I was just wondering who all has lost their place to hunt due to the mighty dollar or other issues?
We have had it happen twice to my hunting party. I grew up on a lease in Mason, hunted there for 18 yrs. The owner died & his kids leased it to other hunters for more money.
For the past 4 yrs. we had been in Hamilton, great place. We had been managing the land & doing what we told the landowner we would do. The place was sold to some city slicker with more money than brains and was told we had the place for 2 more years then we would see what could be worked out. 2 yrs turned into 0 yrs. He leased it out from under us to co-workers for $300 more a gun.
It just burns me up that people can & will do honest hunters the way they do. The younger generations are going to sufer because of the money grubbing people that are inheirting land or the ones that can afford to buy the land in hunting areas. One thing is for sure is they ain't making no more land, what we have now is all there will be.

Here let me get it!

my condolances. that is alway heartbreaking to hear. i never had that happen but it might and i've helped move more than one friend off their lease for the same reason

Hey dgilbert! Just what does that mean? Explain yourself!

A group of us lost a lease b/c a rancher/farmer who paid tons less than us in lease fees didn't like a couple of the guys out there. He was new to ranching the place and we had been there for five or six years at that time. The land is in trust and the rancher calls the shots while leasing it for little of nothing. After making a change, he stuck it to the new guys. Their paying way higher than the average for that area. Their paying for the rancher to lease the land and he now also has a fat wallet every year around July or Aug.

There's one certainty in leasing. At some point you will lose your lease.

the sad truth spoken again. the only way to fix this problem is to buy yourself a place.

Easier said than done. Would love to but the prices they want for just decent area is rediculous.

That's exactly what I did!!

Yep, we've been thru the same thing, and might go thru it again, but we sure hope not.

We used to hunt in Coryell Co... The landowner passed away at 80+ years old after a Rattlesnake bite. His Son, a recluse from Wyoming, took the place over and wintered there. We were told the place looked great and there would not be a problem for us to hunt there. The very next year, we were informed he was going to go with a bowhunting only policy, and the price would increase 50% per gun. Now we did have a good deal with his dad but 50% was just too much. So we left.

The next year we joined a Lease in Concho Co... After hunting one season we were told our price was going to increase 30%.. I said OK, but I want a 5 year contract. Well, they wouldn't do that, I wonder why.

So we are now on a great lease in San Saba Co. and have a great landowner, whom we deal with directly, and pay a decent price. The only problem we see is that the landowner is 80+ and we hope (for multiple reasons) that we won't have to move again for a good long while. But, like we've heard before, we are well liked by the Son-in-law who will have control when it does change hands. But money IS money..



Hope you find a new place and it's even better than the one you left.


Jay

I appreciate your response.

PM sent.

Well, you are not alone. I have heard alot of the same issues on this forum as well as from friends etc including myself.

Our Lease or old lease was broken because the land owner wanted his friends and clients to be able to hunt it along with us. We were managing it and only harvested 3 bucks in the 2 years we were on it and taking about 15 does. Anyway, he offered us a lease that started Oct 1st and ended on November 10th for the same money. Then he and his buddies would pop a cap in anything that walked by. We said no thanks and then screwed him out of $500,000.00 here recently (Mitigation Credits for Wetland Areas). We got even with him so maybe he will think twice the next time he screws somebody.

sorry about your lost. it is getting to the point if you do not own land it is hard to find a place to hunt at a decent price. in the next 10 years it is going to very hard if not impossible for the working man to have a place to hunt.

Just a comment, not that a landowner went up, is the only reason. How about a spouse losing their job, knocking down 60K or better, and now has a job that pay's half as much. Who can afford the prices of a lease in Texas, given those circumstances. There are 2 sides to every coin.

It's not always the landowner that dictates what we can do.


