Cost of Leases forcing people out west?

[Gerard Marcaurele]

I understand the Trip out West instead of the lease but that one trip
a year doesnt satisfy the season long itch to hunt.
And, the public lands have become overrun to the point of being
useless.

I think you’re correct, to a point. HOWEVER, some folks are being asked to pay $3000+ per year for a place that may or may not have shootable deer. If I’m being asked to pay that much and still have a chance to go home empty handed, I’d rather spend less and get a vacation to the mountains with a chance to go home empty handed and a chance to go home with an elk/mule deer

 

[FLATHEAD]

Yeah, I'm not paying 3K for a whitetail lease.

 

[Lawnboi]

It’s stupid. 3k might get you on a 40 in a decent area here in WI.

Access is a big problem, which is why you see people flooding to places with lots of public land.

 

[Gerard Marcaurele]

Yeah, I'm not paying 3K for a whitetail lease.

So where I live here in SE Tx, $3000 is cheap for a place that actually has deer. Was looking for a spot last year and the cheapest place I found was $3500 for 169 acres with two “spots”. That’s almost $2000 per person to hunt about 85 acres. Then I would have to buy stands, feeders, etc. (I know some people don’t think you need a feeder, but on 170 acres you don’t get the luxury of having a home herd and feeders bring deer in)

It’s getting a little crazy, and I just can’t see the merit in taking that money from my family to spend on a couple little whitetail and a lot of time away. I can spend $800 on an OTC elk tag, $500 on fuel and food, and $300 on a couple nights in a hotel and come home reset and thankful for the opportunity to see the mountains. If I’m gone 10 days, that’s way less than going to the lease 4 or 5 times through the season and multiple times during the off-season.

 

[Lowg08]

I’m in agreement on not paying for a deer lease. I just as soon hunt mature bucks on public land. I am however buying points out west for future hunts

 

[wind gypsy]

Financially, leasing makes plenty of sense. For example. Let’s say you want to buy your own land. Average price of 50 acres in my area is $300,000. You need 20% down to buy it. That’s 60k, monthly loan payment is $1900 for 20 years. Over the life of that loan you will pay $450,000 total.

Now, lease a piece of ground. Let’s say land is $25/acre. You lease 200 acres. That’s $5000/year. Split that with another friend and it’s only $2500 yr. So 1/11th of the yearly investment and you get 4x the amount of land.

The #'s in your example look good, are they real though? Who's the guy with a property worth $1.2 million leasing hunting rights for $5k a year?

If a guy has to finance most of it I'd agree that you could easily find a scenario where the annual interest/property tax costs, even when tax deductions are taken into account, exceed the cost of a lease.

Like others have said, it is largely dependent on what someone wants out of it. In my short stint of land ownership I've found the habitat projects on it much more rewarding than actually hunting. In these crazy times having something real like land in your portfolio feels like a good move vs being all in stocks/bonds/cash.

 

[elkyinzer]

id give it a few years and hunters and "outdoors people" will go back to what they were doing pre-covid. i know several people that took up hunting, fishing, camping because they couldnt do anything else. if half go back to what they were doing before we will be better off. Also i think there is a HUGE learning curve to hunting any public compared to private and most people will give up before they figure it out.

I wouldn't bet on it, covid was just a bump in an already occurring trend. This has been going on for decades. I think there's been a major shift in attitudes towards hunting from a more of a hobby of the working class to sort of a defining aspect of many dudes' very existence. Really just to say the working class a couple of generations ago didn't have the time off work to make it a lifestyle, so they partook in it as a hobby.

This sort of gets lost in the RRR push and the resultant industrialization of hunting. If you have 1,000,000 guys as PA used to estimate hunted in rifle season, that casually hunt 5 days a year you have 5 milion hunter days. You can have half the hunters to 500,000 (and half the revenue, thus the alarmist nature of RRR). But those guys hunt 3x more at 15 days per year and suddenly you have 7.5 million hunter days. Half the hunters, 50% more perceived pressure roughly speaking. Now those are just theoretical numbers but I would hypothesize among some other noted factors that is influencing the perceived increase in hunting pressure.

 

[Skerhunter]

I would say this is a huge driver of public land use and people hunting out west. But it has been caused by an increase of habitat loss (fewer places to hunt, fewer animals) and free access to private lands to hunt being reduced every year (even fewer places to hunt). Now we have more people wanting to hunt fewer animals on less land?

 

[Bighorner]

I think there is also a misconception on what xx acres out west will get you. It is dry and desolate comparatively. I see units list total acres of public land. It looks like a lot, but 90% will not have game on it at any given time. Things seem crowded because a western hunter has to cover a lot of ground to find animals and even more to find good ones. I'm sure hunters per acre in the west is a fraction of back east, but so is the animal population (except good bottom land). I know I would be a lot more inclined to hunt out west just on the principle that game is held in trust and I'm personally against paying for access to it, even though that is a completely legitimate route/income source.

 

[fatlander]

Deer in these parts are more pressured on most leases than public land. I had the realization that I was paying thousands to lease what I could hunt for free. The light bulb went off that I could go out west and hunt with the money I wasn’t spending here. I actually spend less money going out west to hunt than I did leasing dirt back east.


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[loganwayne]

I wouldn't bet on it, covid was just a bump in an already occurring trend. This has been going on for decades. I think there's been a major shift in attitudes towards hunting from a more of a hobby of the working class to sort of a defining aspect of many dudes' very existence. Really just to say the working class a couple of generations ago didn't have the time off work to make it a lifestyle, so they partook in it as a hobby.

