How much does a hunting lease cost in Washington?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Washington typically asks about $4,188 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $2,549 and $6,560. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $13.96 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 19% 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 Washington 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 Washington estimate?

Too few listings to stand on their own, so this rate leans heavily on the national median. It rests on 9 filtered lease listings from Washington. 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 Washington

$4,188

per year · 300 acres · Washington

Comparable properties list $2,549–$6,560, or about $13.96 per acre.

That is 19% below the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Washington 38 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Thin data

9 Washington listings

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

By property size

Typical Washington 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	$2,304	$1,475–$3,548	$57.60
100 acres	$3,023	$1,935–$4,656	$30.23
250 acres	$3,968	$2,539–$6,110	$15.87
500 acres	$4,873	$2,578–$8,006	$9.75
1,000 acres	$5,985	$2,618–$10,490	$5.99
2,500 acres	$7,855	$2,671–$14,995	$3.14

The market

Hunting Washington

Washington is nearly a third public hunting land and rates sit well below the national median. Much of the private market is timber company access permits on the west side rather than exclusive leases. Columbia Basin farm ground leased for waterfowl and upland birds is a separate and more expensive market.

Nationally, Washington has more public hunting ground than most states — ranking 12 of 50 states at 31.7% 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.

Elk
Blacktail deer
Mule deer
Waterfowl

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	31.7% of the state 13,467,000 acres · 12 of 50
Bucks harvested	20,858 0.3 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Elk, Blacktail deer, Mule deer, Waterfowl

Within the state

Where Washington prices differ

The $13.96 per-acre figure above is a Washington 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.
Columbia Basin	Irrigated farm ground leased for waterfowl and upland birds at the state's higher rates.
Westside timber	Industrial forest sold as access permits rather than exclusive leases.
Northeast corner	Whitetail country and the closest thing to a conventional deer lease market in the state.

Your property

Price your own Washington 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 Washington lease price

Nearby markets

How Washington compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Washington.
State	Per acre	vs. Washington
New Mexico	$13.62	lower
Colorado	$13.91	lower
Montana	$14.00	higher
Idaho	$14.11	higher

Methodology

How we estimate Washington 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. 9 of those listings were in Washington, so the Washington 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.