How much does a hunting lease cost in Colorado?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Colorado typically asks about $4,173 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $2,540 and $6,537. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

What is the average price per acre for hunting land in Colorado?

About $13.91 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 20% below the national median of $17.32. Per-acre rates fall as properties get larger, so this figure is quoted at a fixed 300 acres to stay comparable between states.

Are these Colorado lease prices what hunters actually pay?

No. Every figure here is an asking price — what landowners list at, not what a lease finally closes for. The model is fit on listing data, so it reflects what a property is likely to be advertised at.

How reliable is the Colorado estimate?

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state. It rests on 29 filtered lease listings from Colorado. Across all states, roughly half of real listings fall inside the range shown, and state and acreage together explain about a quarter of the variation in asking price.

Hunting Lease Prices in Colorado

$4,173

per year · 300 acres · Colorado

Comparable properties list $2,540–$6,537, or about $13.91 per acre.

That is 20% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Colorado 39 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Well supported

29 Colorado listings

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state.

By property size

Typical Colorado lease prices

Yearly asking prices for a property with no amenities or premium habitat specified. Adding food plots, a cabin or a trophy species raises the estimate; the calculator below accounts for those.
Property size	Typical asking price	Usual range	Per acre
40 acres	$2,296	$1,469–$3,535	$57.39
100 acres	$3,013	$1,928–$4,639	$30.13
250 acres	$3,953	$2,530–$6,088	$15.81
500 acres	$4,856	$2,569–$7,977	$9.71
1,000 acres	$5,964	$2,608–$10,453	$5.96
2,500 acres	$7,826	$2,661–$14,942	$3.13

The market

Hunting Colorado

With 35% of Colorado open to the public and a draw system governing the best units, private leases compete against a great deal of free alternative. The leases that do command money are typically low-country ranch parcels that hold elk in early season or sit against a wilderness boundary. Eastern-plains properties leased for deer and pronghorn price quite differently from the mountain units.

Nationally, Colorado has among the most public hunting ground in the country — ranking 10 of 50 states at 35.3% public, and very few whitetails per square mile at 0.28 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Elk
Mule deer
Pronghorn

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	35.3% of the state 23,397,000 acres · 10 of 50
Bucks harvested	29,298 0.28 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Elk, Mule deer, Pronghorn

Within the state

Where Colorado prices differ

The $13.91 per-acre figure above is a Colorado average. These are the sub-markets it averages over, and they do not trade alike:

Directional, not measured — the estimate is fitted at state level and has no sub-state resolution.
Eastern plains	Farm and CRP ground leased for whitetail, mule deer and pronghorn; the most conventional lease market in the state.
Western Slope	Elk country where private parcels are valued for landowner tags and early-season access as much as acreage.
Front Range foothills	Close to population and priced accordingly, but fragmented and heavily regulated.

Your property

Price your own Colorado land

The table above assumes nothing about your land beyond its size. Add your game species, habitat, forage and amenities for an estimate that reflects the property you actually have.

Calculate a Colorado lease price

Nearby markets

How Colorado compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Colorado.
State	Per acre	vs. Colorado
New Mexico	$13.62	lower
Washington	$13.96	higher
Montana	$14.00	higher
Idaho	$14.11	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Colorado lease prices

The estimate comes from a model fit on 979 filtered hunting lease listings across 48 states. A state's rate and the way price scales with acreage are both measured from that data. 29 of those listings were in Colorado, so the Colorado rate is drawn largely from that state's own market.

Three things are worth knowing before you quote these numbers:

These are asking prices. They are what landowners list at, not what a lease closes for.
State and size explain about a quarter of the variation. Roughly half of real listings fall inside the range shown, which is what two features can support — it is the honest width of the answer, not a rough edge waiting to be tuned out.
The land and deer figures above are context, not inputs. They come from Backcountry Chronicles (public hunting acreage) and the National Deer Association's 2024 Deer Report (2022 buck harvest). Neither feeds the estimate, and both correlate only weakly with what states actually charge.
Habitat, game and amenity adjustments are expert judgement, not fit from data — the listing feed does not carry those fields. They are set to be neutral on an average property, so they nudge the estimate rather than drive it.