I may have found the holy grail. 400+ acres, private lease (not paper company), close to home, good deer population, only two other guys with only one actually hunting. (Was three guys) Been waiting for years at a chance to hunt this land and one of the three said they don’t have time anymore and the guy that was next in line has apparently moved and isn’t interested. That leaves me next in line IF the third member actually gets out.

Loose lips sink ships.

Believe me, that’s as much information as I’m saying

👍

Well, you can’t have nothing. Back on the look.

Ah man, what happened?

Its so hard to find places

I prob never hav another good turkey place

Sorry man!!

Dang, maybe it'll work out!

Well, as disappointing as it is, I actually dodged a bullet I guess. The guys that stayed in didn’t know I was friends with the guy that decided not to return and he had already told me what the yearly lease was. When I talked to them they were going to charge me nearly three times what he was paying which he was paying 1/3 of the lease. Basically, they were going to let me pay the full lease and they would hunt for free. Why can’t people just act right?

Thats pretty chity

Wow....that is crappy and low......I wouldn't want to hunt with people like that anyway....you will find something.....

Not southern hospitality as some know it.

Yep, you dodged a bullet

Well since it didn't work out for you, go ahead and spill the beans on who and where this place is located at.

Always require the ability to review the lease agreement before committing or signing anything. The lease will tell all. If they won't show you the lease, you don't want to hunt there.

That's bulldoodoo, screw those guys.

Was you to local? We have 2 locals in our club and they hunt during the week, and we hunt on the weekend, deer get to much pressure. No rules are being broken, just the way cookie crumbled when we got few new guys. I don’t prefer local guys myself, just for this reason. But it what it is.

Ignoring the lease cost, was what they were asking from you in line with the quality of the property? As you said “ you found the Holy Grail” and that has value to the leaseholder, especially if they got it at less than market value. If the leaseholder had locked down a great deal and had been splitting it evenly among two good friends, I don’t see where he would be obligated to do the same with a “friend of a friend” he didn’t have a close relationship with. In that case it would be what the market dictated.

According to your description, Only one guy is actually hunting, so you’d be, at a minimum, doubling the pressure on the property. So to recap, they found the lease, set it up to hunt, prob involving a good bit of both time, labor and money, and managed the property for a number or years for it to become the “holy grail” of hunting opportunities, and you expected to be able to just step right in, after everything is established and in place, and only have to pay what the original members were paying? That doesn’t sound like a reasonable expectation on your part, to me.

Not saying you should pay the entire lease, but I also don’t think it would be fair to the original members, who set everything up, to just let you come in and pay exactly what they are paying, when they would be the ones doing you a favor by letting you join their premium, hard to find, private, turnkey property.

And that right there is what’s wrong with hunting these days.

So not giving away freebies is what is wrong with hunting lol

Do you have any idea how much time and money it takes to get a property completely set up with foodplots, road work, permanent stands, years of management, (now days feeders to attempt to hold your deer), on and on. This doesnt sound like the standard typical Alabama hunting club where you have 20 members and replace 3-6 of them every year with new members at $1000 a head. In that situation, yeah, the dues are the dues and everyone should pay the same. This is not that situation. Unless F150 is bringing a ton of stand's, feeders, tractor and equipment, then he should expect to pay some kind of a premium as compared to the guys that have paid for years to build it up for years and years to what it is today. That's what's wrong with society today. Everyone wants the best without actually doing the work or paying the fair market price for what they are getting.

So he should have to pay the whole lease for the other two guys? I guess I should have kept my 200 acres and charged someone $2000 to hunt it with us then. 🙄

You're making an assumption that the other two guys set up the property and put in all the work to get it huntable.

What if they acquired the property after all the heavy lifting had been done as well?

Been a while since I’ve been on and saw this is still being kicked around. To answer the questions above, yes, i’d expect to pay a premium to get in due to what the others have done but not the whole lease. One of the guys has been in for a long time. The other has been in two years but is good buddies with the first. My buddy that got out built all the stands.

Actually I do but I also know the quality of deer Alabama has. Are there some good ones? Yes but way more average or below average and getting even more sub-par due to loss of crop land and deforestation for human habitat. Maybe I’ve just gotten past the headgear so it’s not worth me paying premium cash when I could go out of state and still get in one of those $1000 hunting clubs to kill a doe every time I go if I want to. Maybe it’s just me but I’m not knowingly paying the full lease for 2 others.
Good luck with your land search F150

Devil’s advocate: would you be happier if the lease was 3x as much and you paid your full third? Same dollar amount. Again just a thought experiment. You seemed pretty excited about the property and annual lease price before you found out more info.

Read the original post again. I was excited about the lease but never said anything about the price. The problem is, with a friend of mine being one of the guys that has recently been in the club, I know what the dues have been for each member. I fully expected to go in paying an additional $500 or so, the first year. The two other guys though led me to believe that the amount they wanted to charge me was what I would pay every year and that they were paying the same amount too. I don’t care how good the lease is. If I can’t trust the other guys, it isn’t worth it.