Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
As of October 2, 407 of HLRBO's 2,132 active annual-priced private listings, about 19 percent, were marked off the market for the season. The Midwest cleared fastest at 24 percent. The West barely moved at 2 percent. And the detail landowners should read twice: the ground that leased was asking more per acre than the ground still sitting, not less.
In September we published the asking side of this market: a median displayed price of $3,420 a year across 2,195 listings, with per-acre asks that swung sevenfold by region while the annual check barely moved. We promised to come back once the season's signings were underway. This is that return, with the same methodology and one new column: whether the listing is still available.
The usual honesty first. "Off the market" here means the landowner or a booking has marked the listing unavailable on the platform. Some leases sign without the flag ever changing, so 19 percent is a floor on actual leasing, not a count of signed agreements. Prices are displayed rates, meaning the landowner's ask plus HLRBO's 14 percent, exactly as a hunter sees them; the raw asks underneath are stated where it matters.
Who cleared
By region, the share of listings marked taken runs Midwest 24 percent (181 of 752), South 20 percent (175 of 883), Northeast 16 percent (47 of 290), and West 2 percent (4 of 207).
The Midwest number is the one that fits the calendar. Archery seasons opened across the region in mid-September and early October, firearms openers stack up through November, and the Midwest's median listing is a mid-sized tract that a single party can lease outright. The West's number fits a different calendar and a different product: large tracts, draw-tag seasons that leave hunters unsure of their fall until late, and a per-acre price so low that annual leases there are often negotiated rather than booked. The West is not failing to lease. It is leasing on its own clock.
What the leased ground was asking
Here is the finding. Nationally, the median per-acre ask of listings marked taken was $28.57, against $26.37 for listings still available; displayed, that is roughly $33 versus $30. The leased ground was dearer by acre.
The Midwest drove it: listings marked taken there asked a median $31.25 an acre, about $36 displayed, against $26.67 for what remains, about $30 displayed. The South was essentially flat, $26.67 taken against $26.89 available. The Northeast ran the other way, with pricier small tracts still waiting ($39.06 asked, about $45 displayed) while cheaper ground cleared ($30.00, about $34). The West's four leased listings are too few to read.
At the whole-lease level the two groups are nearly identical: a $3,000 median ask both for leased and for still-available listings nationally, $3,420 displayed. Hunters did not go bargain shopping. They paid the market rate for the lease they wanted and, in the Midwest, paid a premium for the ground that showed better.
What it says to each side
For landowners with a listing still sitting in mid-October, the data argues against the reflex to cut price. Your competition that leased was not cheaper. It was more completely presented, more flexibly priced, and faster to answer, a pattern we broke down in the anatomy of a listing that leases. The Northeast is the exception, and it is instructive: small tracts carrying high per-acre asks are the one segment where price appears to be the thing holding ground back.
For hunters, 1,725 annual listings remain available on the platform, 81 percent of the inventory, and the per-acre asks on what is left are, on average, slightly lower than on what has gone. The late shopper in this market is not picking through leftovers. In most of the country they are looking at ground priced a touch under the ground that already sold, with deer seasons open and landowners increasingly willing to talk about a season instead of a year.
Where this goes
We will run this board again in early December, when firearms seasons have reset the calendar and the question flips from who leased to who renews. If the pattern holds, the story of 2026 will be that the hunting lease market priced itself the way a mature market does: on the quality of the offer, not the discount.
Four of every five annual listings are still open. Find a lease, or if you own ground that is sitting, list it and read what the leased listings did differently.