ta redo whole house. Money was tight.
Price of Gov. Food Stamp was cheap, family outings
We went ta a credit adviser. (have mentioned this first year on this forum,
in several discussions about leasing). Gave info about money spent,
building materials for house, insurance, car/truck payments & such. They asked anything else ?
Told them about the deer lease.
Quote: was told then, Leasing was a bad thing.
Yet it was a family outing, put on the & freezer.
Leasing started getting too expensive. Seen hunters loose lease ta highest bidder.
Several friends started Leasing in other states. So decided ta hunt area lived.
Then a WMA opened up just down the road.
That's about whin got on this forum,looking for people who wanted ta do some hog hunts.
Most know the rest of the story.

Up here hunting has changed, have 4 different areas can hunt. Alot of the old abandoned
farm places been bought up by people from cities, for hunting camps.
Ya see box stands (store bought) going up all over. Still hunt in tree stands, ground.
4 of us, 80 year young mom still goes sits & takes deer. We get together do own processing.

Hunting has changed. Get alot of slack from some on here.
just a simple post, grammer may not be best.
Best wish's ta all on hunting adventures, stay safe.

Everything, including leasing a place out from under someone else, has been talked to death on here many times. It seems relevant because owning your own place eliminates the issue brought up in the OP.

A bit of a stretch, but fair enough.

It's crazy what a good steak can get you

Our landowner has said I have been offered double what y'all pay and I have guys ready to pay more. That was 20 years ago and we are still there. We have a great relationship. Luckily no guests have tried anything slick.

"A good steak" = A damn good steak and taters every weekend that we are there

This pretty much sums it up

There are LO out there who value leasors who take care of their property and it trumps $$ - the other thing not mentioned here. If you find a great lease do a 5 year lease with some increases in price.

As a landowner, if i marginally unhappy with current lessors would take the bump to see them go, if I was happy with them, would sit down with them and seek small bump in price to cover increase in taxes.

I just stumbled onto this. Interesting thread. My perspective may be a little different than most here. From a business perspective, leasing the hunting rights on property is small potatoes and has a very small impact on revenue/acre generated. With that in mind, most landowners that lease hunting rights in the form of an annual hunting lease agreement do so because they like being able to share what they have, without impacting their business decisions regarding their property. With that in mind, it does not take most landowners long to realize, most lessees do not respect their property, the resources on the property, or the landowner. When a landowner finds a good group of lessees he most usually prefers continuing to lease to a known entity. If the landowner is entertaining offers from other groups to lease to, it is most often an indication the landowner is dissatisfied with the group he is currently leasing to. Prime example: spent $28,000 putting roads back together on a place the hunters tore the hell out of two years ago. Didn’t waste any time that would take me away from profitable endeavors talking to them about it. When the lease term expired they were informed their lease would not be renewed and it was leased to someone else. Former lessor appeared oblivious as to why it did not work out.
As someone who leases out a good bit of property to hunters: in my opinion the guy who tries to slip in and under cut a group to lease a property out from under them is unscrupulous. If he has no problem kicking the current lessors in the nuts, he will not have a problem with kicking the landowner in the nuts either.

we have had an awesome lease for going on 16 years. Two years ago someone came in from the outside and offered big money to take over - the LO took it.

turns out the new guy was clueless and had a horrible season (lots of issues) - LO came back and let us take the lease back over.

I think the LO realized how well we took care of their property and followed all of the rules and knew we were the right guys for being on his property -

Excellent feedback that also points to why it can be so difficult to join a "good" hunting lease. The current members understand fully what's at stake and the risk when any newcomer joins the lease, no matter how well someone claims to know them.

We picked up a lease about 20 years ago (2004). A guy that claimed to be an outfitter had the place, sold a few hunts to out of staters but gave it up and we leased it from a guy that had it leased (grazing and hunting) from the owner. We had it 2 years and then he leased it back out from under us from the landowner who was out of state. We got our stuff off and 2 months later he called and wanted to know if we wanted to lease it back from him. I gave him a big F no without asking for any details. In 2017 I leased our place that we hunt now that is about 4.5 miles north of it for less money and a better buck to doe ratio.

SMH

Been hunting a long time, been in the business 20+ years... sadly I've seen way more unethical or sneaky hunters, than landowners. The landowners I deal with are fantastic, and NONE, in 20+ years have upped the lease amount, while an existing group is in place. Haven't even asked. When it comes open then sure it's time to adjust to the market supply and demand, but many still don't.