JMHO

Spanky

With all due repect to the landowners who read this Forum...I've been screwed out of more leases more ways than I ever knew existed. Money is ALWAYS or at least 99% of the time the root of it.
If you lease a hunting pasture in this state YOU WILL GET JERKED AROUND MORE YEARS THAN NOT SO JUST PLAN ON IT.
I have eaten dinner at a leaseholders home and made friends with his family, done business favors for them...and had a lease taken out from under me for another $300 a gun...I've had a leaseholder try and lease to another party with no notice to us, cashing the deposit check...and trying to represent our blinds and feeders as going with the property yadda yadda yadda.
Go find a lease, write a contract and have it properly signed and witnessed, and file it as an official record with the County Courthouse. Make known to the local sherrif that you and whoever else are driving what vehicles with what license plate #s and have a copy of the properly executed lease available to let him read or keep...and make him note that there are not supposed to be anyone else on the property - except as noted like oil co wokers and so on - then get name of the regualr oil crew workers who service the pasture and what they drive and be sure to talk to their supervisor about the pasture being under a hunting lease and that no hunting is allowed from their trucks yadda yadda ...so many ways to get screwed I can't begin to cover them all here...and the landowner will blame the hunters for the trash, gates left open, cattle hurt when you can prove you were in New York City!!! and throw you off the lease BTDT too!!! when his own family was the ones doing the damage. On big leases you have to be careful with the unknown characters on the General Lease Agreement who will get you in trouble with the law for shooting cows and blaming you or poaching on your pasture at night so the GW is all over the landowner so you will get kincked off because you complained to the Lease manage about the 3-4 times more than the Lease Agreement allowed for family members to ride all over creation on their 4 wheelers and shoot up the water tnaks and pump jacks as well take 4 times more deer than they were allowed becuase was just bobbyjoe bubba having a good time and didn't really mean no harm so what are you so bent about??? Yadda yadda. BTDTHIS with all of these things. So I hunt as a guest, on public land, pay day rates, and will begin to hunt out of state - out of the country more and more or I don't hunt.
Your best friend in a lease is the landowner ...and his lawyer...IF you get a properly executed Contract and get to know someone somehow in the County's Legal System who is part of that County's good ole boy system...but you WILL lose the Lease the next year regardless if the landwowner so chooses...so never plan for more than that year and listen at the gas station/cafes/feed stores for leads on a new lease for next year EVERY YEAR....if for no reason than to keep up with what YOUR landowner is hearing from HIS buddies about what they are charging..so YOU can stay in touch with that counties prices.
In all the years I've leased hunting rights I've only met and leased from one person I would trust to lease from again, a true gentleman in Schleicher County who looked you in the face and shook your hand and was good for his word. Every year on every other lease was always the same hassle as ya'll are complaining about and I've described....money money money ... show me the money!
I love to hunt more than any other sport I've ever participated in but until I can afford to buy something I'm as stuck doing what I can do as everybody else.
Ron

This has become a real common theme all around the state.

Most of what I could say has already been said either this time or on earlier posts about this same subject.

A lot of folks have been having this happen to them, and it is only going to get worse, as long as hunters, and I use that term real loosely, have no scruples about trying to out bid other hunters for a place to hunt.

As bad as it seems, you really can't blame the landowners, for wanting to get their fair share. Admittedly, since the deer people are willing to pay mucho dinero to hunt belong to the public, most of those public deer live on private land.

As someone said earlier, if you lease land you will lose it at some point.

I have beat this point to death a couple of times, but the days of the season/year-round-one group/family lease are over.

Land is the one commodity that farmers and ranchers CAN NOT produce any more of. They have access to a finite commodity, that we as a group, are willing to cut each others throats over. All in the name of Big Racks.

As it stands right now, around a good portion of the state, the wave of the future is the Package Hunt. If each of us that lease would set down and put it to pencil and paper, by the time you figure in what you are paying per gun, add the costs of setting up a camp, blinds/stands, feeders and feed, meals and or lodging going to/coming from the lease, FUEL COSTS, add infinitum, and a $2500.00 to $3500.00 package hunt where you can kill a decent buck, a doe or 2, a hog, a turkey, maybe a Javelina or exotic, and a lot of folks would come out ahead.

Is this type of set-up for everyone, NO. Is it going to become more prevalent in hunting in Texas, YES.

We all hate to hear of you losing your lease, especially this close to season. Unfortunately this is going to be a growing problem that is going to effect everyone that pays to hunt private property.

