I live in Louisiana and hunt in Mississippi and pay the following cost for whitetail hunting:

$700 lease fee (includes electricity for camp, water, seed, trash, etc..) the actual lease is around $500.
$300 out of state license fee
$38 in state license fee

Roughly about $1,000 before fuel, food, ammo, etc... which runs several hundred per year.

The max. I would pay for hunting is $1,000 for the lease, license fees $500. If prices went up any higher I could afford it but would hunt in Louisiana on a lease for around $400-$500 or go fishing a lot more.
I won' t hunt public land with my son (even know I did my whole life) because of the " so called" hunters that make it to unsafe for my liking.

Did Elvis go somewhere?
I wouldn' t and won' t pay to hunt, but like others have said there is alot of public land so I' ve never had to worry about it. If I am going to start throwing money at someone I would rather buy by own property, atleast that way it is mine. I bought 5+ acres for under $8,000 (It boarders public land). Now some of you say you pay $1200 or more per year to hunt, lets say you hunt for 15 years, that comes to $18,000. You could have bought a nice chunk of land for that amount of money, and it would be yours. You would be the one making the rules and deciding who could hunt on the property.

Maybe this wouldn`t be so hard, if your question dealt with reality. I can`t discuss how much I would pay to hunt without relating it to what I am paying now. But you don`t want that information.

Wouldnt pay a dime, hunt public land before I would pay.

just tell me what it costs to hunt that place, and I will do what I can to go hunt there. Hard to say what your final offer is.

I don' t mind spending a little money on hunting, I spend just as much doing little vacations with the family.

Hi bob, How you doing. Do I know you? You seem to know me or at least what I think or want! But that does not matter becouse your info is wrong. Sorry.
My question does deal with reality. May not be your yet but its coming. The purpose of this question is to address the increase in hunting cost and the decrease in open hunting. This IS a trend across the United States. Just becouse you may not be affected, yet, does not make it less real.
I have family in Texas, Kansas, Col., Neb. and Okla. I have good friends in many other states. In talking with them they are faceing the same problems. Farmers/ranchers are fighting losses with a new type income. HUNTING. Birds to big game all has $$$ on them.
The so called public land here has so many hunters on them its dangerous. I have talked with park rangers that say they will not go out during hunting season.
I have also hunted in these here in Texas and I agree with them.
This does not mean its that way everywhere. These areas are decreasing in size due to Projects may be going on.
Hay but no problems. Just wanted to know what each of you thought was too much to pay to hunt.
Thanks,
Rick

Truthfully I cringed at your little Elvis thing. Now I know some of you boys only can hunt leases or whatever and hunting probably doesn' t mean the same to you as it does to me. I hunt the Rockies and the fact that its open public land is half of hunting to me. To be able to go find country the is so deep and rugged you probably couldn' t give it away is part of the ultimate experience for me. If I had to pay to use someone elses land to hunt then I' d probably hang it up. Just wouldn' t be the same.

Thank you for the clarification JRW...

In response to " just a lease" ....I honestly do not know. I would be willing to pay something as long as it did not drastically impact the rest of my current financial burdens...

RATHER said: " If I had to pay to use someone elses land to hunt, I would probably just hang it up"

Whew, you must not be as passionate about hunting as I am. Also, you are already " paying" to hunt: license, gas, gun, ammo, etc.... It is just a question about how much you are willing to pay to hunt. For instance, if there was suddenly NO, repeat NO public hunting, I bet you would pay $1 to hunt someone elses land. The question is how much more than $1 would you pay.

Anyone who says if public land is NOT available and wouldn' t pay $1 to hunt some land I would not believe.

As far as this not being " reality" , it may not be for them in their current situation, but it certainly is a reality of places like Texas.

Bottom line is that it is all what you are used to , what you grew up with.

One more thing. Most states with plenty of public land to hunt have at most 1-2 weeks of hunting season (excluding archery season). In Texas, where the lease is about all most people have as an option, you can hunt the entire month of October (archery), a TWO MONTH long regular gun season, and a month of turkey season in the spring. That is a lot of hunting compared to most Public land hunts in other states. Also, bag limits of 4 deer, 2 turkeys, etc, which is much more liberal than the bag limits on most public land hunts. In other words, you do get more bang for your buck$.

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