How much does a hunting lease cost in Texas?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Texas typically asks about $4,872 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $2,966 and $7,632. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $16.24 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 6% 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 Texas 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 Texas estimate?

This rate blends listings in this state with the national median. It rests on 23 filtered lease listings from Texas. 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 Texas

$4,872

per year · 300 acres · Texas

Comparable properties list $2,966–$7,632, or about $16.24 per acre.

That is 6% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Texas 27 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Moderately supported

23 Texas listings

This rate blends listings in this state with the national median.

By property size

Typical Texas 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	$2,680	$1,715–$4,127	$67.00
100 acres	$3,517	$2,251–$5,416	$35.17
250 acres	$4,616	$2,954–$7,108	$18.46
500 acres	$5,669	$2,999–$9,314	$11.34
1,000 acres	$6,963	$3,045–$12,204	$6.96
2,500 acres	$9,137	$3,107–$17,444	$3.65

The market

Hunting Texas

Texas is roughly 95% privately owned with just 1% public hunting land, and it has by far the largest and most established lease market in the country — season leases, day leases and high-fence management operations all trade openly. Its buck harvest is the nation's largest by a wide margin. The statewide figure blends South Texas brush country, Hill Country and East Texas timber, which price very differently; year-round hogs and exotics extend what a lease is worth.

Nationally, Texas has among the least public hunting ground in the country — ranking 47 of 50 states at 1.0% public, and a solid whitetail herd by national standards at 1.4 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Hogs
Turkey
Exotics
Dove

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	1.0% of the state 1,591,000 acres · 47 of 50
Bucks harvested	377,394 1.4 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Hogs, Turkey, Exotics, Dove

Within the state

Where Texas prices differ

The $16.24 per-acre figure above is a Texas 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.
South Texas brush country	The premium market by a wide margin -- managed brush holding heavy-antlered deer, often high-fenced, and priced above anything else in the state.
Hill Country	High deer numbers but smaller-bodied animals and small tracts; day leases and short-season arrangements are common.
East Texas pine belt	Timber company ground leased by clubs at the lowest per-acre rates in the state.
Panhandle and Rolling Plains	Big country leased for mule deer, whitetail and birds, cheap per acre.

Your property

Price your own Texas 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 Texas lease price Browse 1 Texas lease

Nearby markets

How Texas compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Texas.
State	Per acre	vs. Texas
Nevada	$15.84	lower
North Carolina	$16.30	higher
West Virginia	$16.60	higher
New Hampshire	$16.62	higher

Texas hunting guides

Texas Hunting Lease Prices 2026 | Complete TX Guide to Rates, Counties & Laws

Methodology

How we estimate Texas 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. 23 of those listings were in Texas, so the Texas 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.