For those of you that lease property to hunt on, what do you typically expect to pay? This would be for a 400 acre ranch in coryell county. Not a lot of larger deer but plenty of hogs.

Only comp I have seen posted recently was from Lampasas, but that was a few months ago.

Any ballpark numbers would still be helpful.

We pay $20 an acre in Limestone County, just the other side of Waco.

To be helpful - typical questions:

Year around
How many hunters
Family / guest policy
House
Any utilities

tamc93 said:

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To be helpful - typical questions:

Year around
How many hunters
Family / guest policy
House
Any utilities

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5 hunters, available year round, hookups for rv and a really old and tiny house... utilities, not so sure

Definitely look into utilities.

Also may want to ask about property's MLD status or landowners interest in MLD program.

COSCAG67 said:

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For those of you that lease property to hunt on, what do you typically expect to pay? This would be for a 400 acre ranch in coryell county. Not a lot of larger deer but plenty of hogs.

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I have no idea what it goes for there, but I'd think just about any lease anywhere in Texas (outside of El Paso or Midland) could find 1 hunter per 100 that would pay $2500/ year for a year round place to go get away from the city psychopaths and Kung flu. Throw in the desired added bonus of hogs, you're looking at $3k/gun. The fun factor just tripled though, so totally worth it.

Paid $12 /acre for 306 acres in graham, year round with electricity only on property.

Too bad they decided to stop leasing it.

My uncle has leased approx 600 acres in Coryell county for around $10k. And honestly only about 150 acres of that is decent hunting. There might be a half dozen does(And no hogs) scattered around the rest of the property most of the year.

I'd say somewhere between $10-20 per acre, at least in Central Texas.

We currently pay $15/ac for ~1k acres with barn, bunkhouse, electricity, water, bathroom/shower.

agree on the 15-20/acre range. How's the access to the property?

Accessibility is not an issue. I have 4x4 but never need it.

Price per gun is the best comparison for a lease that size. Price per acre really isn't relevant. If it's an average place with average size and average numbers, I would say $2000 - $3000 a gun is the going rate. If numbers are outstanding plus maybe some add-ons like water and electric, maybe place to stay, you may pay $3000-$4000 a gun. Of course there are exceptions.

Let's say numbers (I assume you mean deer) are on the low end, how would that change things? There's deer but I don't think it's anything crazy.

I disagree with 44mAG that price per acre is irrelevant, that price per gun is more important. Price per gun is only relevant to the individual that is paying their membership. Land owners generally don't care to get involved in finding individual hunters- rather lease the whole acreage and let that person find the hunters. Now they might provide input on the max number of folks he wants hunting it. Price per hunter is determined by total dollars divided by number of hunters. On any leased property, some would rather pay more to have fewer hunters which drives the price up per hunter. Take 2-1000 acre tracts that each cost $20/acre to lease. Depending on where the tracts are located, one lease might only have two hunters at $10,000 each and one lease might have four hunters at $5,000 each. If that same tract is in east Texas there might be 10 hunters at $1,000 each.

I disagree with 44mAG that price per acre is irrelevant, that price per gun is more important. Price per gun is only relevant to the individual that is paying their membership. Land owners generally don't care to get involved in finding individual hunters- rather lease the whole acreage and let that person find the hunters. Now they might provide input on the max number of folks he wants hunting it. Price per hunter is determined by total dollars divided by number of hunters. On any leased property, some would rather pay more to have fewer hunters which drives the price up per hunter. Take 2-1000 acre tracts that each cost $20/acre to lease. Depending on where the tracts are located, one lease might only have two hunters at $10,000 each and one lease might have four hunters at $5,000 each. If that same tract is in east Texas there might be 10 hunters at $1,000 each.

My current lease is $8,000 for 230 acres. If you break that down by a per acre price it is pretty expensive compared to a lot of other places. Here is the breakdown of it:

Year round lease in San Saba county. If its legal, we can hunt it
Family friendly (my wife and kids can all limit out on their own deer tags if we choose). The landowner even let me bring 2 friends out last year to kill some doe & hogs.
24/7/365 access to 2-bedroom cedar cabin with full kitchen living room, central heat & AC. It's less than 4 hours from my house in Collin county so we get out there a lot.
15 minutes to 2 different towns for supplies or restaurants
Barn to store ATV's etc.
Electric to plug in RV if we have a big group one weekend
300 yards of Colorado River frontage for fishing, kayaking, swimming etc.
Landowner said we can put 4 hunters on it but we agreed to stay at 3 members. That puts it to $2,666 per member.

Our group pays about $8/acre in Houston County.

