Considering leasing your land for hunting but have a few questions? We can offer guidance on making your next decision.
Table of Contents
How to post land on hunting locator
What's it worth?
Check out our lease calculator to what your property could lease for!
Why you should lease your land
There are many tracks of land across the US that sit year to year without being hunted. These property owners are missing out on a wide spread of benefits that come from leasing their property. The first and most well known reason to lease is money. Owning land costs money and an easy way to recoup some funds could be signing a lease. With prices per acre ranging from $10 to $25 or higher, you can bring in a decent amount of money. Cover your property taxes for the year, maintain the roads and fences, anything that hurts your wallet by having the property. Outside of money, there are many benefits that fly under the radar until you lease your property.
Security
You may think it’s unsafe to have hunters on your property but we find that it is often quite the opposite. Having hunters actively using the property will keep poachers and unwanted people from trespassing. The hunters who paid you want to keep the land protected as much as you so you’ll have a force of watch guards with trail cameras patrolling your property for most of the year.
Land Management
Get tired of getting the tractor out to fix the roads around your property? Don’t do it anymore. Every lease is different and unique but you can have maintaining roads and other features a responsibility of the hunter. Even if it isn’t in writing, a hunter needs to be able to use the property and will be willing to put in the work to make it usable. A lot of guys already plan on bringing a tractor over. To prepare for the season they’ll be mowing trails to their stands, planting plots, and maintaining the property so they can use it. This is good for you too.
Crop and Livestock Protection
If you’re a farmer or use the land for agricultural purposes, unmanaged wildlife can be a nuisance. You may have too many deer that are eating your seedling crops. Maybe you have too many coyotes and they’re picking off your calves or eating your chickens. The wildlife on your property can be easily controlled by allowing people to hunt them. A property well managed by hunters will have a healthy population of game animals without them being a nuisance. And just the hunting pressure alone can keep them from walking out into your field or sneaking into your coop.
Posting on Hunting Locator
Do you own a few remote acres you plan to build on one day? Or maybe you have a 10,000 acre farm that you don’t hunt yourself? Why not post your property for FREE on Hunting Locator? I’ll cover the many benefits to leasing your property in the next section but to start, posting on Hunting Locator is easy. Follow this step-by-step guide.
First Step
From any page on the site, find the Post a Lease button and select it. This will take you to our form to input your lease information.
Second Step
Select getting started and follow the prompts to tell us about your lease.
1. Basic Info
The First section of information you’ll be asked to give only needs a name of your lease and what length of lease it is.
Expert Tip - Title your lease something short and catchy, make it unique.
A good example of this could be “600 Acres close to Atlanta” or, if your property has a name, “Spring Creek Hunt Club needs members.” Anything that will catch a hunter’s eye and make them want to click more. A lot of hunters are attracted to location and money so mentioning where your property is or that it’s a club so it’s probably less expensive will draw attention.
2. Lease Information
The next section asked for very general information regarding your lease. Information like price, size, animals, and weapon are filled in here.
Expert Tip - Don’t be afraid to check a lot of boxes
If people hunt with rifles on your property, why not let them use bows, shotguns and muzzleloaders? If most people hunt deer but you have a healthy population of Turkeys, check that box as well. When hunters are filtering through properties they may have one animal or hunting technique in mind, if you don’t select that option they may never see you lease.
3. Location
The title says it all. Tell us where your property is. Don’t worry though, we only want the zip code, county, and State so no one will be showing up at your door unannounced.
Expert Tip - Enter the closest city that people have heard of.
You may be near a town that all of the locals know by heart, but when someone from out of state is scrolling your ad, they’ve likely never heard of it. An easy technique for this would be to find your property on an online map and zoom out until you can see the whole state. The closest city with a name still showing would be a good choice.
4. Photos
If you have 1000 acres, a couple pictures won’t start to show what all is offered, but it can be a good start. Put up to 6 photos of your property on the ad.
Expert Tip - Be selective. We suggest putting up a picture of a successful hunt, as well as unique aspects of your property. This could be a body of water, a planted field, or a campground.
5. Contact
How do we reach you? We won’t give out your information but we’ll need a way to send you notifications when someone is interested.
Expert Tip - If you get a notification from us that someone is interested, just reply to the email. Your response will be automatically sent via our messaging system.
6. Description
Tell us more about your property in your own words. The more descriptive you are, the less repetitive questions you may have to answer when people start contacting you.
Expert Tip - Put yourself in the hunter’s shoes and answer those questions.
This could mean describing the exact price, number of members, property access, stands, plots, etc. Anything the hunters may want to know before signing a lease.
Third Step
Sit back and wait
It won’t be long until someone sends you a message. We have 1000s of hunters a day searching our site and many hunters with property alerts that are going to go off as soon as you post your property. Talk to the people who reach out and pick someone you’re comfortable with entrusting your property to.
Legalities
An area of leasing that makes some landowners uncomfortable is the legal responsibility of it. While this is a valid concern, this is where the lease document comes into play. Besides making sure the hunters pay and having their information on hand, this protects you.
You don’t ever want someone falling and breaking a bone on your property but the only thing worse would be to have that happen and then have a lawsuit to deal with. Include a part of the lease that puts all liabilities on the hunter so they can’t put the blame on you.
Set rules that limit the chance of injuries. Some examples would be that hunters must use all safety equipment when riding an ATV and climbing a tree stand. You may limit the time they can access the property. Can they bring alcohol on the property? What firearms are they allowed to use? You own the land, you can make any rule that makes you more comfortable to have them out there.
At the end of the day we can only offer suggestions on how you handle your lease. For best practice, have a lawyer draw up a lease agreement for your specific situation to make sure you're covered.