How much does a hunting lease cost in Utah?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Utah typically asks about $4,563 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $2,778 and $7,148. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $15.21 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 12% 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 Utah 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 Utah estimate?

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median. It rests on 1 filtered lease listing from Utah. 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 Utah

$4,563

per year · 300 acres · Utah

Comparable properties list $2,778–$7,148, or about $15.21 per acre.

That is 12% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Utah 34 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

1 Utah listing

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

By property size

Typical Utah 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	$2,510	$1,607–$3,866	$62.75
100 acres	$3,294	$2,108–$5,073	$32.94
250 acres	$4,323	$2,767–$6,657	$17.29
500 acres	$5,309	$2,809–$8,723	$10.62
1,000 acres	$6,521	$2,852–$11,430	$6.52
2,500 acres	$8,558	$2,910–$16,338	$3.42

The market

Hunting Utah

Two thirds of Utah is public hunting land and access is governed by a difficult draw rather than by ownership. There is no whitetail lease market of the kind this model was fit on. Private leases exist mainly as ranch access and Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit permits, which price on tag quality rather than acreage.

Nationally, Utah has among the most public hunting ground in the country — ranking 3 of 50 states at 66.1% public. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Elk
Mule deer
Pronghorn

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	66.1% of the state 34,736,000 acres · 3 of 50
Leased for	Elk, Mule deer, Pronghorn

Within the state

Where Utah prices differ

The $15.21 per-acre figure above is a Utah 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.
Northern ranges	Elk and mule deer ground where Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit permits, not leases, carry the value.
Ranch valleys	Limited private leasing, mostly for deer and upland birds.

Your property

Price your own Utah 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 Utah lease price

Nearby markets

How Utah compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Utah.
State	Per acre	vs. Utah
Tennessee	$15.35	higher
Kansas	$15.44	higher
Hawaii	$15.45	higher
Missouri	$15.45	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Utah 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. 1 of those listing was in Utah, so the Utah 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.