I'm negotiating to buy this place. This is going to be a weird one. 300 acres 30 miles south of Childress.
240 acres of wheat, 60 acres of canyon running through the middle of wheat field.
800 yards north of the 30,000-acre Matador Wildlife Refuge.
Rancher was only one to hunt and 1 mule deer killed there every year for last 7 years, however not all met
the 20" rule as that did not go into effect until a couple of years ago. See photos.
4 bedroom, three bath house. I will be there and cook hot breakfast and
steak dinner. Lunch if you come in will be sandwiches.
I am going to charge $100 per day to stay in the house and get food. Or if you choose,
you could stay in Childress on your own.
How much should I charge to hunt such a small place. I want two
hunters for first 5 days of mule deer season, The way the place is laid out would hunt
three safely but only want two. Will hunt from blinds over feeders and wheat field.
The two by two was killed last year.

Mr. T,

That is a tough one, especially since the place is small and as you know, muley's migrate so much. I would look at a daily flat charge with a kill fee, based on the size of the buck.

In terms of the numbers, let me think on that some more.

4W

The mule buck will have to be a decent size one since the spread has to be 20" now.
There are white tails there also, most around 125-140. Maybe they could
take a mule or whitetail. Their choice.

Short 2 week season, I’d do a sliding scale

2k fee(since food and lodging)
Plus Trophy fee of:
130-140: 500 if mature 2k if under 5
140-150: 1000
150-160:1500
160-170:2000
170+: 2500

$100.00 per day for food & lodging is to cheap, you need to be at $250.00 per day.
What about game care, you dressing/skinning, cold storage?
Don't forget to have them sign a waver so they don't own your ranch.

Got a buddy that has a 3500 acre lease in that area. He told me that he sees MD, but very rare to see a legal one. Now that's his lease, maybe different on your place.

Bobo is on the right track here. You’re just east of being in good consistent mule deer country. I’ve managed a lease within a few miles of you as well as outfitting for mule deer 20+ years on the other side of Palo Duro Canyon from you. PM me if you want to chat on the phone. Too many questions to do it effectively through posts.

Matador used to consistently crank out monsters. I can't afford it but if you could get them hitting feeders (corn, protein or cotton seed), you could offer Bowhunting too.

I plan on putting up at least three feeders in addition to protein, cotton seed and mineral blocks.
Going to do my best to draw them out of the MWA. The rancher said that he did nothing and
just shot them in the wheat fields. So hopefully with feeding I can get more and maybe bigger.
The 800 yards between me and the MWA is all canyons and draws. I'm the closest wheat field.

Personally, I would lease to one individual for the MD season. That small of a place can easily be overhunted quick. That's part of the reason most PH counties now have the 20" rule

I would advise against this purchase. Not enough acres to sustain shooting bucks every year that make the minimum spread.

This season is short......and this country can get mundane and ugly in the summer especially with the temps and wind blowing that dust around.....you could find yourself sitting on it for a while if you needed a relatively quick sale IMO....I've been hunting this type of country for about 18 years now so I have a perspective based on experience......

Be prepared to deal with dissatisfaction.

Thank you. Kershen can attest to this, most management Mulie deer hunts start at 4k and most 170+ hunts start at 7k min and I’ve seen 10k.

I wouldn’t try to outfit it, I would sell it as a season lease for one, with you onsite maybe helping.

Problem is harvest potential is limited due to property size and features

Hunt it yourself the 1st year and get a better feel for what it is worth.

Look further west for more mule deer,Wayside area is good

I like this idea a lot....

The 20" rule on small property with short season could be problematic for 5 day lease. Best option is $250 per day for food/lodging and as suggested a sliding kill fee scale. I agree probably be better to find 1-2 person for the 2 week season lease. If you purchase, are you going to continue to plant the wheat or hire it planted? Hunted 5 miles S of Turkey a few years before AR and very occaisionally would see a real good MD traveling Wind River/canyons had good WT in some parts of 3000ac lease. Wheat fields always held deer

You don’t even want to know what folks might pay to lease a 300 acre place for just whitetails where I live, with only a 10 day gun deer season. But I live in the land of giants. I think you might be surprised what you can earn.

As others have said, You probably should hunt it yourself for the first year and set out a bunch of trail cams to see firsthand what's out there and where/how they move. That way you can gain some knowledge to share with your clients to give them a better chance at a successful hunt.

Your success on the place if you are leasing out for mule deer will be mostly dependent on how good the stand of wheat. If you or your rancher plants and gets a good green stand come up and stay up, you will have Muley success. But if you don’t get the rains, or what is way more common in that country, you get a good rain, grain germinates and greens up, but then it gets freakishly hot and dry a few weeks to a month and burns it up brown and you have no grain.
Relying on dry land wheat for ultimate success is a roll of the dice many years. I’ve hunted that country long enough to know.

This is true. Very true.

I would encourage you, Mr. T, and anyone else looking to lease country as lessee or lessor, to look at it from the standpoint of - what can the resource produce on a sustainable basis? Not - how much money can I get for it.

For some perspective, consider this - If all 3 hunters are successful, and kill a 20" mule deer, which won't happen, but let's say it did. That would be 1 mule deer buck out of 100 acres. So if the Matador WMA (28,000 ac) followed that mindset, they would kill 280 bucks per year. Actually, I shouldn't say per year, because they would be totally out of bucks before the end of year 2 without any kind of antler restriction. They draw 12 mule deer archery tags and 8 mule deer either sex tags. That's a total of 20 bucks IF everyone killed a buck, but success rate is less than 50%.

See what I mean?

Would definitely be interested in talking with you about this. Also interested in your cabin Pagosa. I can be reached at 214-208-5649.

If I were you, I would also provide a sliding scale on the number of mule deer killed and go with a smaller price for any hunter that followed a hunter that killed a deer First hunter kills a deer, the 2nd hunter as does the third hunter pay less than the first hunter and I would let the hunters know that. That way they know that the more deer killed, that you are taking care of their chances being lower. Don't really understand anyone saying that an acre or 300 acres could be overhunted. If you only hunt 300 acres of a 3000 acre place, are you overhunting it if you sit there 1/2 the time? Probably not. Deer will adjust their movement to numbers of hunters, but I don't think necessarily a single hunter hunting on 300 acres is going to run a number of deer off. If you hunted 5 hunters to 300 acres, you are overhunting it, But what about the about the single hunter that hunts a 300 acre pasture the entire season? Hunt the wind, how you leave the blind, and how and where you enter the blind to take care of not overhunting the place. Season is only 2 weeks long and depending on the weather, the deer may be pouring into the field, or barely using it and the same with the feeders.

Benbob, I think when most people talk about "too many hunters" they are NOT talking about the pressure that may cause deer to MOVE AWAY. Instead its the extra hunters/pressure that KILLS too many deer. Especially as relates to a property being able to sustain a certain number of deer(especially Trophies.)

agree with Freerange ... the place I have out SW from Ozona used to be a corporate lease 20+ years ago, where they took clients, lots of clients. over time, the place was pretty much shot out completely. The corporate people realized it and left to find somewhere else with a game rich environment to do the same time likely. It took years to begin to start to recover. regardless of the size of a ranch, it can only sustain so many deer being taken over a certain amount of time to where the population can remain it's size.

I guess I would be of the opposite opinion in that after the first MD was taken, the price would go up considerably to try to help maintain the population for the area. This would discourage too many deer being taken unless there was really deep pockets.