One Other Deer Lease Perspective

Selecting a private land trophy whitetail deer hunting lease does not have much mystery about it. It is just work and time to look/walk at a lot of potential hunting land to find that right lease.

Our deer lease approach is year round. A perspective on the amount of work it requires is that our hunting land leasing effort is conducted over a 12 month period each year. Lease availability is such that we need to respond when the opportunity occurs or, as is much of the case we make our own opportunity. It is rarely a quick or over narrow window of time. It rarely just comes to us.

A Sample Deer Hunting Lease

This hunting key points picture on this page are nothing more than a single snapshot of a single lease. These pictures are part of the decision process for securing a lease.

In this case the picture series is of some of the points of concern we take in during the current deer season preparing for the next. This is part of the year round requirement of keeping an eye on the land and the landowner's actions. The perspective is we pay good money for the hunting land, location and surrounding conditions we want and we want that deer habitat when we want to hunt it. The end result is a deer productive lease rather than just lease land.

During deer season lease runs are a bit more leisurely allowing us to review, rank and possibly add to the list of potential leases for the hunting season to come. These hunting land runs are also a time to check up on current leases as well during the hunting season when the protective cover is all the more critical.

Taken for granted we lease for the right type of food source and protective cover within the right region of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa for the production we are after. Frequently that means making lease decisions with less than complete certainty.

Using all available observations combined allows for pass or possibly our offering a lease. A lease offering never implies the landowner will accept our offer or, that we will pay too much for any lease. Often we will pass on better hunting spots in a lower production region and pay more for less quality hunting food/cover within a better region for the land profile we seek. One of the many nuances that go into a lease decision.

Taken all together each land run ranks any lease by region, by hunting potential (cover and food habitat, surrounding area), added to the list ranked by quality, Association hunter hunting profile and budget. We do not accept all the hunting land we look at and neither do the landowners accept all the lease contracts we offer. In the end however, we typically have better overall hunting land at the end of that year's land contracting cycle than we started.

Deer Hunting Lease Decisions Are Never Certain

The only deer to be seen. Not a trophy, but an idea of what may be there. It is better to have seen one on a casual walk then none at all.

One of a flock. As this farm is in row crop and was surrounded by pasture.

We may assume the flock was roosted on or near the potential lease as it is far more common for turkeys to feed in a crop field than a pasture.

One of the many nuances that go into a lease decision. Finding this was luck (at right) and a supposed surprise to the landowner.

No lease or potential lease is perfect.

The bottle was found on the land under consideration when no one was supposed to be having hunted it - or so the landowner thought or wanted us to believe so. It is the case that even after a lease deal it does take a season or two to know just how good a decision that land may or may not be.

What we do not like to see but have to accept as the nature of leasing within agricultural regions. That is farm land improvement. Such activity does lessen the hunting value of that lease ranking within our inventory of land