Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
It’s no secret, waterfowling is becoming more and more competitive. With people competing for hunting spots and “honey holes” from opening day to the final hours of the season, it seems like hunters are becoming more and more willing to fork over some of their hard-earned cash to make sure they have access to the best hunting ground possible. But is that a good thing? Is leasing ground helping or hurting the “common hunter”? Some may argue that leasing ground actually helps ensure that there’s ground to be hunted, others may argue that it takes away from the “right way” to get permission to hunt the land. But with how competitive it’s getting for hunting access these days, one can only imagine what people are willing to do to ensure that they have a spot to rest their decoys come opening day.
First and foremost, we need to look at the obvious- when you lease ground, you take away other people’s chances at hunting. Plain and simple. There’s no way to argue with this fact. By tying up ground exclusively for yourself, you’re bastardizing others from having more chances to hunt. Most people probably don’t see it that way (unless they’re guides because guides lease ground which is then hunted by the public- for a price), but that’s the one cold reality of leasing up private ground. By handing money over to a landowner, and buying the hunting rights, you’re taking away the chances for others to knock on that landowner’s door, and ask to hunt his ground. This might not be the most popular paragraph in the world, but it’s a band-aid of truth that you need to rip off and understand. When you lease ground, you take away hunting opportunities from other waterfowlers. It would seem that that’s quite the problem, but yet, prices keep going up, and more and more farmers are jumping on the “ground for lease” train each year.
Another frustration had by many hunters with those that lease is that it takes away from “the right way” to do things. There’s an argument that showing up, and throwing thousands of dollars at landowners differs from the traditional way of knocking on the landowner’s door, fostering relationships, and trying to work your way onto the land. Obviously, there really isn’t a right or wrong way of getting on land (as long as it’s done legally and without causing tension between parties), but there is something to be said about showing up, paying large amounts of money, and getting hunters kicked off land that they’ve been hunting for years on end. It might leave some a bit jaded towards those that use the lease tactic.
We also see the cost of hunting rising even higher because of those that are willing to lease ground because farmers and landowners know that they can either tell permission seekers “no”, or put their hand out and force the hunters to pay up if they truly want to hunt their land. Most farmers know what their land is worth, and if they don’t, one desperate hunter with a checkbook can answer that question for them. It falls back into the “supply and demand” lesson in school. There seems to be a limited supply of prime hunting real estate, and the demand is through the roof. Enough that hunters are willing to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for the land.
However, there are some good things that come from leasing ground. For example, a farmer leasing his ground is a farmer saying yes to people hunting his property. It may be for an expensive price, but at least people are hunting it.
Another upside, which might seem a bit ironic, is it forces people to be competitive. When people lose ground to leases, they have to get out and find new ground. This allows them to get out and find new areas to hunt, meet new people, and expand new hunting networks. This might be a double-edged sword in the sense that you don’t want to lose your hunting spots to be in that scenario, however, finding new places and new people to network and hunt with is never a bad thing.
No matter how you cut it up, leasing ground can screw a lot of people. But there’s also plenty of ground out there to hunt. Just remember, as things heat up and get more competitive, if you want to pay for a lease yourself, go read the first paragraph of this article; if you feel ok with that, then have at it. If you don’t and want to keep doing it the old school way, then more power to you. But one thing’s for certain, with the off-season here, there’s no better time to start trying to get on land and tying up your ability to hunt for next season.
