Hello all, I've been reading this forum for about a month now, and yall have alot oof interesting and funny posts here. I've noticed some of yall saying things like "yeah I know so and so, so I hunt the land for free.."
and etc.. Well, I was wondering how many of you pay for a lease to hunt on and if not what do you do for hunting land, your own, public or what? Here in Texas I have always heard public sucks and so I have always hunted leases. I wish I knew someone with land, of any hunting value anyway.. I have some land of my own right behind the Pecan Bend State Park off the Brazos but it is restricted..

Welcome to the huntingnet, Ericstac!
Seeing that you are a Texas hunter, you probably know that most land in Tx. is private! There is a lots of cheaper, "Type II" hunting lands, mostly in East Texas, and National Forest lands are still free. At least I think they are still free! These lands produce good deer every year, but with the hunting pressure, to me it is not worth the hassle! Timber Company hunting "clubs," are going up, but are still worth the expense of not fighting the public! I will probably be looking to the southwesten areas of the Hill Country for private property next year!

I'm so glad the leasing of hunting land is not yet common practice here in the northeast. The unspoken rule here is that if it's not posted, you can hunt it, though it is still best to ask landowner permission first in order to ensure that open land stays open.

I hunted Polk County a couple seasons a while back on some land a large paper company owns but it was real productive. The last few years I've been hunting Real County and still not real productive. This season I went to a lease further east in Real county and had some success tagging a nice 8 pointer. But jees them leases down there are expensive. whats the Timber Company hunting Clubs?
The private land you are looking for next year, are you looking for a personal lease or purchase? If a lease are you looking for one that has guys already on it or one that is just looking for something small like two guns for the entire lease?

Our Vt heritage has always been for open lands.Most of the old Vt farmers would always welcome hunters. Now much of the land has been sold andthe new ownerswho didn't grow up in our friendly culture are saying no and posting in record numbers. I started to huntNH, Maine and NY.

My family owns a farm here and I hunt on another guys property about 3 hours from my house. He just want to get rid of the deer! He doesn't charge us anything. We do hunt some public land and the hunting is just as good as private.


[/align]

i hunt public land here in florida. to lease private land in this area...expect to pay between $4,000.00 to $8,000.00 a year. i love to hunt more than anything but there is no way i can afford that kind of price. kinda sucks when you think about though...no matter how good of a hunter i am or how much time i put in the woods...the reallity of me getting a B&C buck is obsolete while hunting public land here in florida.

Leasing land will become more and more necessary, unless you are going to hunt public land. Many of the larger paper companies are selling their timberlands, and depending on who buys the lands, a lot of people are going to be without their old hunting land. International Paper, the largest of the paper company landowners, is about to sell over 6,000,000 acres and that is going to impact a lot of hunters. If you have a private lease, you need to do everything you can to hold on to it.

Here in Texas I pay to hunt (1100 acres in freestone/limestone counties. We have a little bit of land (125 acres) that does have a few deer but not enough for good hunting. In Mississippi I hunt for free. Its nice to have friends.

-john

I am not a trophy hunter. I just want a good experience of being in the woods hunting deer under "free chase" conditions. I live in Texas and don't want to pay $1,500 to lease land to hunt deer. I go to Oklahoma where a niece's husband has access to 160 acres of land suited to deer hunting where I can hunt free. I have taken a deer there every year since I started in 2002 -- including both a buck and a doe this year. These deer are not record book deer. My buck this year field dressed 110 LBS and had a 3x4 rack with an inside spread of about 12 inches. My does field dress between 80 LBS and 100 LBS. I pay $250 for non-resident combination (doe and buck) tag. I prefer this to paying $1,500 to lease in Texas.

If I had to pay $1,500 to lease land, I would prefer to go hunt elk in Colorado. A DIY hunt can be done on public land in Colorado, and if you are willing to backpack in a couple of miles off the roadsI don't think you are going to be overrun with other hunters (horse enabled hunters will go in further). I hope to test this idea in a cow elk hunt in a Colorado wilderness area in 2006.

I dislike the idea of paying to hunt, so even if I could afford the lease -- and frankly I think I could afford the $1,500 annual lease -- I don't want to do that. To me this seems to encourage this practice which tends to the elimination of hunters who are not financially able to pay lease prices.

I mention the fact that I am not a trophy deer hunter because if I were I believe I would be compelled to pay to lease land or even more expensive hire an outfitter. It is my perception that if you want the best chance of bagging a very large deer you go to where the largest deer have historically been taken. Outfitters usually have already scoped out these same productive areas and have leased any private land that is promising. Thus, if you want access to these productive private lands you need to pay the outfitter. Public land that produces large deer probably have some quota system in place -- or else all the large deer would have been eliminated already -- and then you are in a situation of playing the tag lottery rather than hunting.

I try to give gifts to my niece's husband and the father of my niece's husband (the father actually leases the property for cattle range).