This sort of gets lost in the RRR push and the resultant industrialization of hunting. If you have 1,000,000 guys as PA used to estimate hunted in rifle season, that casually hunt 5 days a year you have 5 milion hunter days. You can have half the hunters to 500,000 (and half the revenue, thus the alarmist nature of RRR). But those guys hunt 3x more at 15 days per year and suddenly you have 7.5 million hunter days. Half the hunters, 50% more perceived pressure roughly speaking. Now those are just theoretical numbers but I would hypothesize among some other noted factors that is influencing the perceived increase in hunting pressure.

that is an interesting take on pressure and hadnt thought about it that way. but i agree less people hunting more could increase pressure.

 

[Dexter Grayson]

Lease prices play a small role in western over crowding. Social media is your main reason.

 

[isocyanate]

There's folks that like the whitetail game and those that don't. I live in Louisiana because I have to. Might buy a chunk of land, but as mentioned above, all the other projects are of more interest than the hunting.

I guess bottom line for me is that my heart is out west, so it's not so much the cost of a lease as it is the fact that hunting whitetail is completely boring. If I have kids, then I could see needing some space to roam, play, and shoot guns like I was fortunate to have access to growing up. But just for me? Nah.

 

[FLATHEAD]

So where I live here in SE Tx, $3000 is cheap for a place that actually has deer. Was looking for a spot last year and the cheapest place I found was $3500 for 169 acres with two “spots”. That’s almost $2000 per person to hunt about 85 acres. Then I would have to buy stands, feeders, etc. (I know some people don’t think you need a feeder, but on 170 acres you don’t get the luxury of having a home herd and feeders bring deer in)

It’s getting a little crazy, and I just can’t see the merit in taking that money from my family to spend on a couple little whitetail and a lot of time away. I can spend $800 on an OTC elk tag, $500 on fuel and food, and $300 on a couple nights in a hotel and come home reset and thankful for the opportunity to see the mountains. If I’m gone 10 days, that’s way less than going to the lease 4 or 5 times through the season and multiple times during the off-season.

Looks like I'm about to get in a lease of 160 acres for 1200$, 80 of which will be all for myself.
Only one other guy who has another 160.
Thats about my limit, but I have a place to deer hunt and also year round for hogs and predators.
And I will still go out West when I draw a tag.
One trip out West just doesnt satisfy my itch. The Summers are long here on the Gulf so gotta take advantage of the cool weather when it happens.

 

[JesseC]

I'm in Washington and unfortunately the trend of leasing out land has taken off with force out here. It used to be alright to buy a hunting permit that'd get you access to thousands of private timber acres. Now, they're being sliced into leases and sold to the highest bidder. I didn't think they'd gain a lot of traction.... but..... wrong again. They sold out within a day.

Pay to play is the way....

 

[timekiller13]

The #'s in your example look good, are they real though? Who's the guy with a property worth $1.2 million leasing hunting rights for $5k a year?

If a guy has to finance most of it I'd agree that you could easily find a scenario where the annual interest/property tax costs, even when tax deductions are taken into account, exceed the cost of a lease.

Like others have said, it is largely dependent on what someone wants out of it. In my short stint of land ownership I've found the habitat projects on it much more rewarding than actually hunting. In these crazy times having something real like land in your portfolio feels like a good move vs being all in stocks/bonds/cash.

My numbers are very real. I can lease 200 acres right now for $5k a year. That’s hunting rights only.


The real point is most people don’t have the necessary cash for a down payment (20-60k) for a decent chunk of dirt nor do they have the financial ability to pay $2k/month for 20 yrs. A couple thousand a year is easier to pay than a couple thousand per month.

 

[FLATHEAD]

What makes it even tougher is it's usually hunting rights only.
Cant camp on it so you gotta find a place to overnight.

 

[bowieknife50]

I wouldn't bet on it, covid was just a bump in an already occurring trend. This has been going on for decades. I think there's been a major shift in attitudes towards hunting from a more of a hobby of the working class to sort of a defining aspect of many dudes' very existence. Really just to say the working class a couple of generations ago didn't have the time off work to make it a lifestyle, so they partook in it as a hobby.

This sort of gets lost in the RRR push and the resultant industrialization of hunting. If you have 1,000,000 guys as PA used to estimate hunted in rifle season, that casually hunt 5 days a year you have 5 milion hunter days. You can have half the hunters to 500,000 (and half the revenue, thus the alarmist nature of RRR). But those guys hunt 3x more at 15 days per year and suddenly you have 7.5 million hunter days. Half the hunters, 50% more perceived pressure roughly speaking. Now those are just theoretical numbers but I would hypothesize among some other noted factors that is influencing the perceived increase in hunting pressure.

So are you saying that you think of hunter numbers were halved the guys left would hunt 3X more than they do now? The numbers in your example make sense but I am just wondering how much hunting pressure decreases the hard-core hunter's desire to hunt. I would think most guys that are lifer hunters hunt as much as they can already but that could very well just be projecting my own situation into the general hunting public. I only get so many days off per year and I'm hunting them no matter who else is.

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[S-3 ranch]

I don’t know , I know guys who pay 10- 14,000 per lease spot, and still
are traveling to out of state bow hunting elk and mulie for a 7- 10 day every year
some are also traveling to Africa every country of years

maybe timber companies are driving up the price on private because they know someone is with to pay market price

 

[MuleyFever]

You can add land fragmentation to the list of things that contribute to people looking west. I grew up hunting deer in WI. It was easy to get access when I was a teenager by knocking on doors. I saw a lot of properties go out the window because the parents were selling that 80 acres and the 4 kids were all getting 20.

I would also guess that there are a lot of properties that were owned by non hunters that now have a family member that picked up hunting. The people that maybe were hunting it get kicked off because now the nephew wants to hunt it.

Also land lost to development.