How much does a hunting lease cost in Massachusetts?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Massachusetts typically asks about $5,196 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,163 and $8,139. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $17.32 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is close to 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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts estimate?

We have no listings for this state, so this is the national median rather than a local estimate. 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 Massachusetts

$5,196

per year · 300 acres · Massachusetts

Comparable properties list $3,163–$8,139, or about $17.32 per acre.

That puts Massachusetts close to the national median of $17.32 per acre.

What this rests on

No local data

0 Massachusetts listings

We have no listings for this state, so this is the national median rather than a local estimate.

By property size

Typical Massachusetts 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	$2,858	$1,829–$4,402	$71.46
100 acres	$3,751	$2,401–$5,777	$37.51
250 acres	$4,922	$3,150–$7,581	$19.69
500 acres	$6,046	$3,199–$9,933	$12.09
1,000 acres	$7,426	$3,248–$13,015	$7.43
2,500 acres	$9,745	$3,313–$18,604	$3.90

The market

Hunting Massachusetts

Massachusetts has a small, tightly regulated hunting land base and a deer herd concentrated where firearms hunting is most restricted. We have no Massachusetts listings behind this estimate, so the figure shown is the national median rather than a local reading. Treat it as a starting point and verify against local comparables.

Nationally, Massachusetts has a middling amount of public hunting ground — ranking 34 of 50 states at 4.6% public, and a solid whitetail herd by national standards at 1.2 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Turkey

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	4.6% of the state 232,000 acres · 34 of 50
Bucks harvested	9,076 1.2 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Turkey

Within the state

Where Massachusetts prices differ

The $17.32 per-acre figure above is a Massachusetts 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.
Central and western hills	The larger woodlots and most of what private hunting access exists.
Southeast and Cape	Fragmented, with archery-only zones and heavy development limiting leasable ground.

Your property

Price your own Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts lease price

Nearby markets

How Massachusetts compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Massachusetts.
State	Per acre	vs. Massachusetts
Minnesota	$16.70	lower
California	$17.00	lower
New York	$17.04	lower
South Carolina	$17.71	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Massachusetts 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. None of them were in Massachusetts, so the figures above are the national median rather than a Massachusetts measurement.

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.