How much does a hunting lease cost in Minnesota?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Minnesota typically asks about $5,010 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,050 and $7,848. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $16.70 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 4% 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 Minnesota 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 Minnesota estimate?

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state. It rests on 30 filtered lease listings from Minnesota. 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 Minnesota

$5,010

per year · 300 acres · Minnesota

Comparable properties list $3,050–$7,848, or about $16.70 per acre.

That is 4% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Minnesota 23 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Well supported

30 Minnesota listings

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state.

By property size

Typical Minnesota 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	$2,756	$1,764–$4,244	$68.90
100 acres	$3,617	$2,315–$5,570	$36.17
250 acres	$4,746	$3,038–$7,309	$18.99
500 acres	$5,830	$3,084–$9,577	$11.66
1,000 acres	$7,160	$3,131–$12,549	$7.16
2,500 acres	$9,396	$3,195–$17,938	$3.76

The market

Hunting Minnesota

Minnesota has over eight million acres of public hunting land, 16% of the state, which keeps lease rates near the national median rather than above it. The farmland zone in the south and west holds the densest deer and most of the private lease activity. Waterfowl and grouse are a genuine second and third use for a lot of leased ground.

Nationally, Minnesota has more public hunting ground than most states — ranking 16 of 50 states at 16.1% public, and a thinner whitetail herd than the eastern average at 1.1 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Waterfowl
Black bear
Grouse

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	16.1% of the state 8,217,000 acres · 16 of 50
Bucks harvested	88,114 1.1 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Waterfowl, Black bear, Grouse

Within the state

Where Minnesota prices differ

The $16.70 per-acre figure above is a Minnesota 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.
Southeast bluff country	Driftless terrain with the state's best deer and its highest lease rates.
Farmland zone	South and west row-crop ground with strong deer numbers.
Northern forest	Vast public land holds private prices down; bear and grouse add secondary value.

Your property

Price your own Minnesota 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 Minnesota lease price

Nearby markets

How Minnesota compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Minnesota.
State	Per acre	vs. Minnesota
West Virginia	$16.60	lower
New Hampshire	$16.62	lower
California	$17.00	higher
New York	$17.04	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Minnesota 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. 30 of those listings were in Minnesota, so the Minnesota 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.