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Lease rate

I like to hunt mature deer. I feel there is more of a challenge. A lot of guys posting against leasing land are the same ones in other posts drooling over what a buck scores. Accusing lease hunters of just chasing high scoring racks. Yet I don't know what any trophy hanging on my walls scores. They are mature bucks that gave me a hunt to remember. FYI I also carry an insurance policy to protect the land owner. $300 a year just for that. You could by a lot of mushrooms for that. Although you may not sue landowner for an accident, you don't know that your family wouldn't.
 
We milk 120 holstiens on 400/arcres where we raise our own feed to support our herd. I know exactly what it costs to farm.

There is no we in this equation unless you and your wife are paying the bills on a farming operation. If that was the case; I don't think you'd be asking what the going rate for leasing is in Iowa. Unless of course; you are looking for the going rate to charge! If you knew exactly what it cost to run an average size farm in Iowa; you wouldn't be making the statements you are on here. I paid a hired hand to help milk 82 cows. He liked to go to town and tell everybody how much he knew about farming also! The truth is I didn't even trust him to disc a field!
 
Go through this entire thread and read each and every one of my responses. I continue to respond as I continue to be called out and poked fun at; sorry for having a backbone.

And an expensive education that gives you the right to look down your nose at others. Too bad that attitude and education hasn't gotten you farther in life! Legend in your own mind seems to ring a bell here. And it only took 25 yrs.!
 
There is no we in this equation unless you and your wife are paying the bills on a farming operation. If that was the case; I don't think you'd be asking what the going rate for leasing is in Iowa. Unless of course; you are looking for the going rate to charge! If you knew exactly what it cost to run an average size farm in Iowa; you wouldn't be making the statements you are on here. I paid a hired hand to help milk 82 cows. He liked to go to town and tell everybody how much he knew about farming also! The truth is I didn't even trust him to disc a field!

First of all I dont need to send you proof of my farming background. I have lived on and been a part of my families farm since I fell in the gutter at age 2 and earned my first stitches. My father and I run the farm. Just because we dont run 1000's of acres doesn't mean we don't know what we are doing. For your info I only asked because I saw a lease advertised at over 25$ an acre and I had heard a kid was paying 500$ to an 80 year old down the road from me for his 300 acres. I know his son and wanted to make sure he wasn't being cheated. We dont lease our farm, we aren't farming for wildlife we are farming the beast we can to survive milk prices. I am not a fan of leasing. My opinion. There are plenty of crop farmers that only have a select few hunters and gripe about lost crops. Its a fact. So..... Have more people hunt! Is that such a terrible idea?
 
First of all I dont need to send you proof of my farming background. I have lived on and been a part of my families farm since I fell in the gutter at age 2 and earned my first stitches. My father and I run the farm. Just because we dont run 1000's of acres doesn't mean we don't know what we are doing. For your info I only asked because I saw a lease advertised at over 25$ an acre and I had heard a kid was paying 500$ to an 80 year old down the road from me for his 300 acres. I know his son and wanted to make sure he wasn't being cheated. We dont lease our farm, we aren't farming for wildlife we are farming the beast we can to survive milk prices. I am not a fan of leasing. My opinion. There are plenty of crop farmers that only have a select few hunters and gripe about lost crops. Its a fact. So..... Have more people hunt! Is that such a terrible idea?

So; you are paying for the farming operation or your father? It makes a huge difference in my mind. I grew up on a farm also. The difference is my father was only 40 yrs old when I turned 20. Needless to say I didn't get the family farm, and my father didn't help me buy the farm I have.
 
I pay for the share I own. I will have bought the whole farm someday, but he will own enough to survive financially til he no longer needs it.
 
My opinion. There are plenty of crop farmers that only have a select few hunters and gripe about lost crops. Its a fact. So..... Have more people hunt! Is that such a terrible idea?
Couple things: 1. Why is there a jealousy of big crop operators? They treat farming as a business and have grown their operations. That's capitalism at its finest. Also as you'll see over the next few years, just because they're big doesn't mean there successful or good managers. There are risks in expanding and that will be seen sooner than later in that industry.
2. More people doesn't equal more deer killed. More people equals more pressure. I am a firm believer that allowing everybody to hunt doesn't eliminate a crop damage issue. That crop damage happens in the late summer/early fall when nobody is pressuring anything. Those deer can then be pressured out during season only to return the next year if the habitat is good. If you can keep the deer there in the fall with minimal pressure then more deer can be harvested. I am neither a farmer (I grew up a farmer's son and work in the industry still) and I'm not a biologist, but I have hunted a lot of places where this is the case. If you're trying to kill does on those properties to manage numbers, you'd better kill them in the first 2 weeks of season.
 
