Don't hear much about "paper company" leases anymore, but it seems that they were a lot cheaper than private leases.

Do they still exist?

This is true in many cases. Landowners don't want the headache of lease hunters

All it takes is discipline and commitment. So easy a clown can do it lol

I agree 100%. Ours doesn`t need the money either. He ran off the hunters before us because they treated it like they owned it bringing entire family year-round like it was an RV park with a built in moto cross track for grand kids. There is junk (old rotten deer blinds) still spread out over our lease that they just left including a 24' camper and several years of junk around their camp (pathetic). We do our best to act like the guest that we are and only use it from mid-August until mid-January.

I hauled 9 crap deer blinds, and 2 or 3 trashed-out feeders, to the dump and hired the "cabin" razed and hauled off. Pure PWT.

Why the price//value/demand increase? The dirt/rocks/water hasn’t changed. Inflation and/or demand? Why?

In a way, I’m a beneficiary. The junk land I bought 35-40 years ago for almost nothing hasn’t changed much but the value certainly has. Why? Inflation certainly plays a part. But, it’s still only good for recreation. Good for nothing but hunting, shooting, fishing, chunking rocks.

It’s not like a store that you can sell stuff out of. Well, I’m actually loaded with rocks if anybody needed some.

I can’t raise crops or livestock on that POS. No way I could afford to buy it now.

Land is a finite resource that has seen incredible increases in value in the last 30 years. It has far outpaced the inflation value of the dollar. Scarcity breeds demand.

My family bought a 1200 acre, unimproved ranch about an hour and a half south of San Antonio in December of 1994 for $330/acre. If you follow straight inflation, it would be worth about $700/acre today. The actual value is about $4500/acre. And that’s just south Texas brush county. Places you could have bought in the hill country during that same time for $1200/acre are worth $12,000/acre now. All recreational land.

Don’t discount the value of recreation. People see the importance of it and will pay for it. That’s why we have things like sports cars, ski boats, etc. not everything has to have production value to be valuable.


You listed about 3 things in your “good for nothing” argument that people will pay premiums for.

Still think your land is junk ?

I do not miss my lessors at all. Too many challenges.

I gave up looking for a lease years ago and found a wife whose family owns around a 1,000 acres. Win/win.

Now that's using your head for something besides a hat rack.

There’s a fair amount of large properties around here and almost everyone is done leasing. All the above plus treating it like it’s a shooting range, tearing up roads just to do it and the easiest way to not get a lease renewed, tannerite.

Yelp, From a ranching/farm owner perspective it’s good drought insurance or fence money, but it’s not close to same revenue of cattle or farming for vast majority of operations, there are exceptions but with way cattle prices are trending, I wouldn’t # in the landowners cheerios. They could make more money cleaning up pasture with an excavator and increasing stocking units

Having to get around when it's wet is one thing. Rutting all over the place, thinking you're going to find a better way, then not mention a peep to the landowner is a sure way not to be invited back. He won't be back. Yet another "guide" that never...ever...shut up!

TxTrophy, yeah, I think it’s junk land because it’s non productive. Unless it’s toys for kids, I like to look at value when I buy stuff.

BTW, I’m debt free. Raised on a farm/ranch that didn’t raise cows for pets. They had to pay their own way. Same for equipment.

I have to have a vehicle and know that’s a sure thing to wear out and have to be replaced. Not an investment but an out of pocket expense that I can’t depreciate for taxes.

My 133 acres of junk land was paid off many years ago. Since I don’t lease the grazing or hunting, it’s an expense that I accept. It’s been a great investment. I paid $43,500 for it. According to realtors, it will sell for over a million bucks. But, until I convert it to cash, it’s an out of pocket expense that I accept for sanity. My rent houses are doing a little over breaking even. Like the ranch, they have increased in value that I can’t spend.

Due to terrain and vegetation it’s a net, out of pocket, expense every year. Can’t graze it. I could recover some $ by leasing hunting.

It’s about like a non working trophy wife.

