Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Lost my East Texas Lease

I've never leased any land to hunt on. Growing up I was fortunate to have had family that owned a lot of land that I could hunt on, in addition to the neighbors who let me hunt. As I got older, I acquired land of my own, and currently have 300 acres of pretty fair deer and turkey hunting. My in-laws have several thousand acres that I can hunt on if I wanted to, but I usually don't ask as they have some grandkids that sometimes hunt. Also, I have a couple of friends that let me hunt coyotes on their farms.

Having said that.......the best deer and turkey hunting in my locale is a few miles north of me, and if I could lease a farm there, and didn't have to pay an arm and a leg, I would. But, hunting land there is a hot commodity, with out of staters paying huge prices to lease it. Come deer season here in my part of Kentucky, you see more trucks with Georgia and Florida plates on them, as you do in state plates.

Hanco, sorry to hear that. Been meaning to PM you and see exactly how you build your hog pen trap gates. I need to set one up on the family farm in Nacogdoches.last year we had a sounder with at least 30 pigs in it. Any chance of buying one off of you since ya got to move everything out from Woodville?

I've paid to hunt before, it just wasn't cash money. I've moved hay bales, mended fences, picked up trash and junk left by trespassing hunters, and helped paint a barn, at different times, and places, in exchange for hunting privileges. Either way, it is an exchange of value for the land owner.
My biggest issue with leases, is that so many places get closed off from my type of value exchange due to cash is king, wallet hunters. More places get lost to the deapest pockets every year.
I've seen company lease the Rights for thier employees only, or buy up the rights around the property they are hunting, to prevent competition from getting THIER deer. I don't like this trend.

No matter where you hunt, and by what legal methods you chose to use, I wish you well this hunting season, gentlemen.

In my post I wasn’t shot at, merely shots fired prior to daylight...“any” daylight. I was in my tree stand, well before light, and when the shots were fired....I got rather intimate with the tree, not knowing which direction the shots were fired! Unlikely to be hit, but you pucker-up, none the less! memtb

I was on the ground, bow hunting during gun season (legal). Idiot shot at movement, I think. Hit a large tree behind me.

GunDoc7, I really dont know what brand one of the pirogue's is. It was my wife's grandfathers and he gave it to her, cause she liked to fish. it's fiberglass and has been reworked so many times that it now weighs a ton. It's got to be 50 yrs old or older, but its a Ferrari. Easiest paddling I've ever done.

My old one is also fiberglass, weighs 2 tons, and is like paddling a boxcar. I usually hook a trolling motor to it. It's almost 50 yrs old. I forget the brand name, but it was made in Marshall, Tx.

Neither of these are as fancy as a Ron Chapman.

After reading this whole thread, the only conclusion that I can come to is: If youre one of those fortunate ones that actually gets paid for your ptsd, you probably should avoid hunting public land.

1.lmao at "bullets whizzing thru the air"
2.lmao at "hitting the deck every time i hear a rifle shot"

Note* how bout not being a 'walk-around-all-day-Elmer-Fudd' and extending some goddamm hunter courtesy to others that may be out there before you decided to stroll in at 9 fugging AM after your foray to the waffle house first.

Hanco, so sorry to hear you lost that lease. I hope you'll find another close place to hunt.

One way to cure the problem of large timber companies charging confiscatory rates for hunting rights would be to institute substantial progressive property taxes on land that go up as acreage holdings increase. In Louisiana privately held companies own hundreds of thousands of acres of timber and are busy trying to squeeze smaller land owners out by keeping the price of timber sales on small tracts down and constantly badgering heirs to sell their shares so they can file legal actions to force out the other owners. I am lucky enough to hold 300 acres in my ownership which gives us plenty of whitetail deer and hog hunting. I get form letters all the time from the companies wanting to buy land or undivided interest in land. My friends that lease have to face all kind of restrictions along with continual rises in lease rent. Income tax is progressive and maybe land tax should be also. I see families pushed off their places and very little decent land is for sale to individuals as the big companies have lawyers constantly in courthouses doing title searches and driving wedges in property ownership parcels. The leases around here started out pretty cheap but now they are outlandish. I have one 100 acre place that a hunter begged me to let him have for $1000 a year cash under the table just so he could hunt in a place that was close enough he could sleep in his own house. Bottom line is the big companies block most people from acquiring a small (100-300 acres) piece of land and they depress the timber value of the smaller individual landowner.

Sandbilly you are a straight up [bleep]. Your a jealous small minded man. Get over yourself dumbass.

