How much does a hunting lease cost in Michigan?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Michigan typically asks about $6,048 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,682 and $9,474. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $20.16 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 16% 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 Michigan 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 Michigan estimate?

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state. It rests on 25 filtered lease listings from Michigan. 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 Michigan

$6,048

per year · 300 acres · Michigan

Comparable properties list $3,682–$9,474, or about $20.16 per acre.

That is 16% above the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Michigan 11 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Well supported

25 Michigan listings

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state.

By property size

Typical Michigan 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	$3,327	$2,129–$5,124	$83.18
100 acres	$4,366	$2,794–$6,724	$43.66
250 acres	$5,730	$3,667–$8,824	$22.92
500 acres	$7,037	$3,723–$11,562	$14.07
1,000 acres	$8,644	$3,780–$15,149	$8.64
2,500 acres	$11,343	$3,857–$21,655	$4.54

The market

Hunting Michigan

Michigan holds the largest state forest system in the lower 48 and over seven million acres of public hunting land in total — 20.3% of the state. It also has one of the largest deer harvests in the country. Leases here compete directly with a great deal of free ground, so the ones that command real money are usually southern farm counties rather than the northern forest.

Nationally, Michigan has more public hunting ground than most states — ranking 13 of 50 states at 20.3% public, and one of the denser whitetail herds in the country at 3.6 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Black bear
Waterfowl
Grouse

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	20.3% of the state 7,346,000 acres · 13 of 50
Bucks harvested	203,744 3.6 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Black bear, Waterfowl, Grouse

Within the state

Where Michigan prices differ

The $20.16 per-acre figure above is a Michigan 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 farm counties	Where the big deer are; the leases that command real money in Michigan.
Northern Lower Peninsula	Forest country competing directly with millions of acres of state land.
Upper Peninsula	Low deer density, bear and grouse value, and the cheapest leasing in the state.

Your property

Price your own Michigan 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 Michigan lease price

Nearby markets

How Michigan compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Michigan.
State	Per acre	vs. Michigan
Alaska	$20.23	higher
Alabama	$20.24	higher
Indiana	$20.26	higher
Delaware	$20.60	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Michigan 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. 25 of those listings were in Michigan, so the Michigan 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.