Question for SE U.S. hunters

[quilbilly]

In the last 18 months, a timber company primarily from the SE U.S. bought the timberlands of a local timber company here on the east side of the Olympic Mountains near Hood Canal (a saltwater fjord). This summer they announced they were going to charge leasing fees to hunt or even gather mushrooms on parcels from 10 to 300 acres. To us, their fees sound absurd for deer hunting (no elk in this area). Most of this company's holding are in Louisiana, across to NE Florida.
My question is what the going rate is to lease whitetail hunting rights on a 200 acre parcel of tree farm, for instance, in Louisiana or NE Florida???
My explanation to people who have asked me about this is that the bean counters are comparing our blacktail deer country locally where the limit is one per year with whitetail country where the limit might be as much as 2-3 per day. What the bean counters don't know is that in my neighborhood (I live across the creek from one their small parcels), we are awash in mountain lions. The deer population is very, very thin. Three different mountain lions have visited my small acreage in the last two months alone according to my trail cams a few yards from the house.
Is $2500 to lease hunting and recreation rights on a 200 acre parcel for 9 months normal?

[Winger Ed.]

Is $2500 to lease hunting and recreation rights on a 200 acre parcel for 9 months normal?

Here, lease rates are 'so much' for the acreage, with a limit on how many shooters are allowed, and sometimes restrictions
on what, which, and how many game animals are allowed to be taken.
It would usually look something like: "300 acres, $600., 3 guns, hogs and all legal deer".

You'd need to know how many guns/shooters are allowed on it, and if there is a certain total bag limit for the property.
Also, if it included all hunting rights for the period--- squirrels, birds, etc. or just deer.
Is the $2500. just for one or each person, or can the fee be spit among a given number of others?

If it's $2500. for one person-- I'd think going to a professional game ranch for a 3 day weekend would be cheaper,
a much better guarantee of success, and the accommodations better.

[trails4u]

Seems high to me, particularly if the game numbers are low. Most leases here are pretty wide-open about what you can kill, which is why people do it....they can fill their freezers without having to deal with the issues that come with public land hunting.

[OFFSHORE]

I hunt Florida, Georgia and Alabama, and prices will range from $8.00 to $20.00 per acer for the year of use. . .then there is always liability insurance which varies in price due to amount of members and a few other factors, all in all that fee is not horrendous. Their price of $12.50 per acre is not to far off base, but it does depend on the quality of the land.

[ABJ]

Ours is in North GA. it is $11.00 per acre, per year. That includes the insurance the property owner requires. Anything legal per state regs. is allowed. One person per 25 acres give or take. That kinda depends on the property topo.
Tony

[rancher1913]

hunting aint what it once was. if you dont want to fight with everybody else on state land then you are forced to pony up to hunt private land. I have a small lake and some fields that encompass about 30 acres, I put it up for bid this spring and had offers as high as 6 grand, sight unseen. I went with 2 fathers and their young sons and get enough to pay my property taxes on the whole farm/ranch which is the only reason I lease the ground. in the big picture this model will kill hunting for the little guy with no money and the sport will lose hunters but landowners simply can not leave money on the table when they have bills to pay.

[white eagle]

In the last 18 months, a timber company primarily from the SE U.S. bought the timberlands of a local timber company here on the east side of the Olympic Mountains near Hood Canal (a saltwater fjord). This summer they announced they were going to charge leasing fees to hunt or even gather mushrooms on parcels from 10 to 300 acres. To us, their fees sound absurd for deer hunting (no elk in this area). Most of this company's holding are in Louisiana, across to NE Florida.
My question is what the going rate is to lease whitetail hunting rights on a 200 acre parcel of tree farm, for instance, in Louisiana or NE Florida???
My explanation to people who have asked me about this is that the bean counters are comparing our blacktail deer country locally where the limit is one per year with whitetail country where the limit might be as much as 2-3 per day. What the bean counters don't know is that in my neighborhood (I live across the creek from one their small parcels), we are awash in mountain lions. The deer population is very, very thin. Three different mountain lions have visited my small acreage in the last two months alone according to my trail cams a few yards from the house.
Is $2500 to lease hunting and recreation rights on a 200 acre parcel for 9 months normal?

sounds like a total rip off to me
2500 to hunt is absurd

[ikarus1]

Yeah I hunt public wildlife refuges, in NC, and it costs $12.50 per applicant for 30K acres and a 200 hunter limit.

