How much does a hunting lease cost in Maine?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Maine typically asks about $3,498 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $2,129 and $5,479. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $11.66 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 33% 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 Maine 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 Maine estimate?

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median. It rests on 6 filtered lease listings from Maine. 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 Maine

$3,498

per year · 300 acres · Maine

Comparable properties list $2,129–$5,479, or about $11.66 per acre.

That is 33% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Maine 44 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

6 Maine listings

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

By property size

Typical Maine 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	$1,924	$1,232–$2,963	$48.11
100 acres	$2,525	$1,616–$3,889	$25.25
250 acres	$3,314	$2,121–$5,103	$13.26
500 acres	$4,070	$2,153–$6,687	$8.14
1,000 acres	$4,999	$2,186–$8,762	$5.00
2,500 acres	$6,560	$2,231–$12,525	$2.62

The market

Hunting Maine

Maine's north woods are largely commercial timberland, and much of it has traditionally been open to hunting without a lease at all — which is the main reason lease rates here sit near the bottom of the table despite only 4.8% of the state being formally public. Deer density is low outside the southern counties. Bear and moose are a meaningful part of what Maine ground is valued for.

Nationally, Maine has a middling amount of public hunting ground — ranking 33 of 50 states at 4.8% public, and a thinner whitetail herd than the eastern average at 0.8 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Moose
Black bear
Grouse

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	4.8% of the state 942,000 acres · 33 of 50
Bucks harvested	23,802 0.8 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Moose, Black bear, Grouse

Within the state

Where Maine prices differ

The $11.66 per-acre figure above is a Maine 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.
Southern Maine	Where the deer actually are, and the only part of the state with meaningful lease demand.
North woods	Commercial timberland historically open to hunting without a lease, which suppresses the whole market.
Downeast	Coastal bear and grouse country with low deer density; leased cheaply where it is leased at all.

Your property

Price your own Maine 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 Maine lease price

Nearby markets

How Maine compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Maine.
State	Per acre	vs. Maine
North Dakota	$10.77	lower
Arkansas	$11.35	lower
Pennsylvania	$12.48	higher
Oregon	$12.96	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Maine 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. 6 of those listings were in Maine, so the Maine 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.