| Survey | Lease type | Reported $/acre | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri — MU Extension G427 (reprinted as G9420) | Any wildlife / deer | 2024 avg $21.45 any wildlife, $23.33 deer; IQR $15–$30 | 2024 | Freshest public survey — but n=11 any-wildlife and n=3 deer. Waterfowl ~$2,500/hunter |
| Georgia — UGA statewide (134 leases) | Deer (turkey on most) | avg $10.10; range $1–$21 | 2013 | Bare-land leases, avg 934 ac; pine cover higher than cutover |
| Georgia — UGA Circular C 971 | Deer | avg $16; range $10–$30+ | stated 2022, pub. rev. 2024 | Asserted with no survey, sample size or source named — see below |
| Kansas — K-State Ag Econ | Deer | avg $2.50; range $0.25–$12 | 2001–02 | Access-only; two decades old — treat as relative, not current |
| Louisiana — LSU AgCenter | All hunting | avg $5.32; premium waterfowl $60–70 | 2001 | Waterfowl figure includes blinds + managed units |
| Pennsylvania — Penn State | Forestland hunting | $1–$10+; typical $4–5 | pub. 2005 | Amenities "increase rates substantially" |
| Mississippi — MSU Ext. P2310 | Small game → quality deer | $0.50 → $25+ | rev. 2023 | Explicitly rule-of-thumb, not a survey |
Older surveys are shown because they're the published record — hunting lease markets have moved substantially since 2001-era data. Where a fresh number matters, the Missouri 2024 survey is the best public anchor, adjusted for your region's demand — but read its quartile range rather than its average, because the averages rest on as few as three responses.
The two Georgia numbers, and why we show both
Georgia appears twice in that table with figures that do not agree, and the disagreement is the point. The 2013 entry is a real survey: 134 leases, a stated average of $10.10 per acre, results broken out by cover type and region. The second entry comes from UGA Circular C 971, Tips for Creating a Hunting Lease Agreement, last revised October 2024, which states that in 2022 Georgia deer leases averaged about $16 per acre with a range of $10 to $30 or more. We went through that circular looking for what stands behind $16 — a survey, a sample size, a year of collection, a citation to somebody else's work — and there is none. It is a bare figure in an extension circular, which is not the same kind of object as a survey result, however recent the revision date.
We show it anyway, for a reason that has nothing to do with our confidence in it. If you search for what Georgia hunting ground leases for, UGA's $16 is what you will find, because it is newer and it is from a land-grant university. A page that quietly omitted it would look out of date to you, and you would have no way to tell whether we had missed it or discarded it. So it is in the table, labelled for what it is. Treat it the way you would treat a number an experienced local told you over a tailgate: probably in the right neighborhood, worth knowing, and not something to put in a contract. The honest reading of the two Georgia rows together is that leases there have risen since 2013 and that nobody has published a measurement of by how much.
Why the honest answer is a range, not a number
Every figure in the table above comes from a different state, in a different year, describing a different kind of agreement. Missouri's 2024 Extension survey covers any-wildlife and deer leases and is recent enough to reflect the current market, though it is thin: eleven responses behind the any-wildlife average and three behind each deer figure, which is why the $15–$30 quartile range is worth more to you than the $21.45 midpoint. Georgia's 2013 statewide work described bare-land deer leases with turkey usually included. Kansas State's 2001–02 figures describe access-only arrangements collected more than two decades ago. Louisiana's 2001 AgCenter survey pooled all hunting types together. These are not measuring the same product, and they are not measuring it at the same moment.
So this page will never hand you a national average, and you should distrust any page that does. Blending a 2001 Louisiana figure with a 2024 Missouri figure yields a number that describes no market anywhere — it is arithmetic performed on incompatible units, and the tidiness of the result hides how little it means. Read each survey as a range attached to its own state and its own year. Take the one closest to your ground and closest to the present, ignore its midpoint, and reason outward from your own parcel's facts.
What actually sets the price on your tract
Acreage and shape
The common belief is that large blocks lease for less per acre than small ones — that a hunter needs some minimum quantity of ground before a lease is worth having at all and will pay a premium to clear that threshold, and that past it each additional acre buys less. Treat that as an assumption to test, not as a finding. We went looking for the survey behind it and could not find one. Georgia's 2013 statewide work breaks its results out by cover type and by region but never cross-tabulates dollars per acre against tract size; K-State's Kansas survey reports a statewide average and range with no size stratification at all; Missouri's 2024 Extension survey records an average acres-per-lease figure but publishes no pricing by acreage class. None of them measures the relationship, in either direction. So if you believe it applies to your ground, encode it yourself — nudge the low and high dollars-per-acre you enter above down a little for a big block or up a little for a small one — and then replace the guess as soon as you have real local comparables, which is what a neighbor's signed lease or two answered advertisements will give you. Shape matters alongside size, and it is a separate question. A compact block hunts bigger than a long narrow strip of identical acreage, because a strip is nearly all boundary, and boundary means your hunters are permanently conscious of whoever is next door.
Cover, water and food
Habitat is the driver the surveys captured most directly — Georgia's 2013 results showed pine cover leasing above cutover, meaning the cover type itself registered in the price. Standing timber with a living understory, thickets, bedding cover and defined travel corridors all lift what a tract is worth to a deer hunter. Water lifts it further, and for waterfowl water is the entire proposition: the 2001 LSU AgCenter survey put premium waterfowl ground at $60–$70 per acre against an all-hunting average of $5.32, and Missouri's 2024 survey reports waterfowl at roughly $2,500 per hunter rather than per acre at all.
