How much does a hunting lease cost in Wisconsin?

A 300-acre hunting lease in Wisconsin typically asks about $6,555 per year, with most comparable properties falling between $3,990 and $10,268. Smaller parcels cost more per acre and larger ones less.

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

About $21.85 per acre per year for a 300-acre property, which is 26% 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 Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin estimate?

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state. It rests on 36 filtered lease listings from Wisconsin. 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 Wisconsin

$6,555

per year · 300 acres · Wisconsin

Comparable properties list $3,990–$10,268, or about $21.85 per acre.

That is 26% above the national median of $17.32 per acre, ranking Wisconsin 4 of 48 states by price.

What this rests on

Well supported

36 Wisconsin listings

This rate comes mostly from listings in this state.

By property size

Typical Wisconsin 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	$3,606	$2,308–$5,553	$90.15
100 acres	$4,732	$3,029–$7,288	$47.32
250 acres	$6,210	$3,974–$9,563	$24.84
500 acres	$7,627	$4,035–$12,531	$15.25
1,000 acres	$9,368	$4,097–$16,419	$9.37
2,500 acres	$12,294	$4,180–$23,470	$4.92

The market

Hunting Wisconsin

Wisconsin prices among the highest in this model despite having five million acres of public hunting land, which is a useful corrective to the idea that access scarcity sets price. The state has a deep deer hunting culture, a very large harvest, and farm country in the south that produces the bucks people pay for. Northern forest ground leases for considerably less.

Nationally, Wisconsin has more public hunting ground than most states — ranking 18 of 50 states at 14.9% public, and one of the denser whitetail herds in the country at 3.0 bucks taken per square mile. Neither figure feeds the estimate above; both are the ground truth a lease is negotiated against.

Whitetail deer
Waterfowl
Turkey
Black bear

Context, not price drivers — see the methodology note below.
Public hunting land	14.9% of the state 5,167,000 acres · 18 of 50
Bucks harvested	163,806 3.0 per square mile · 2022 season
Leased for	Whitetail deer, Waterfowl, Turkey, Black bear

Within the state

Where Wisconsin prices differ

The $21.85 per-acre figure above is a Wisconsin 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.
Southern farmland zone	Buffalo County and the western counties draw national trophy money and price well above the state average.
Central sands	Mixed agriculture and forest with strong deer and moderate rates.
Northern forest	Large public holdings and lower deer density; the cheapest leasing in Wisconsin.

Your property

Price your own Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin lease price

Nearby markets

How Wisconsin compares

States whose hunting lease markets are priced closest to Wisconsin.
State	Per acre	vs. Wisconsin
Nebraska	$20.81	lower
Louisiana	$20.88	lower
Ohio	$22.26	higher
New Jersey	$22.52	higher

Wisconsin hunting guides

Wisconsin Hunting Lease Prices 2026 | Complete WI Guide to Rates, Counties & Laws

Methodology

How we estimate Wisconsin 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. 36 of those listings were in Wisconsin, so the Wisconsin 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.