I agree...people around Austin area are not even hunters or complete outdoors types. They just want a place to get away to for recreation. Everyone I know wishes they had 10-50 acres for this even if nothing is on it, all grass or all trees. You cannot just go camping at a state park without planning months in advance and you still are pretty close to your neighbors. And with so many people moving around here and traffic so bad, people are finding rural land easier to get to, and away from it all. Being able to work remotely after COVID has also driven prices up. I think 2 hours or less away from a major City or Town prices will continue to climb at a fast rate, while more remote places 3+ hours away will likely climb a little slower. Another thing driving costs up is what was discussed, solar, wind, radio tower leases, and the latest one is data centers near major power sources. Always something especially closer to Cities and infastructure. All of this driving leases up and will prevent new people from getting into the sport.

Along with demand for land, Federal Reserve money printing will continually drive inflation as a whole, and land prices specifically. I don't see the price per acre increases stopping, on the contrary, I see them accelerating.
More money chasing the same amount of land.

Bingo. I was told as a kid to buy land, they are not making anymore of it.

It has production value. That value is in the wildlife and recreational aspect. It may not be the same as a commodity crop or livestock, but it is there.

Comparing real estate to a vehicle is apples to oranges. one is an appreciating asset, the other is a depreciating asset.


One major thing that has changed since you bought your land is the affordability for "average" people who are buying in.

Say you bought it in 1990. $43,500 is the equivalent today to about $104,000. Many working class people could afford a $100k land note with 20% down. But you said your property is valued now at around $1mm. Buyer pool shrinks by a lot in that dollar range. So what's happened with the market and the value of real estate and how it relates to hunting, is that what was once an affordable hunting tract for a middle class family is now unaffordable. Have a high school buddy who's parents bought 50 acres in Colorado county with a nice little 1 bdrm ranch house on it sometime in the early 90s. Don't know what they paid for it, but his dad was retired from a hourly job for Union Pacific and his mom was a vet tech. Normal, every day people. His dad thought real hard about selling when land got to $5k/acre, which would have put about $250k in his pocket. Now that property is worth about $20k/acre or $1mm. So when it was acquired, it was within reach of a working class family as a play place, now it is not.

Now, the working class is buying smaller 20–40-acre tracts in secondary areas because that's what is affordable for their budgets. Hunting isn't something that's at the forefront but just having a place away from the city to hike around, ride a 4 wheeler and shoot a few guns is their motivation for buying.


As landholdings have gotten smaller and value per acre has increased and the demographic of landowners has changed, people are not needing/wanting the lease money to offset operating costs to own these properties. They are keeping the hunting for friends and family or otherwise choosing not to lease at all. I know of tens of thousands of acres that are not leased and really not hunted, simply due to the landowners not wanting the headaches of dealing with it. I've been around plenty of leases that have sold and very few of them really take care of the property like an owner would and when they leave, 99 out of 100 times, they leave a mess that has to be cleaned up. Just not worth the hassle.

The number of leases available will continue to shrink, while the price of what is available will continue to go up. That is going to be the outlook on leases for the foreseeable future

Trophy, great description of what is occurring out there with skyrocketing land prices

What has me concerned is they but 10 acres of land because that's all they can afford and want to shoot their guns like they owned 3 or 4 hundred acres. Really bothers me! Have heard of some areas are passing laws for archery only related to acreage.

It’s not only a safety issue but a nuisance. I like a 50 acre minimum to discharge a centerfire rifle and have placed that restriction on several properties I have sold.

Not trying to limit people fun, but no one wants to hear their neighbor doing mag dumps at dusk.

Those little parcels oftentimes have these issues. Was at a buddies place this morning, a couple years back the neighbor sold and the guy tried to flip it. When that failed he cut it into 20-30 acre tracts and sold it owner finance. Some of the best brush country in south Texas, ruined.

Now it looks like a Colonia with travel trailers camps and shanty shacks every 1/4 mile. He heard 8 shots in one evening coming from there last week. Will be devoid of animals in another year

And that's exactly the message public land hunters want to become mainstream. And the ones who often claim how difficult it can be to take a nice buck on public land, or tout safety concerns, help the cause as well.

Totally agree.I've been fortunate enough that either me my neighbors or us together have bought the places around our farms in the past so pretty secure for now but definitely concerned for my kids and grandkids years down the line. Seeing more and more "colonias" as you stated!

An investor that I met and talked to a long time ago has bought land on 2 sides of me. One is land locked. He doesn’t do anything with them and never visits. Just buys and holds them. It is my understanding that he has 15 to 20 different properties. He is a Vietnamese refugee from the 1960’s.

The rural realtors know about him.He pays cash and offers a substantial discount for a quick sale.