We lost our lease in Jacksboro about 2 months ago due to the property selling. We did find another lease that will be better than our previous lease but it does take some work to find one worth having! I will say that during the search I did make some good contacts with some good folks that could prove beneficial down the road should we ever lose this one!

We had a lease at Brady for 26 years. We built a 1200 square feet cabin with central heat and air on the place. The owner died and the children got the ranch. We came down to fill our feeders and found archery hunters sitting over our feeders in OUR stands, staying in our house, using our linens and everything. We complained, but the NEW owners said our contract was for gun season only. I explained that was because their mother hated archery hunting and wouldn't let us use bows. They didn't care. The next year they asked 4 times what we were paying. I've been told that they are now getting $2000 a gun there.

We managed that place and had trophy bucks running everywhere. We had 7 albino doe on the ranch. We made a rule that no one could shoot them. They were beautiful. One day, during the week, the owners came down and shot every single one of them. They weren't hard to find, they stuck out like a sore thumb and hung out around the cabin, all in one herd, since they seemed to know that we wouldn't shoot them.

The new hunters were down there when we went to pick up our stands and feeders. We were told 2 weeks before deer season that he had new hunters. We had been feeding for 2 months!! Anyway, the new hunters were mad because the land owner told them that all the stands and feeders came with the lease. We were out of there with everything we had down there in less than 1/2 a day. We all had 24' gooseneck trailers. They really were upset when we loaded up our silverware, dishes, pots, pans, linens, refrigerators, freezers, microwave, TV, antenae, matresses and everything else we could haul. They were told all that came with the lease. Wish I could have gotten that central heating and air conditioner unit!! Makes you want to just burn the cabin down. Believe me, the thought crossed my mind. Here was this beautiful house on this land that we built and paid for and now we had no recourse for recovery of our money. The original land owner said the place was ours forever and to not worry about it. Yeah right!!! The kids saw some possible big money and jumped all over us!!!!

I hunted antelope in New Mexico for eight consecutive years at no expense other than an out-of-state license. The landowner prided himself in having never sold a permit. I might add that if you did not take a lope you were not invited back - he thought they competed with his livestock for grass. He passed away and a nephew took over the ranch and promptly told me it would cost $500 a permit. This was in the mid 80's. Never went again.

Awhile back when we were looking for another lease, I called a man regarding one. He said he was charging $600 a gun, I couldn't believe it. I questioned him further regarding the price. He said he didn't believe in STICKING IT to the hunters(his words). Of course he did not have anything available. But I thank him for what he does for todays hunter, and told him he was a dieing breed.

Marry in to it... LOL My wife's parents have 500 acres in Comanche County I'll get to hunt on starting this year. (We got married last Dec)

I hunted growing up on my parents 150 acres in Oklahoma, and when I moved down here 9 years ago I didn't want the expense or hassle of a lease, so I got bored and bought a $30k bass boat and started tournament fishing But I still drove my to my parents in OK each year to deer hunt.

We had a quil lease in south Texas that was set up for after deer season. It was a large ranch and we had 2500 acres for quail hunting after deer season. The price for quail hunting was the same on the whole ranch. On our section they had some new deer hunters come in and while they were setting up noticed all the quail and asked about the hunting rights for qail. They were told the quail rights were already leased so the hunters said they would pay double what we paid so we got the boot but the rest of the ranch prices stayed the same.

Again, with all due respect for the landowners who read this Forum...I'd like to look at the situation from as much of their perspective as a non landowner can. JMHO

Hunters are a cash crop and as such are not seen as a long term investment in cultivating by landowners. Like bears sitting in a salmon run creek, we get hammered as they get hungry.

However, as a cash crop or spot market product, to borrow a phrase from the oil industry, the value of the product - in this case the hunting rights and experience offered by the landowner during X season -is a varible controlled by market forces. If the salmon don't run in that creek anymore the bears leave...and if we stopped being the lemmings that the Landowners can easily take advantage of things might change back to what us old farts remember...which will NEVER happen...'cause we are determined to have a hunting experience in Texas and are willing to take the scalding more times than not.

AS CHC sez...the future of season leases is about gone in Texas unless you meet up with someone who does not want to market the product aggressivley...or who is so old school that is is almost a treasured oddity.