Bill

Oldman3, I never thought of Chapman boats as fancy, just nicely built. I had one for a while, but it wasn't suited to the intended use. I wanted to fish the flats of the Texas coast, and it caught too much wind. A flat, sit on top kayak worked better for that. But I was impressed with the boat and the people a Chapman's. Just good people.

Lease hunting does have some advantages.
You know who is on the land. Most hunting accidents in Texas involve people falling from stands, not getting shot. If they do get shot, it is usually due to unsafe "administrative" gun handling as opposed to the unsafe gun handling of getting shot by someone you don't know.
You can manage the game so that inferior bucks are removed early in life and the better bucks have time to grow up. This is not to say they are tame or managed like cattle, only that some rules are followed about what you shoot. (That said, I was on a lease for three years where you were allowed only one "good" buck a year. I was always holding out for a taxidermy worthy buck. I passed up a number of bucks over the years that would have been great in a year or two, but were good enough for other hunters at the time. I'd be saying "Nice deer" while thinking "$h!t, I passed on him two weeks ago. Actually had the crosshairs right where they belonged and my thumb on the safety. Oh well. Someday." But those other guys were following the rules, so it was what it was. I never got that taxidermy buck, but I did shoot plenty of deer off the place. Whining over.)

And of course there are disadvantages and opportunities for abuse.
One of the reasons people hunt from stands is that you need to know where people are, or at least you ought to know. If you have five people hunting 1000 acres, it is not all that productive or safe if all are moving about the property. In the western US, where it is often easy to get in a spot and see 1000 acres, or sometimes much more, the concept of a hunter per 200 acres, sometimes less, seems ludicrous. Much depends on the size of the place, the number of hunters, number of hunters that day, fences, other surrounding properties (and how those properties are or are not hunted), just all manner of things. There are sometimes disadvantages you must work around, and sometimes you are pretty much forced to do things you'd rather not do. Not illegal things, but forced to hunt in ways you'd avoid if you could.

There are some great thoughts on this thread. But there are also some poorly thought out judgemental comments (or maybe carefully thought out comments from some overly judgemental aholes.) People who are lucky enough to have access to lots of land, be it public, due to relatives, due to good relationships with the landowners, or due to being wealthy enough to lease it or even own it, aren't "superior" people. They just happen to have, for whatever reason, great circumstances.

Everyone can spin this however they want based on their own biases and what they are used to. You have to remember that neither "public land" nor "leasing" is generic. Either can be great or crappy depending on.....wait for it.......the conditions WHERE YOU LIVE!

Lmao. You forgot broke dick.

I've hunted public, private, and managed a small lease.

The leasing was by far the most stressful and least fun. Made the best of it though and had a place to take my family and fugk off.

I wholeheartedly agree.

You should tell him more via PM.

I live in a state with a small amount of public land. I love to hunt, I don't own land yet, so I exercise the options I have. I have a lease that I've been on for 17 years now.

It is an hour and a half from my house. No, I can't walk out my back door and go hunting (believe me, I'd love to be able to). But, on a Friday after work, I can be at a place every weekend of the year if I choose to be, hunting deer for 3.5 months of the year, quail for 4 months and hogs and varmints year round. No funky seasons or draws to worry about. I can spend time with my boys and a couple of great friends just messing around.
I can hunt from a blind. I can spot and stalk. I can wonder around and hike a bit. Nothing like I can do on wide open public land, but I can do it at will, which I can't on public land in my area.

So, you self righteous asses that crow "if you can't hunt public land, you're not a hunter and you suck and blah blah blah. Well, that's just pathetic. Don't we have enough other things to worry about than tearing each other down for working with what we have available to us that allows us to enjoy the outdoors?

By the way, I have also hunted public land in SW CO for the last 17 years for elk, bear and deer. All do it yourself, no guides. So yes, that is an outstanding opportunity that I take advantage of for 10 days every year. I wish I could do it on the same schedule that I can with my lease. But, it's not possible.

I wish the best to all who are enjoying the outdoors in solitude, with friends and/or family, on public, private or whatever land they can do it on. Fact is, they're out there.

Hunting is a killer, ain't tit?

Real successful people have cable TV, when they hunt.

Do you watch hunting shows while hunting? Lol

Here is a website that explains a lot of what this thread is about. Note the # of acres of public land in the states and the # of acres per person to hunt. I realize that not everyone hunts, but by using the same measuring stick for each state, it's about as accurate as we're gonna get.

https://www.backcountrychronicles.com/public-hunting-land/

Gundoc7, we get only one buck a year, period. No matter what season, method or weapon. Does vary from 3-6 each year due to herd sizes.