Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
Ask what a hunting lease costs and every answer you get is an anecdote. Here is a dataset instead: across 2,195 active, annually priced private listings on HLRBO as of September 1, 2026, the median lease displays at $3,420 a year, and that number barely moves whether the ground is in the South, the Midwest, or the West. What moves, wildly, is what an acre costs.
This is HLRBO data, from the largest independent hunting lease marketplace in the country, and it is the first time we have published the distribution. Methodology first, because a price without its basis is just a louder anecdote: figures below cover active, approved private-land listings priced per year, with obvious data-entry errors excluded (prices outside $100 to $150,000). Per-acre math uses properties of 5 acres and up. All prices are displayed rates, meaning the landowner's asking price plus HLRBO's 14 percent, exactly as a hunter sees them on the site, rounded; the landowner's median ask underneath the $3,420 figure is $3,000 even. These are asking prices, not closed transactions, and medians, not averages, so one Illinois trophy lease cannot drag the number.
The middle of the market
The national median displayed price per acre is $30 a year. The middle half of all listings runs from roughly $8 to $59 an acre. That range brackets the benchmark the industry usually quotes, Forest Resource Consultants' 2026 guide at $5 to $50 and up, which is reassuring in both directions: our first-party data agrees with the market's reference point, and it adds the distribution the reference point never had.
By region, displayed per-acre medians land close enough to be siblings and far enough to matter: Midwest $32, South $29, Northeast $39, and the West at $6, where median tracts are large and per-acre math dilutes accordingly.
The finding: America prices the lease, not the acre
Now the part that surprised us. Set the per-acre numbers aside and look at the whole-lease ask. The median annual displayed price is $3,420 nationally, $3,443 in the Midwest, $3,420 in the South, $3,756 in the West, $2,850 in the Northeast. Per-acre medians across those same regions vary by a factor of nearly seven. The annual check varies by a few hundred dollars.
The state table says it plainest. Texas, our second-deepest state with 209 active annual listings, has a median tract of 560 acres and a displayed median around $5.60 an acre. Michigan's median listing is 50 acres at about $48 an acre. Wisconsin, 80 acres at $50. Kentucky, quietly our deepest inventory state at 217 listings, sits at 170 acres and $32. Different ground, different game, different math per acre, and yet the annual ask keeps landing in the same neighborhood: hunters and landowners across the country appear to negotiate toward what a season is worth to one hunting party, then let the acreage fall where it falls.
For a landowner pricing ground, that reframes the exercise. The question is not only what the county's per-acre comp says. It is what a committed group will pay for a season of access to what your property actually offers, and on this marketplace that answer clusters near $3,400 whether the offer is 60 acres of Michigan hardwoods or a section of Oklahoma cross-timbers.
What the per-acre number is still for
Per-acre remains the right tool for comparing your ground to ground like it, and the spread is real: displayed medians of $41 in New York, $42 in Indiana, $36 in Ohio, $30 in Missouri, $14 in Oklahoma, $11 in Iowa's big-tract listings. It is also the honest way to weigh a lease against the alternatives we have covered this season, from expiring CRP payments to the cash-rent squeeze. Just carry both numbers into the conversation. The acre is the comp. The lease is the deal.
One more honesty note: asking is not getting. A displayed price is an opening position, and listings that sit unleased into November are telling their owners something. We will revisit this dataset when the season's signings are behind us.
The 2,195 leases behind these numbers are live now, searchable by state, species, and price. Find a lease, or if you own ground and want to see what it could ask, list your property.