But it will help the following years. And I am not saying to let everyone hunt. That is never a good idea. And its not jealousy, I just feel they take on more than they can properly manage and take care of sometimes. The farmer next to us runs over 6000 acres. He is raping the land he farms and puts corn in year after year. No waterways, no terraces, no rotation at all. The guy who rents the tillable where i hunt is doing the same thing, and when it wont produce he will move on. We dont milk 500/cows because I dont want to manage people. I want to do the work, I enjoy it. If I wanted to sit in an office all day I would do something else. We are getting way off subject now and honestly all I really wanted to know was if my friend was getting cheated.
 
First off, I'm only 33 so don't read if you've owned land longer than I've been alive!

I'm not here to say leasing is right/wrong as everyone's situation is different.
(So in my opinion)
If you are paying 20,000/yr to hunt you need to take a class in common sense.
If you say that all landowners just want the most money, your crazy. Example? I've lived on my acreage for just over 3 years and have the best neighbor landowners you can ask for.
Among them; one was willing to help me try to
buy a neighboring farm, one leases a hunting property and let's me hunt his farm, and one has killed a bigger deer than (all) most of you.
What's this cost me? I plant food plots for one but rest haven't accepted any form of payment.
Granted I don't have 100% control of any and only coyote hunt one but it allow me to do what I love near my home.
 
But it will help the following years. And I am not saying to let everyone hunt. That is never a good idea. And its not jealousy, I just feel they take on more than they can properly manage and take care of sometimes. The farmer next to us runs over 6000 acres. He is raping the land he farms and puts corn in year after year. No waterways, no terraces, no rotation at all. The guy who rents the tillable where i hunt is doing the same thing, and when it wont produce he will move on. We dont milk 500/cows because I dont want to manage people. I want to do the work, I enjoy it. If I wanted to sit in an office all day I would do something else. We are getting way off subject now and honestly all I really wanted to know was if my friend was getting cheated.

In Iowa ground can be leased for $10/acre if you do all of the work and pay for insurance. If you go through a company you are going to pay $15-25/acre
 
The ignorance in this thread is amazing! Each of us is in a different situation and we do things differently. One guy leases, one guy buys, another does work for the farmer. We are all deer hunters and need to be talking about things to help one another, not tear others down. Difference is what makes the world go around! If you don't lease or never have then don't chime in, if you have never owned ground then don't chime in on that question. This site is a resource we should use to better ourselves and what we love to do.....
 
If you pay for cable when you you can get crap channels for free, don't chime in.


What if you have to pay for cable in order to get the Internet? I could live with crap channels which 99 % of them are with or without cable but I live in the country, so in order to get internet I have to pay for cable and we need Internet for work.
 
If the locals want to keep out of town leasers and land owners away then they need to start blasting every 120 inch buck they see. Its a lot less fun to pay a bunch of money and not have a crack at a big buck.

20 years ago it was shoot any buck you see, then that wasn't fun anymore so we went to make sure its big, type attitude. Then all the sudden eveyone is doing it and there are more bigger bucks around. Then all the sudden out of town landowners move in cause there are big bucks around, they pay more than the cattle guy could for ruff ground just to play on. They are also the types that restrict hunting access to locals. Then the lease money shows up cause they used to get permission from the farmers. Now farmers don't own it, and the guy that does is from outta town and won't let anyone hunt anyway.

I am back in the camp of shoot whatever the heck you want, its more fun anyway. Geez how many heads do you want on the wall anyway? About the last thing I want in my neighborhood is a 260 inch bomb getting killed, and I mean that. It would ruin things for a long time for the locals.