So yeah I wouldnt pay insane prices to lease land in the Florida or La swamps

[quilbilly]

Thank you all for the input on how it works and costs elsewhere. The fee here is per hunter per car. Yes, it is a ripoff from what you are saying.
One interesting part is that there is also a checkerboard of public land in small parcels adjoined the timber company's land but the deer are just as scarce there. There is not much to tell you which land is which either but I understand a new smart phone app called onyx helps with that. Being a local and having collected timber harvest plans from many of those public parcels over the years, I know exactly where they are.
For those interested in our blacktail deer's response to four legged predation, about seven years ago I lost one of my favorite "honey holes" for deer to an invasion of mountain lions. For the next five years I saw no deer sign whatsoever and it is only in the last two years that deer are starting to reoccupy again. It took two lions to clean out the deer in about six months and, yes, I saw them both up close and personal. The situation was unique because it was on a small peninsula (15 sq miles) bounded on three sides by deep salt water and HWY 101 on the fourth. This is a classic ecological drama much like jackrabbits and coyotes in the desert southwest.
Hopefully the timber company is getting rude awakening. It may help that our fish&wildlife agency will quit planting thousands of trout in those three lakes on that land since the public is losing access.
Please keep the information coming so I can answer people's questions about these hunting leases more intelligently.

[badguybuster]

Thats an absurd amount. We pay 550 for access to 11000 acres, limited to 72 members.

[white cloud]

I am a timber tract owner in S.C. Around here leasing your timber tract nets you about $2 per acre after insurance, etc.

[Finster101]

Sounds like time for a lion hunt.

[Rapier]

Sounds lke a big timber company, we have a few here bouts. They way they work is to make a $ buck, no pun intended, on everything they do. They have no interest in what is fair. It really does not matter how much is charged in MS or GA or FL, it is what they feel they can charge for access. They are also familiar with the local trespass laws, on agricultural land.
Suggest you find another area that is more suitable to you, if you have a problem with their rules, regulations or rates.
By the way, if they lease the plot across the creek, you will have more than cougars on your place.

[starnbar]

It has been awhile since we had a hunt club we had a parcel which included a old FWC plot called perpetual amd we paid 70. dollars a year for 5000 acres turkey, deer, and hogs, coyotes were open season you see em you shoot em this was right out side OLD Town Fl.

[Grayone]

Sounds lke a big timber company, we have a few here bouts. They way they work is to make a $ buck, no pun intended, on everything they do. They have no interest in what is fair. It really does not matter how much is charged in MS or GA or FL, it is what they feel they can charge for access. They are also familiar with the local trespass laws, on agricultural land.
Suggest you find another area that is more suitable to you, if you have a problem with their rules, regulations or rates.
By the way, if they lease the plot across the creek, you will have more than cougars on your place.

This is good advice!

[quilbilly]

Sounds lke a big timber company, we have a few here bouts. They way they work is to make a $ buck, no pun intended, on everything they do. They have no interest in what is fair. It really does not matter how much is charged in MS or GA or FL, it is what they feel they can charge for access. They are also familiar with the local trespass laws, on agricultural land.
Suggest you find another area that is more suitable to you, if you have a problem with their rules, regulations or rates.
By the way, if they lease the plot across the creek, you will have more than cougars on your place.
I would be willing to bet we are talking about one of the same companies that I have been hesitant to name since they control a lot of land in NW Florida. The people around Forks, Washington detest the company for what it did to access to their world famous steelhead rivers let alone what they charge for hunting leases there due the elk. It ruined a big portion of their tourist economy that depended on abundant bank fishing opportunities( I have business customers there and I have heard all about it). It is well known they are not a good neighbor. Luckily there will be plenty of good hunting opportunities to hunt deer around here on those hidden public land parcels once the deer populations begin to recover in a few years after the lions die out. I do like to muzzleloader mule deer hunt out in the desert just over the Cascades anyway.
Thanks again to all for the wonderful information you are sending to me. You never know where a trail might lead.