Food is the other half of the equation. Row crops on the property, or immediately across the fence, concentrate animals and extend the hours they spend somewhere visible. Corn, beans and small grains next door do work you never pay for. Where the food has to be manufactured, plots are the usual instrument — our food plot calculator sizes and prices that honestly.
Access, neighboring pressure and exclusivity
Road frontage, a gate that locks, an interior trail a side-by-side can navigate, and somewhere to park all raise the rate, because each reduces the friction of actually hunting. A tract reachable only by crossing somebody else's land is worth less no matter what grows on it. Drive time is demand in disguise: the same acreage ninety minutes from a metropolitan area leases above identical acreage five hours out.
Pressure along your boundary pushes the opposite direction. If adjoining parcels are leased to large clubs, opened to public hunting, or simply hunted hard, the animals on your ground are shared animals, and an experienced lessee will discount accordingly. Exclusivity is the thing a hunter is genuinely purchasing. One family or a small named group holding sole access commands more per acre than club-style membership spread thin, and a lease that carves out your own hunting, or a timber crew's comings and goings, is worth measurably less than one that does not.
Improvements and length of term
Stands, blinds, a camp with power and running water, a skinning shed, graded interior roads and established plots all add. Penn State's forestland work described amenities as increasing rates substantially, which matches the pattern across every other survey here — improvements are the distance between raw acreage and somewhere people want to spend a season. Settle in writing who owns them when the term expires.
Term length cuts both directions. A single-year agreement preserves your flexibility and lets you reprice each summer, but it gives the lessee no incentive to invest in plots, stands or habitat work, and it returns you to the market annually. A three-to-five-year term with a stated escalation buys a tenant who behaves like an owner. Landowners commonly report giving up a little per acre in exchange for a longer term, and often judge the stability worth it — but that too is a negotiating pattern rather than anything the published surveys measure, so treat the size of the discount as yours to set.
Per acre or per gun
Per-acre pricing is the default for deer ground and the format nearly every published survey reports in. It scales predictably, it compares directly against the record above, and it is what a hunting club expects to be quoted.
Per-gun pricing — also called per-hunter or per-membership — appears wherever value is not really a function of acreage. Waterfowl impoundments are the clearest instance, which is why Missouri's 2024 survey reports that species per hunter: what changes hands is a seat in a blind, not a fraction of a deed. Tightly managed quality-deer programs sometimes price the same way, since the binding constraint is the harvest allocation rather than the ground. Very small tracts drift toward per-gun quotes too, because per-acre math on a few dozen acres produces a figure too trivial to justify the paperwork.
Quote whichever suits the property, then audit yourself with the other. Multiply your per-gun price by the number of hunters you intend to permit, divide by huntable acres, and ask whether the implied per-acre rate is defensible against the survey for your state and year.
The landowner's side of it
What follows are considerations to raise with your own advisors. None of it is legal advice, and nothing here substitutes for an attorney licensed in the state where the property sits.
- Written lease, always — species and seasons covered, dates, acres mapped, named hunters and guest rules, vehicle/ATV rules, stand and camera rules, food plots and improvements, gates and access, fire rules, damage responsibility, subleasing ban, payment schedule, termination terms.
- Liability and insurance — hunt-lease liability policies exist, generally cost little relative to the rent, and commonly name the landowner as an additional insured. Ask your own carrier how a hunting lease interacts with an existing farm or ranch policy before assuming you are covered; some treat fee hunting as a separate commercial exposure.
- State law check — recreational-use statutes, waiver enforceability, and in some states landowner licensing or registration for fee hunting vary. Charging money can itself change how a recreational-use statute applies. Have an attorney licensed in the property's state review the lease.
- Tax and assessment — ask your accountant how the income should be reported and whether leasing recreation interacts with any agricultural assessment or conservation program already on the parcel.
What this tool cannot tell you
It cannot tell you what your tract is worth. It multiplies your acres by a rate you selected, so the rate carries the entire answer and the calculator merely handles the arithmetic and displays the spread. That is a planning estimate for a budget conversation, not an appraisal or a valuation of anything.
It cannot see your county. Lease markets are local to a degree statewide surveys already strain to represent; two counties within one state, one an hour from a city and one four hours beyond it, behave as separate markets. It cannot see this season either — the freshest survey on this page is Missouri's 2024, and every other row predates it, some by decades. Mississippi State's rule-of-thumb spread from $0.50 for small-game access up to $25 and beyond for quality deer management is published explicitly as judgment rather than measurement, and deserves to be read that way.
Above all, it cannot see demand. Whether three clubs are competing for your ground or nobody has called is the single largest determinant of what you will actually collect, and no published table measures it anywhere. The most reliable price discovery available is conversation: neighboring landowners who already lease, your regional wildlife biologist or conservation officer, a farm-management or forestry consultant, and wherever leases in your area get advertised. Post it, see who responds, and let the answer inform the rate rather than the other way round.
Then remember what you are signing. A hunting lease is a legal document that binds you and a group of strangers for a season or for several, on ground you own, and it is worth having reviewed by someone qualified before anyone puts a pen to it.
If the same ground also rents for crops or grazing, see cash rent — whether hunting rights are retained or conveyed changes what the farm lease is worth.