How much does a hunting lease cost in Nebraska?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Nebraska typically asks about $6,243 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,800 and $9,779. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $20.81 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 20% 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 Nebraska 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 Nebraska estimate?

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state. It rests on 33 filtered lease listings from Nebraska. 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 Nebraska

$6,243

per year · 300 acres · Nebraska

Comparable properties list $3,800–$9,779, or about $20.81 per acre.

That is 20% above the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Nebraska 6 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Well supported

33 Nebraska listings

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state.

By property size

Typical Nebraska 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	$3,434	$2,198–$5,289	$85.86
100 acres	$4,507	$2,884–$6,941	$45.07
250 acres	$5,914	$3,785–$9,108	$23.66
500 acres	$7,264	$3,843–$11,934	$14.53
1,000 acres	$8,922	$3,902–$15,638	$8.92
2,500 acres	$11,709	$3,981–$22,353	$4.68

The market

Hunting Nebraska

Nebraska has only 1.4% public hunting land and prices well above the national median. River-corridor whitetail ground along the Platte, Republican and Missouri carries most of the value, while the Sandhills lease more cheaply per acre in much larger blocks. Upland bird hunting and spring turkey extend the season a lease covers.

Nationally, Nebraska has among the least public hunting ground in the country — ranking 46 of 50 states at 1.4% public, and very few whitetails per square mile at 0.3 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Mule deer
Turkey
Upland birds

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	1.4% of the state 699,000 acres · 46 of 50
Bucks harvested	23,401 0.3 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Mule deer, Turkey, Upland birds

Within the state

Where Nebraska prices differ

The $20.81 per-acre figure above is a Nebraska 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.
River corridors	The Platte, Republican and Missouri bottoms hold the whitetail value and the highest rates.
Sandhills	Enormous grassland tracts leased cheaply per acre, often as much for birds as deer.
Southeast farm country	Row crop with timbered draws, the densest deer in the state.

Your property

Price your own Nebraska 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 Nebraska lease price

Nearby markets

How Nebraska compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Nebraska.
State	Per acre	vs. Nebraska
Alabama	$20.24	lower
Indiana	$20.26	lower
Delaware	$20.60	lower
Louisiana	$20.88	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Nebraska 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. 33 of those listings were in Nebraska, so the Nebraska 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.