How much does a hunting lease cost in Vermont?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Vermont typically asks about $5,625 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,424 and $8,811. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $18.75 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 8% 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 Vermont 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 Vermont 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 Vermont. 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 Vermont

$5,625

per year · 300 acres · Vermont

Comparable properties list $3,424–$8,811, or about $18.75 per acre.

That is 8% above the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Vermont 14 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

1 Vermont listing

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

By property size

Typical Vermont 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	$3,094	$1,980–$4,765	$77.36
100 acres	$4,061	$2,599–$6,254	$40.61
250 acres	$5,329	$3,410–$8,207	$21.32
500 acres	$6,545	$3,463–$10,753	$13.09
1,000 acres	$8,039	$3,516–$14,090	$8.04
2,500 acres	$10,550	$3,587–$20,140	$4.22

The market

Hunting Vermont

Vermont has a strong tradition of hunting on private land by permission, which suppresses the formal lease market — posting land is the exception rather than the default. Public hunting land is 7.9% of the state. Our Vermont estimate rests on very little local listing data.

Nationally, Vermont has a middling amount of public hunting ground — ranking 26 of 50 states at 7.9% public, and a thinner whitetail herd than the eastern average at 1.0 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Black bear
Turkey
Moose

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	7.9% of the state 463,000 acres · 26 of 50
Bucks harvested	9,619 1.0 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Black bear, Turkey, Moose

Within the state

Where Vermont prices differ

The $18.75 per-acre figure above is a Vermont 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.
Champlain Valley	The farm country holding most of Vermont's deer and nearly all its lease interest.
Green Mountains and Northeast Kingdom	Big woods with low deer density and a strong tradition of hunting by permission rather than lease.

Your property

Price your own Vermont 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 Vermont lease price

Nearby markets

How Vermont compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Vermont.
State	Per acre	vs. Vermont
Oklahoma	$18.14	lower
Iowa	$18.30	lower
Illinois	$18.49	lower
Georgia	$18.95	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Vermont 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 Vermont, so the Vermont 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.