How much does a hunting lease cost in Delaware?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Delaware typically asks about $6,180 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,762 and $9,681. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $20.60 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 19% above 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 Delaware 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 Delaware estimate?

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median. It rests on 5 filtered lease listings from Delaware. 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 Delaware

$6,180

per year · 300 acres · Delaware

Comparable properties list $3,762–$9,681, or about $20.60 per acre.

That is 19% above the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Delaware 7 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

5 Delaware listings

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median.

By property size

Typical Delaware 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	$3,400	$2,176–$5,236	$84.99
100 acres	$4,461	$2,855–$6,871	$44.61
250 acres	$5,855	$3,747–$9,016	$23.42
500 acres	$7,191	$3,804–$11,814	$14.38
1,000 acres	$8,832	$3,863–$15,480	$8.83
2,500 acres	$11,591	$3,941–$22,128	$4.64

The market

Hunting Delaware

Delaware is small, agricultural and close to a lot of people, and its farm ground carries both deer and migrating waterfowl. Only 4.9% of the state is public hunting land, so a lease is the practical route to consistent access. Parcels are correspondingly small and priced per acre accordingly.

Nationally, Delaware has a middling amount of public hunting ground — ranking 30 of 50 states at 4.9% public, and a solid whitetail herd by national standards at 2.2 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Waterfowl
Turkey

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	4.9% of the state 61,000 acres · 30 of 50
Bucks harvested	4,359 2.2 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Waterfowl, Turkey

Within the state

Where Delaware prices differ

The $20.60 per-acre figure above is a Delaware 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.
Sussex County	Farm ground with both deer and migrating waterfowl; nearly all of the state's lease activity.
Northern Delaware	Suburban and fragmented on the Wilmington corridor, with little acreage large enough to lease.

Your property

Price your own Delaware 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 Delaware lease price

Nearby markets

How Delaware compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Delaware.
State	Per acre	vs. Delaware
Alabama	$20.24	lower
Indiana	$20.26	lower
Nebraska	$20.81	higher
Louisiana	$20.88	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Delaware 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. 5 of those listings were in Delaware, so the Delaware rate is pulled most of the way back toward the national median, which is what the model does when a state cannot support its own estimate.

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.