[Thin Man]

In TN the paper mills own many large and small tracts that are designated as Wildlife Management Areas. Any legal hunter with the proper state license (permit) can hunt these lands. I hunted one of these when it had various hardwood groves and the hunting was very good. Then the owner companies removed all the hardwood and replaced them with pine plots. The deer thinned out quickly. Next we joined in with various lease opportunities from company lands that were not public access (WMA) lands and quickly learned that the local hunters who had hunted these lands for years kept using them without buying into the lease. We often hunted on week-ends and the locals in the middle of the week, so that concept went away. Now we are looking into leasing privately owned land to hunt but most land owners are reluctant to offer their land to anyone outside of their family. Even the State officials issued notice of the scarce deer populations on the WMA's due to timber harvesting and explained that the timber companies only care about their wood crop and the hunters mean little to them. Now with building materials in high demand at even higher prices I predict these lands may become barren of all growth except for the recently planted seedlings.

[Rapier]

What actually happened was pine pulp wood was $6 a ton. The high grade paper made from hard woods went way up, sent hardwoods to $67 a ton. Over 10x the value of pines. That is what happened to your hardwood trees. I own a tree farm, still have my hardwood trees, left them for the critters. The fellow across the road bought 100 acres, built a house, etc., discovered the previous owner cut all the hardwoods off of it, no deer or turkey on his place, he watches the herds of deer and the turkeys on my place, calls me on the phone, etc.

[Daekar]

Based on my experience with hunting leases in West Virginia, that $2500 is absolutely criminally high. Some sucker might pay it, but I darn sure wouldn't.

[Harter66]

Here in Arkansas 100 acres backed up to USFS is about $3k per year .

It is generally left to the prime lease party to determine counts . Leases are annual and generally subject to general leasee care in terms of plots lanes and access . Based on my limited interaction .
You get 3 tags with your annual license and can buy 3-7 more depending on specific areas ......then there's the private property rules .
Hogs are open season , they do have to show up 2x in 48 hr to ensure they aren't domestic runaways .
I don't know that are seasonal restrictions .
This applies to private property and owners rules .
Major lease with sublet is another bucket of snakes .

[Winger Ed.]

Sounds lke a big timber company, we have a few here bouts. They way they work is to make a $ buck, no pun intended, on everything they do. They have no interest in what is fair.

Sounds like they have 'the suspender boys' in charge of marketing and charge the most the market will bear.

I'm not sure how it is now, but in years past huge parts of East Texas was old growth pine trees, owned by the paper companies.
You could hunt on their properties as if it was public/govt. land for free.
They had their own rangers & wardens all over the place, but their main concern was making sure nobody got careless with fires.

I'm not sure, but back then, the companies might have thought that if they went all stupid with hunting restrictions & fees,
there might be a big outbreak of forest fires.

[quilbilly]

Over the last 18 months I have never seen logging on such a vast scale done at what I call "light speed". The market being what it was, they were logging what we locals call toothpicks. The previous local timber company owner of the now leased lands turned thousands of acres of evergreens into prairies almost overnight. One 150 acre parcel was logged flat in three days and that was big timber.
As a previous responder noted, firs and pines do not make good deer habitat so the new "prairies" bordering on treed state owned parcels will now be prime forage areas for deer when mountain lion number start to decline. The previous owners of the 20-30,000 acres allowed walk-in, bicycle, or horseback only hunting and I suspect this new company has found out what the traffic will bear for leases considering thin deer numbers, no feral hogs, no turkey, and no elk. It would be cheaper for them to go back to previous rules rather than create incredible ill will as well as run expensive enforcement 365 days a year. Yesterday I checked some of the areas of the expensive leases and all the signs had been torn down and one of the neighbors said plenty of cars were parked at the locked gates on the last two days of the modern firearm season. I do not envy the enforcement guy who works for the new company since he was thoroughly disliked around here even before the season.