Anyway, my point is, I won't feel bad for guys that buy land or lease land for the sole purpose of shooting a deer, when I shoot that 2.5 year old 138 incher you have named "O Tanembaum", that has been eating out of your Buckmaster Blend food plot. I will probably cut off his horns and nail them to my barn, so you can come look when ever you feel like.

Buy it if you want, lease it if you want, but don't expect locals that used to hunt that timber to let him go just because you have him on camera.


I love this response! This is just how it is. I love when the out of towner comes in on a lease or gets permission from someone they have never met until they looked them up on the assessors page and then they complain about everyone that grew up there and how they hunt. The very best is when "their" deer gets shot by someone else. Lease owners are not well liked in my area. There are the exceptions. When they come in the bar and co exist with everyone in the area and keep their mouth shut about managing deer herds they usually are accepted by the locals.
 
I love this response! This is just how it is. I love when the out of towner comes in on a lease or gets permission from someone they have never met until they looked them up on the assessors page and then they complain about everyone that grew up there and how they hunt. The very best is when "their" deer gets shot by someone else. Lease owners are not well liked in my area. There are the exceptions. When they come in the bar and co exist with everyone in the area and keep their mouth shut about managing deer herds they usually are accepted by the locals.

Yeah the DNR loves you local boys as well, the same local boys that cross every fence line, hunt from the road and ignore any law out there! Guess what.....QDMA is not going away and that local boy mentality is fading quickly! Nothing wrong with a lot of local boys but ones with attitudes like you 2 are what creates the problems. Most LO don't lease for the money alone but they get fed up with the good ole local boys who think they own the neighborhood
 
No TV? You could be a much better hunter with way more deer on the wall if you had TV and let the big boys on the Outdoor Channel show you how it's done. Cable up man, everyone's got it. :D

Now that's funny, I don't care who you are lol
 
Local or out of town still sucks to have a farm leased out from under you. Can't really blame land owners that dont hunt. Bugs me when they take advantage. Paying way to little. There should be more regs on stuff like that, ins should be required. To me doesn't matter where they come from. It is sad where it is leading though.
 
I didn't read through all of this but just a few tidbits from my own perspective....
All the land I hunted when I was growing up was owned by my uncle, he died, all was sold. I was "mad" and actually had a fit with my family. I was 13-14 years old. They told me "buy your own then". I said "I'm fourteen, so I can't. Someday I will". That was my goal at 13-14 and I honestly set on that path from that day on. In the meantime, from 15 years old to 22 (and even permission land into my 30's).... Ground was sold out from under me, leased out, other hunters got sole access, the family decided to hunt, etc - I lost farm after farm. That's been going on since I was 15, so 20 years ago. I imagine it was going on 10 years before then, etc, etc. So 30, 40 years ago even. I decided to buy my own farm and saved every dime I could. bought one at 22 years old after saving from my 1st job and also saving in college.
Hunting farms, in general, most folks I know, me included - Wanted to manage farms (own, lease, have sole permission, etc) because we did want the rare opportunity at a mature buck - along with a million other reasons like: management, habitat, investment, peace & quiet, you making decisions, stop losing spots & changing all the time, love of land, conservation, etc, etc, etc. A lot of times when you were in a "free for all" situation, everything that was 1, 2, whatever got gunned down in droves. Bucks rarely, if ever made it to maturity. I have a passion for trying to find a mature buck to hunt. So, I left those situations and bought my own ground to grow a "managed herd", manage it how I want, etc. I can't control what happens over the fence, totally admit it and that's just fine. I love managing for a balanced deer herd, shooting does as needed, letting good young bucks live, shooting does as needed, letting kids & friends hunt with peace & quiet (safe too), etc. I want quality deer herd and habitat. Lots of guys do. Whether they do it from buying, leasing, getting sole control, whatever, I understand why.
I've been on both sides of the fence - no where to hunt, hunting public, losing farms left & right. I've been on the side of owning farms, wanting a place for family & friends without problems & a place where it's managed the way I want and see best.
I can't control leasing, no one can. No one can control who buys the ground I have permission on unless I buy it. Lot of things we can't control. There will always be a farm to hunt (quality might be terrible and too many hunters) for someone & the guys who own, lease, whatever - I can see why they do it and what they are trying to accomplish. Just my 2 cents being on both sides of this issue.
 
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