Would you lease land for hunting?

NO! I would leave my land open to hunting unless there presented a serious enough problem that I had to close it and limit access.

We all know that eventually we will all be faced with this situation. I was reading where North Dakota has a program called PLOTS - Private Lands Open to Sportsmen. The state pays landowners to leave their land open to hunting.

There used to be virtually no private land available to hunt on in N. Dakota. It was all leased out to guide services and hunting clubs. To offer up more competition, PLOTS was begun and now they have around 855,000 acres of private land open to hunting.

A problem arose from this. This land was closed to out of state hunters because the money used to buy up leases (this is in essence what it is they are doing) was resident license fees and tax payer dollars.

A new program has evolved called Community Match Program. Community groups, like chamber of commerce, city councils, wildlife groups, can raise money and contribute to the coffers. This way communities can designate lands, through working with local landowners, open to hunting and if they choose, can open it to non-resident hunters.

The reason this happened was there were some towns complaining about all the hunting revenue they were losing by shutting out the out of state hunter.

These are all interesting and creative ways of keeping land open, which in some states is at a crisis level.

There's more on this story at this link

http://mainehuntingtoday.com/bbb/?p=356

Thats about the only way to find places here in NC to hunt. I'm in a couple of diffrent leases otherwise I'd be out of luck. One of my leases is on the border of some public hunting ground but the public ground is only open 3 days a week to hunting. Unlike Maine where many of the timber companies land is open to public hunting or you pay a small fee at the gate here its all leases. Of course the cost of a lease depends on where it is and what can be hunted on. Right now myself and a another guy are looking for a 100-200 A farm land in central NC with turkey deer and geese for about $7-$9 an A so far no luck. The sad fact is you don't want to have to get to the point you have to lease but I suspect it will be a fact of life everywhere soon.
It adds a lot of aspects to the hunt that most folks never think about, like you lease some land with your buddies work to improve it add food plots etc. Then maybe you kill a nice buck on it or people start seeing nice deer on your land. All of a sudden your priced out of the game because someone comes along and offers the landowner 2 to 3 times what you are paying. Its a part of the hunt I never thought about prior to moving here.

This is an interesting topic. Leasing land is a way of life in many other states. Nate and I lease 4000 acres in SC with 8 other guys. www.luckybs.com Down there you basicly don't hunt unless you lease the land. The advantage is that we can practice QDM and plant food plots and know that only we are hunting the land. The big disadvantage is having to pay cash to hunt. This seems so different from how I grew up hunting here in Maine.

That being said, I do see this trend coming to Maine soon. To some extent it is already here. The big cash cow for Maine Hunting is bear. I also run a guide service and know how hard it is to find good private land to bear hunt on. Most guides lease land from paper companies or private persons.

I would like to sit back and say I would never pay to hunt here in Maine. But I also fear that if I don't get my buddies together and form a club and lease some land, someone else might get all the good spots.

I am sure it is this fear that will drive a lot of people to lease land here in Maine.