I see them for sale from time to time and see quite a few on my way to our place in Callahan County and was just curious if this is a profitable business or just a really rich man's hobby?

There wouldn't be so many of them if they weren't money making ventures.

And you have to have some coin before striking into the business.

And remember, high fences are to keep deer out, not in. LOL

The majority of high fence places don't run them as businesses or commercial hunting ventures for profit centers. Although there are the ones that do run commercial hunting, have web sites, advertise etc. Some do occasional hunts on a non commercial basis..word of mouth, friendships, business clients. Most owners have them to merely be able to manage their personal deer herds with goals of building a resident herd of quality deer by allowing them to age to maturity and reaching their potential……this coupled with having exotics for personal enjoyment. In addition many of these may do a few select hunts for friends, family, business associates or doing live animal sales.
Texas Wildlife Association and Exotic Wildlife Association have done multiple census that confirm that most high fences are not run as pay for hunt businesses.
To answer your question…..there are lots of numbers of high fence ranches. Many do commercial hunts….but majority don't run commercial hunting operations.

"Texas Wildlife Association and Exotic Wildlife Association have done multiple census that confirm that most high fences are not run as pay for hunt businesses."

How could one see one of those polls/census?

They send the survey forms out to members usually every couple of years or so. Also ask species data, harvest data, supplemental feed data, acreage sizes etc. Data typically shared within business meetings/seminars at their conventions.

I don't know any high fence ranch that runs a profit. Unless there is oil and gas on it.

Yes sir. The vast majority of the ones I worked with or dealt with when we had our place did it for their personal enjoyment. They may have sold a few hunts to recoup a little expense of feed bills or such….majority didn't want the liability risk or the cost of the liability insurance…which has become super expensive.

I know of quite a few people that have them merely for tax reasons. They are all wealthy from other businesses.

There are a lot simpler ways of using ag land as a tax advantage than trying to do hunts on deer or exotics imho.

DVM97 said:

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I don't know any high fence ranch that runs a profit. Unless there is oil and gas on it.

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I had some high fence ranch clients (but more that were not high fenced) and they lost a lot of money.


The largest was around 6,000 acres, had 6 guys that owned it, all older and all high rollers. Mostly did quail hunts though. They knew from day one there would be no money to be made other than on the sale of the property somewhere down the road.

Here is a good information piece on exotic ranches and on the numbers of high fenced Exotic Ranches in Texas. It states that there are about 5500 high fenced exotic ranches in Texas. 5000 of those either don't hunt the animals at all (or do live sales only) or personal enjoyment or occasionally hunt exotics on a non commercial basis.( not paid hunts to the public) Only 500 of the 5500 do commercial hunting to the public.
https://wildlifepartners.com/history-of-exotic-game/

Let's just say I know someone that is on their 4th ranch over the past 25 years.

The hunters fees currently just cover the feed bill. Sure, they could probably figure out ways to make more of the land but they are also trying to balance impact on the property.

They've only made money once they sell.

we have considered doing one. the only reason was to run enough hunts to cover the place so that we would have it for personal enjoyment for the entire year. but there are so many risks. disease/health, winter, etc make it where things can get ugly pretty quickly.

When we originally bought our ranch in 1990 we went into debt up to our eyeballs. It was just raw acreage. No improvements at all. No electricity, no wells, no structures and crappy fence. Nothing but rocks, cactus and cedar's. But we wanted our own land and we were willing to make sacrifices, live modestly, and thankfully had the ability to do most of the work ourselves. The price per acre paid was about average for that part of the hill country at the time. We were not anywhere near "rich". So I had to "poor boy" it and do most all the work ourselves from scratch.
After we figured out that if we ever wanted to have some really good deer we would have to high fence it.
This was because our neighbors all leased their land out for hunting and game management was not in their vocabulary. They shot anything and everything…..and we had a poaching issue.
So we decided to high fence it. I did 90% of the fence construction myself….working on it when I could.
We had no intention of selling hunts. We then, for fun, added some exotics. We never bought or brought in one single white tail ever. I knew we could not compete with the fancy game farms for hunts. But what we did was have a few exotic animal species and let them get mature and big.
Then we did limited hunts per year on those big animals and could get much more $$$ for them. Exotics only. We also did live animal sales on the exotics. I never sold a whitetail hunt or made one penny off of a whitetail. The whitetails were strictly for our personal enjoyment and for family and friends to hunt.
We advertised strictly by word of mouth. No fancy web sites etc.
Our goal was just to break even. The largest expenses every year was feed, feeders (As we could find no brands that really held up), liability insurance, equipment upkeep and maintenance, blinds, developing water sources, and constant range management work. Did I mention feed?
Some years we did break even . A couple of years actually made a little money. (Mainly due to live animal sales of the exotics). Some years we went in the hole. Owned the place for just at 30 years. Sold it and bought another….but it is not and never will be high fenced. To do it right and consistently turn a profit you need to be wealthy. I am not.

I think it's better to high fence and then breed exotics and sell those animals. A good friend of mine does exactly that and makes a pretty decent chunk as a side gig doing it and he only runs 50 acres. It is not his full time gig but supplements 30-50k with it. I don't know many details.

There isn't a world when I could imagine hunting would be profitable and I'm kinda happy to see that seems to be true. I've considered it on ours but the idea of having to deal with hunters and hunts that just seems like something I'm not interested in. The liability oh man…hard pass.

to really make money, I would think you have to sell the experience, not just the animal. Nice lodge, quality trophies, high end service/food. I still have a draw to it for some reason. I think it is because having taken some of our employees and some kids to a ranch we have been to, I really enjoy being part of peoples experiences. especially those that don't get to do that kind of thing often. The cost stops me short though.

Two friends of mine and I took four children on a management hunt on youth weekend several years ago. The place was high fenced and was bow only, had not been rifle hunted in like 20 years. The owner had brought in some high priced whitetails to improve his herd but had some deer he wanted culled and allowed rifle hunting for this group of kids over that long weekend. One of the other dads on the hunt was a good friend of the owners, thus we got to hunt. They had some really nice bucks, sure was hard telling a 7 year old this deer and that deer were too good for us to shoot, lol.

The owner and his son were in Ohio or Missouri on a bow hunt and we dealt strictly with his wife while there. Helped her fix a couple of feeders, filled all the feeders etc. She told us they made most of their money selling hog hunts and that people came from everywhere to hunt. The price per animal was much lower than a whitetail of course, but the success ratio was like right at 100%. I find it hard to drive 15 minutes to kill hogs, never thought anyone would travel much distance to do so.

You are spot on. The other thing is to be able to handle larger groups.
We had some real pleasant hunters but also some pure arrogant jerks.
The most enjoyable things for us was donating hunts for " Operation Orphans", Make a Wish ( until they became woke and quit allowing hunts) , Wounded Warriors, and we donated hunts to folks with terminal diseases.
We also donated hunts to CCA and EWA. That was always enjoyable. We miss that.

We had shy of two sections but I didn't want cross fences or such, so on our live animal sales we either captured by darting them ourselves or doing aerial capture (expensive but better on the animals). You always ran the risk of killing an animal.
Agree with you as we made the most income from raising and selling live animals…..however lots of other ranches sold, axis, blackbucks, fallow, aoudad, elk, and red deer.
We centered on super exotics like Zebra, Gemsbok, Addax, Scimitar, Waterbuck, Lechwe and a few Kudu and Gazelles.
Lots of high fenced places want the super exotics not necessarily for hunting, but to look at and enjoy seeing them. There was good money in those after the initial investment of getting a breeding pair or two.