Except for the more and more frequent family heirs who are absentee landowners looking for an easy buck with no agriculture investment, the landowner has longterm overhead in producing agriculture at an ever increasing cost of doing busines, just all of us do too...his gas goes up just like ours does, his county's tax bill is going up because in most cases of an ever shrinking tax base as rural counties populations shrink, foreign competition on livestock is cutting his profit margins, and while hunters are not livestock?!?!?! hunters are one of the few legal areas of agriculture that the prices are totally unregulated or subsidized...so when JohnnyJoe Landowner sits at the Dairy Queen over a cup of coffee and hears that his neighbors are getting $15 or $20 or more on a seasonally annualized daylease per acre for hunting rights and our lease's JJL is only charging us $10 or $12 when JJL is struggling to met his feed bill or pay his tax's much less buy health insurance ... what do you think he - or you/I in the same boat - would do when ever possible....raise prices to the Market Level just like happens every day at the Auction Barn.

What my over riding source of displeasure with almost all of the JJL's I've dealt with is the 90%+ of the time, is that a JJL makes a Legal Lease Agreement Contract and then knowingly violates it. You/I wouldn't tolerate that in our own business transactions on how we make a living and I don't tolerate it on a Hunting Lease Agreement...and no matter what I think of the "huntability/ chances of success" are I have refused to spend my money where I can't deal directly with a landowner and judge for myself if he is trustworthy. I also do some research with the local law enforcement officials, the CofC's in the area, local feed stores, maybe even the local bankers if they are foolish enough to talk to me, the local GW if I can find him and look for high turnover in the # of Hunting party's that have hunted that ranch...sure signs of Landowner problems. I also ask for names and phone #'s of the previous lease holders and CALL them to find out why they aren't still on the lease among other things.

You are making a legal committment and need to be satisfied that the Contract is going to be fulfilled...as the JJL has a right to expect you to fullfill your HALF of the Lease Agreement.

I am very close to someone, a father and son, who got into a deal where there 25-30 Lease holders on a huge ranch at the bottom edge of the Hill Country. The Lease was managed by a Lease Manager who apparantly held the Master Lease, and he allowed a group of rowdy in laws to violate their Contracts by having too many hunter/guests, shooting up the place and other non permitted and immoral activities specifically prohibited by the General Lease Agreement and State & County Law.

My friend made a susbstantial investment in improvements in his living quarters in the $40-50k range plus several hundred hours of sweat equity, went to great efforts to follow the Lease Rules, and when he complained to the Lease Manager repeatedly about the illicit activities of half of the other Leaseholders and went directly to the Landowner... the problems began.

The climatic event was when the Landowner refused to maintain the fences and keep the neighbors cows out - although that neighbor has been well documented and has a history of running illegal scams on hunters according to a Texas Ranger who later came into how this whole incident played out. Anyway the neighbors cows came thru some cut places in the fence and were never corraled and returned to their property for several months, the cows were allowed to run free and eat all the insulation off the hunters cabins, electrical wires, water hoses and poop on the porches of the hunters cabins and so on to the tune of sevral thousand dollars of damage to my friends living quarters.
When my friend was commenting about this cow problem to a feed store employee on a trip to fill feeders in the off season he was told that "somebody ought to shoot them cows" if the County refused to handle the problem as there was County corral to control this kind of thing if the cows owner would not...now this was months after the Lease Manager and the Landowner were notified more than once.

My friend and his son went home after loading their feeders and repairing as much of the cows damage as possible and had commented to some of the rowdy crowd about the cows again. Several weeks later he and his son are served arrest warrants charging them with killing a large number of the starving cows, had to post bonds and hire lawyers to fight the case 250+ miles from home. The bottom line was that the good ole boy legal system in that county convicted my friend and his son of killing the cows after he spent well into 6 figures on lawyers fees for attempting to fight the system, and as the Texas Ranger admitted after his investigation cleared my friend and his son totally and implicated the conspiracy of the Lease manager and the rowdy crowd of Leaseholders who were not nearly as wealthy as my friend...my friend and his son were allowed to plead "No contest", adjudicate the charges, and have the conviction reduced to a Class A or B Misdemeanor. Other wise my friend would have fought the case all the way to another location in an Appelate Court out of this county's Circuit and then may have had a better chance of the kangaroo court's conviction being over turned ...or took a chance that the Felony conviction would stand. He took the deal and got out as the Ranger suggested.

