"Land Trust" Experiences

el_jefe_pescado

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
245
Location
Montana
Anyone ever use this service? I have my opinions but I am wondering if anyone has a first hand experience hunting one of their properties.
 

Hnthrdr

WKR
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Jan 29, 2022
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The West
I had the exact same idea as land trust circa 2014 with a buddy, started to talk to an app developer and we eventually lost steam and it fizzled out. Thank God! IMO this couldn’t be a worse idea/ concept for the hunting world. Take a quick min and see what airbnb has done to housing… I don’t think anything positive would come from this company. All I see is it squeezing people financially to hunt. It’s a disaster and I hope it doesn’t take off. Just wait till blackrock or vanguard figures out they can buy up vacant land and cash flow it, there goes any hope of someone buying a hunting property
 
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el_jefe_pescado

el_jefe_pescado

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
May 8, 2019
Messages
245
Location
Montana
I had the exact same idea as land trust circa 2014 with a buddy, started to talk to an app developer and we eventually lost steam and it fizzled out. Thank God! IMO this couldn’t be a worse idea/ concept for the hunting world. Take a quick min and see what airbnb has done to housing… I don’t think anything positive would come from this company. All I see is it squeezing people financially to hunt. It’s a disaster and I hope it doesn’t take off. Just wait till blackrock or vanguard figures out they can buy up vacant land and cash flow it, there goes any hope of someone buying a hunting property
Yeah, I have heard several versions of the same idea be tossed around after a few cervezas. Never really thought about the big money getting involved but I guess it does make sense.
 

Hnthrdr

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Yeah, I have heard several versions of the same idea be tossed around after a few cervezas. Never really thought about the big money getting involved but I guess it does make sense.
Yeah I think there was someone who had beat us to the so called punch, might have been land trust can’t remember the name of the company at the time. My buddy and I are were young army officers getting ready to deploy so we kind of just let it die. I used to think ingenious, yet now I get the feeling that hunting commercialization has jumped the ship, and we are all worse off for it
 

jolemons

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Mar 16, 2013
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MT, USA
Friend used to hunt pheasant in KS and elk in MT. His feedback to me was positive on both trips.

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Joined
Nov 15, 2022
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I used Land Trust and paid for three days of access to a place in Central Montana last year about a month and a half after I broke my leg. Trying to salvage part of my hunting season as it was a fairly flat property and about all I could do hobbling around. It was a pretty poor experience. Not great communication with the landowner. Supposedly there was three access points to the property, but only one of them was available, the other two were down roads that were so rutted up there was no way to even get a side-by-side down them. No game on the property at all. Short of some magpies. Pretty expensive for a place to hike around. Definitely won’t do it again. If I hadn’t been limited by my physical setback, I never would’ve considered it to begin with.
 

MTtrout

WKR
Joined
Jan 2, 2013
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381
It seems that folks don’t understand what a land trust actually is and got caught up in what other people are trying to sell you
 

Hnthrdr

WKR
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The West
And there are 5-6 of these similar outfits now. I sure don’t like it.
Yeah not a positive trend. Even though I live out west and have access to lots of public this is a very troubling trend. IMO all it will do is squeeze people off of leases, or spots they used to have access on into small and smaller chunks or push people out of the game from not being able to afford it.
 

amassi

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Joined
May 26, 2018
Messages
3,939
Yeah not a positive trend. Even though I live out west and have access to lots of public this is a very troubling trend. IMO all it will do is squeeze people off of leases, or spots they used to have access on into small and smaller chunks or push people out of the game from not being able to afford it.

Saw it here in the far west
Ag, especially vineyards, would let you shoot all the pigs you wanted for free and often would allow you access to hunt deer, turkeys etc as a kind of thank you. Then some idiot offered to pay for that privilege and ended that access to 99% of the properties by pricing average people out.


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jolemons

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Mar 16, 2013
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MT, USA
As a lifelong rancher, I fully support any opportunity for those making a living off of a narrow margin business to be able to capitalize on supplemental income from allowing hunting access on land. Without ranchers and the working landscape their ranches offer, the wildlife habitat would be transformed and decimated. As hunters, we should support these working lands and their owners, empowering them to stay in business as an investment in our conservation value. It's capitalism, and if you don't like it, hunt public land.

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CorbLand

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Mar 16, 2016
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As a lifelong rancher, I fully support any opportunity for those making a living off of a narrow margin business to be able to capitalize on supplemental income from allowing hunting access on land. Without ranchers and the working landscape their ranches offer, the wildlife habitat would be transformed and decimated. As hunters, we should support these working lands and their owners, empowering them to stay in business as an investment in our conservation value. It's capitalism, and if you don't like it, hunt public land.

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The one thing I dont like about it is looking on the site there is a 6500 acre ranch where I use to hunt. Generations of my family and friends hunted that area. I know exactly where that ranch is and couldnt count the number of animals shot off it. They didnt care if people hunted it. Now they are charging 6500 per person for a hunt there. Kind of sucks to see these places that people had access to being locked up.

It is private ground and the owners call but it still sucks.
 

jolemons

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Mar 16, 2013
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The one thing I dont like about it is looking on the site there is a 6500 acre ranch where I use to hunt. Generations of my family and friends hunted that area. I know exactly where that ranch is and couldnt count the number of animals shot off it. They didnt care if people hunted it. Now they are charging 6500 per person for a hunt there. Kind of sucks to see these places that people had access to being locked up.

It is private ground and the owners call but it still sucks.
Clearly I don't know the details, but would you rather them charge $6500 for access and be able to keep the ranch or be forced to sell to a developer who has plans to turn it into the next Yellowstone Club? That's the decision facing many ranchers. The habitat loss that the west will likely face as generational ranches turn over may be profound if we don't find ways to keep them as working landscapes. In many areas, winter range is 85+% privately owned. Subdivisions don't make good winter range, but ranches do.

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Hnthrdr

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Clearly I don't know the details, but would you rather them charge $6500 for access and be able to keep the ranch or be forced to sell to a developer who has plans to turn it into the next Yellowstone Club? That's the decision facing many ranchers. The habitat loss that the west will likely face as generational ranches turn over may be profound if we don't find ways to keep them as working landscapes. In many areas, winter range is 85+% privately owned. Subdivisions don't make good winter range, but ranches do.

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Lot of these big ranches are already federally subsidized via our tax dollars (not a hater of it, it is just how it goes) and often aren’t “scraping by” with the help of land trust they are just further monetizing hunting forcing more people into less area and creating a European style of aristocratic/ pay to play hunting. It’s private so they can do as they please. But let’s not pretend that they will all go under and turn into urban sprawl
 

CorbLand

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Clearly I don't know the details, but would you rather them charge $6500 for access and be able to keep the ranch or be forced to sell to a developer who has plans to turn it into the next Yellowstone Club? That's the decision facing many ranchers. The habitat loss that the west will likely face as generational ranches turn over may be profound if we don't find ways to keep them as working landscapes. In many areas, winter range is 85+% privately owned. Subdivisions don't make good winter range, but ranches do.

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Any developer that buys the ranch I am talking about to try and turn it into the next Yellowstone Club is dumber than anyone that pays 6500 bucks to hunt the property. Its ranch land and its the only thing its good for.

Companies like Landtrust are going to continue to search out people and convince them to do it. Many of the ranchers in this area would have zero idea you could even do this but when someone tells them they can, they will. Like I said, it just sucks.
 
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