Membership vs Acreage size

In your guys opinions. How many acres should you have per hunter in a average club with say 4000 acres? 20? 50? 100? 200?

It's not strictly a number of acres per member although my rule of thumb is 100 acres per member MINIMUM! Count any retired member as three and any father with multiple children and a wife who hunts as 1 + .75 per dependent.

10 single men on 1000 acres can put a LOT less pressure than 5 on the same tract if 2 of the five are retired and the other three have family hunting.

Throw out 50 and 20.. The correct answer is as few members as you can afford to have and still pay the lease. Most say 100 acres per member but if you are planning on being a "trophy club" this is too many members. If you have 2 trophy bucks per square mile (640 acres) on your property, that's good. If you kill 50% of those you take 1 buck per 640 acres per year. There will be lots of members not killing any bucks.

I like the 200 each person. i would rather pay more.

Depends on the hunters and property, if you have quite a bit of open land and high number of hunters it can get pretty crowded. If you have all woods you can support more per acres. If you have a couple of show nuff deer killers then those two on a couple thousand might be too many.

On what i would consider average land in Alabama with numbers going up or down if you have a very high or very low deer population on your property. I think if you go by state law or very minimal limit on bucks say 4 or 6 point rule and a limit of 1-2 does per member then I would say a minimum of 100/per member. If you are going to try to protect more bucks and only kill 3.5 year old bucks and older and have a more liberal doe limit of 3-4 does per member I would say a minimum of 150-200/per member. If you are going to only kill mature bucks say 4.5 and older and allow a even more liberal doe harvest per member i would say a minimum of 250-300 per member. I think those numbers would allow the club to kill somewhere close to 1 buck per member making each member feel like he would have the opportunity to harvest a buck each year while allowing each member to be able to kill does without killing them at a rate that the property can't sustain.

Very well put Mike, I think you are spot on. I have no more Than 4 guns total on 750 ac. with 2.5 or better, and about 3-5 does taken a year

4000 acres should handle 3 hunters ok....

As many acres per member as possible and still pay the lease and plant food plots and not a member more!

I will add that if you are a serious turkey hunter then you need at least 1000 acres per member so as to be able to move around and get on birds.

I didn't read every post above, so someone may have already said this, but on any lease of a specific acreage, a large percentage of it isn't actually huntable acreage. So I'd go with as few folks as I could afford the lease with, keeping in mind that a lot of my total acreage might not actually be "huntable".

10 guys on 4000 acres doesn't sound like much, but if 3000 acres are 10' tall thick pines, you're really only hunting 1000 acres (and that's gonnna get pressured quickly).

I say for 4000 acres, 30 members would probably be good. OR your own lease and you can have as many acres as you can afford, and have all the buddies you want! Back on topic though, even though its 4000 acres, 35 members is a lot. I can also guarantee you 35 people aren't going to all agree, so that creates a lot of men acting like women that dont get their way.

Depends on your guest policy. 1000 acres with 5 members and a liberal guests policy is worse or usually more pressured than 1000 acres with 10 members with a strict guests policy.

Hunting clubs with a strict guests policy usually have happier members. You can't feed the world.