This is what can happen to you when you Lease with an unscrupulous Landowner, who the Ranger implicated as being an accomplice to the neighbor and derelict in keeping his fences mended per the Lease contract, an unscrupulous Lease Manager, or unscrupulous Lease Partners. Needless to say these events took a couple years to play out but this is a very true story about someone I am very very close to. My friend and his son do not hunt anymore after having hunted in Texas for a lifetime. Their probation and adjudication is over, the conviction is supposed to have been wiped, and their CHC rights restored...but it cost way more than just the close to $200,000 in lawyers fees to get past this railroad job.

We do research before we buy a car, take a cruise ship, go to a vacation resort and spend the same or more kind of effort to go find another life's partner - at least some of us do 'cause I got one buddy who'd be better served keeping a Deevorce lawyer on a retainer since he's been hitched 7-8 times but at least he's left no footprints anywhere to pay child support on! I keep telling him he does NOT have to buy the cow....but I think he's related to one of the many many times married Gabor sisters

So you have to understand the low level of respect that not all but a large number of JJL's have for the source of their cash crop ..we are, in their eyes IMO, a easy constant flow of sheep to be fleeced in our quest for a pleasant Norman Rockwell moment hunting experience. You won't get that at McDonalds or Burger King...or any of the $500 a plate highend chop houses I've ever been to either once the bill has been paid...and you STILL don't know for sure that the waiter has not spit in your plate....don't ask me how I know that either

Be careful who you do business with is all I'm saying 'cause there is sometimes way more to the deal than meets the eye in more ways than one.
Ron

I have read all of the postings here on this forum. I am a new user of THF & TFF. I happen to be on both sides of the fence. My in-laws have recently passed away, leaving a vast area to my wife and I and her sister. At the present time I am currently on a season lease in Marble Falls and have been there for twenty two years. My father was on the same lease for forty years. We are like many of you, are like family with the current owners. But...... things are changing because the owner is 85 years of age and the family is standing by to take over in the event of the owners death. We also have 40 years of buildings, stands, feeders, jeeps, furniture, and the likes. We hate to give it up but the day is coming. We pay $500.00 per gun for a year round lease. Last of a dieing price for a great lease! Now back to the inherited land!! We have already hired a guide and the property has been largely closed to the public for many, many, years. There is an abundance of game (all kinds you name it) and we are building a lodge and have one in place for hunters now. I know it sounds cold but the days of the family leases are fastly disappearing. Hunting is a privilage just like driving your car on Texas Highways and all controlled by the state. We are still the most privilaged people on the face of the earth. There are literally millions of people that would love to be doing what you and I have done for years on our leases. If you are interested, email me at: txkirtley@sbcglobal.net Thanks, Benny

Sound like you are about to fall into the same hole all other land owners do. You see a chance to make BIG DOLLARS from your land. You will most likely high fence the place off trapping wild animals into a large pen. I don't care how many acres it is, it still becomes a cage for the animals. These animals belong to the state of Texas not you. Cows, horses & other farm animals belong to the land owner, but you can't hunt cows!! Then you will use this guide to take high paying customers out to hunt in a big bucks sanctuary, knowing that at 8:30 a.m. every morning he comes and eats out of the feeder that you are looking at from about 50 yrds. in your "TOWER MANSION". Let the "HUNTER" (some business guy that has never just sat in the woods & enjoyed being out in God's creation)shoot the buck, take pictures, pat him on the back & the next time he touches the deer will be when he hangs it on the wall & brags about taking the buck. Hope you understand that no matter how hard it is to realize that times are changing, it is the land owners that are changing them for the hunters of today & tomorrow. People all talk about getting kids involved in the outdoors, but thanks to todays group of land owners down the road hunters like me that have been brought up hunting with my Dad, brother & family will not have a place to take our kids. It will be were only people like described above can afford to hunt. And that AIN'T HUNTING!!!