How much does a hunting lease cost in North Dakota?

A 300-acre hunting lease in North Dakota typically asks about $3,231 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $1,967 and $5,061. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $10.77 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 38% 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 North Dakota 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 North Dakota estimate?

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median. It rests on 8 filtered lease listings from North Dakota. 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 North Dakota

$3,231

per year · 300 acres · North Dakota

Comparable properties list $1,967–$5,061, or about $10.77 per acre.

That is 38% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking North Dakota 46 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

8 North Dakota listings

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

By property size

Typical North Dakota 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	$1,777	$1,138–$2,737	$44.44
100 acres	$2,333	$1,493–$3,592	$23.33
250 acres	$3,061	$1,959–$4,714	$12.24
500 acres	$3,760	$1,989–$6,177	$7.52
1,000 acres	$4,618	$2,019–$8,093	$4.62
2,500 acres	$6,060	$2,060–$11,569	$2.42

The market

Hunting North Dakota

North Dakota prices near the bottom of the national table despite only 4.5% public hunting land, largely because its PLOTS program pays private landowners to open ground to walk-in public access. Waterfowl in the prairie pothole country is a major driver of what private ground is worth. Deer tags are limited by lottery, which caps how hard anyone will bid for deer access alone.

Nationally, North Dakota has a middling amount of public hunting ground — ranking 35 of 50 states at 4.5% 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
Waterfowl
Upland birds

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	4.5% of the state 1,976,000 acres · 35 of 50
Bucks harvested	17,512 0.3 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Mule deer, Waterfowl, Upland birds

Within the state

Where North Dakota prices differ

The $10.77 per-acre figure above is a North Dakota 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.
Missouri River breaks	Rough country holding mule deer and the state's better whitetail.
Prairie pothole country	Waterfowl value dominates; deer are secondary and tags are limited.
Red River Valley	Flat, intensively farmed, with deer concentrated in shelterbelts and river timber.

Your property

Price your own North Dakota 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 North Dakota lease price

Nearby markets

How North Dakota compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to North Dakota.
State	Per acre	vs. North Dakota
Florida	$9.36	lower
Arizona	$9.79	lower
Arkansas	$11.35	higher
Maine	$11.66	higher

Methodology

How we estimate North Dakota 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. 8 of those listings were in North Dakota, so the North Dakota 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.