1000 acre tree farm
Electricity
No water
No camphouse

Decent logging roads throughout property which gives good access to the majority of the acreage. Our mature bucks are typically in the 130-140 class.

This is how we're setup. Landowner says he wants X for the entire property and not to exceed a certain number of hunters. We figure out with the group how many hunters we want - Y:

X/Y = cost per hunter

I have found that dealing with less people and paying more is absolutely worth it, within reason. The trade off is when you need to have a workday or fill feeders. Less people with open space on their calendars.

We pay $21 per acre in Gillespie County. Same price since 2008.

Deets:

Year around -- YES
How many hunters -- 4
Family / guest policy -- immediate family, yes; guests, no
House -- yes, which we outfitted w/ insulation, fridge, sink, stove, bunks, TV, etc.
Any utilities -- we pay electricity; landowner pays water.

We pay a total of about $9.50/acre for a 440 acre place west of Hamilton. Great deer, few pigs (thankfully), and a few turkey. Includes a creek, ponds worth fishing, and plenty of timber.

Year round - Yes
How many hunters - 3, but can take kids when we want
Family / guest policy - we take kids if we want, and guests to fish or hang out. Nothing too formal, but its understood guests don't shoot our deer unless we agree we need help with doe.
House - Two guys that were there longer put a converted construction trailer on it. I have an RV out there.
Utilities - electricity, water, and sewer, paid by the landowner.

Russ79 said:

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I disagree with 44mAG that price per acre is irrelevant, that price per gun is more important. Price per gun is only relevant to the individual that is paying their membership. Land owners generally don't care to get involved in finding individual hunters- rather lease the whole acreage and let that person find the hunters. Now they might provide input on the max number of folks he wants hunting it. Price per hunter is determined by total dollars divided by number of hunters. On any leased property, some would rather pay more to have fewer hunters which drives the price up per hunter. Take 2-1000 acre tracts that each cost $20/acre to lease. Depending on where the tracts are located, one lease might only have two hunters at $10,000 each and one lease might have four hunters at $5,000 each. If that same tract is in east Texas there might be 10 hunters at $1,000 each.

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My statement was in regards to leases 500 acres and less mostly. As other people stated above, you can expect to pay in the $20-$30 per acre price for a good small hill country lease. When talking about price per acre, most people would say that is totally outrageous.

But, if you say that you are paying $3000 a gun for a really good hill country lease, those same people would say that is about right. An example would be four hunters paying $3000 each for an exceptional 400 acres of hunting ground in the hill country. Regarding the less people paying more, most of the time on good ground, the land owner has the gun number set as they want to insure that a certain number of deer come off of the place every year.

COSCAG67 said:

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Let's say numbers (I assume you mean deer) are on the low end, how would that change things? There's deer but I don't think it's anything crazy.

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My advice in this instance would be this. It's really hard to even get a chance to lease a place to hunt these days. Everyone is looking and most of the time you have to know someone in order to get an invite to an open place/spot. If you think you will have no trouble finding another option, then just do what you think is best given your financial situation.

At worst, you could try this place out for a year to see how the place is regarding the actual deer hunting. Will you have this place only to your family? Or will there be other hunters/strangers? If you can have it to just your family, I would be willing to pay more myself.

I see where you said 5 hunters. That is one maybe two more guns than I would feel comfortable at on any 400 acres (But only the land owner's opinion on that matters in the end). If they want 5 guns, then there better be a boat load of deer on it in my opinion. If you will be splitting the place 5 ways, and the deer hunting is not great, I would expect to pay at most $25 per acre or $2000 a gun. Now if it was only 4 guns on the place, That price would go closer to maybe $3000 per gun. I would not pay over $30 per acre for the entire place no matter what. But again, if it's not a problem financially, do what you wish and have fun on it.

I'm on the other end of it. My uncle was leasing the place out to his buddies but things have changed and I'm trying to get the revenue up to cover taxes etc. I just want it leased at market rate, whatever that is.

Gotcha. In that case, you can charge as much as someone is willing to pay lol. Another data point for you is my family pays $7500 total or $2500 a gun for a very good 350 acre lease in Kimble county. It has RV hookups and water available. No exotics unfortunately. If there were, price would be $3000 per gun I'm sure.

COSCAG67 said:

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I'm on the other end of it. My uncle was leasing the place out to his buddies but things have changed and I'm trying to get the revenue up to cover taxes etc. I just want it leased at market rate, whatever that is.

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In that case ignore my data point. I have a stupid good deal. If you have deer and habitat that holds them, you can certainly have a few hunters paying 2500 - 3000 per gun. If you have things like tanks or a creek with fish, a good camp site with water and power, and can give year-round access, you can probably get a bit more.