There was a hunting club in Greene Co I was a member of 3 years ago. Same club has leased that property for over 50 years. Its about 3k acres of timber company land. Dues were 1750 when I got in, including camper spot power, water, etc…. They had a nice club house with kitchen and good showers also. Great group of guys and ran really well. I got out because there were 28 members and many of them were there every week. Pressure was intense and it definitely affected the deer movement. 2 of my friends stayed in until this season. Now its the same number of members and cost 2500.00/ year due to timber co raising lease prices. Both of them have decided its not worth that kind of money. Thats how clubs are these days. Too many members and dues too high. Or they cut the members and pay 4k each. Either way the hunting is not worth it.

I thought you were talking about supply being hunting leases. Not deer. The two affect each other somewhat but they are not the same.

I think you have to decide what your objective is. For me, I like being the lease holder and the Pres. I like working the land and seeing the results. I like spending time in the woods looking at wild life. What I don't like is a bunch of trigger happy brown and its down hunters, or clubs.

So for me, I would spend a good amount of $ for a lease/club where the number of hunters was low, and the members all seemed to be on the same page. I like deer hunting more than turkey hunting, so I would be fine with a lease with turkey hunters only and deer hunters only. If you want to do both, then pay more.

But if I had to spend 5K a year, I might go out of state and find a different hobby to do here.

If you apply your theory above CNC, the best thing for the state to do is shorten the season, and limit the harvest for both out of state hunters and resident hunters. I dont agree it would work, but under your theory this should reduce lease prices because in theory, it would/should reduce hunter numbers. Based on past history, the more deer the state has, the more liberal the bag limits and rules imposed by the state will be. The more liberal the bag limits and longer the season, the more people will hunt. This is going to hurt a lot of feelings but it's not like lowering the limit would stop or slow down the vast majority of AL hunters. Just look at the responses in some of your other threads. I hunt and have hunted all over the south and there's more me, me, me, I, I, I, slob hunters that dont pay a lick of attention to season dates, limits or regulations in AL than I've ever seen in the other states. I was pulling stands last Sat morning and heard two turkeys die, or at least get shot at, over a 3 hour period. AL hunters have less restraint and more game selfishness than anywhere I've ever hunted. If they see a deer or have a turkey gobbling out of season, they just cannot seem to resist the urge to kill it. I'll openly admit that used to absolutely hammer the deer, both bucks and does, but I grew out of it years ago and recognized the error of my past ways.

The length of Alabama's season, Alabama's kill a doe a day, and up until just recently, a buck a day too, are all completely freaking ridiculous, as far as managing the deer herd for the good of the resource. Heck, even TX limits their hunters to just 5 total deer per year. That's a hard limit. Once you hit 5, youre done. They've got 5X the number of deer Bama has and over 5.5 million whitetails in their herd. Limit of 5 per person. Yet, in Alabama, you can legally kill 121 deer a season. It used to be 239 season, and before that when it was 2 does a day and no limit on bucks, wow, I'm not even going to type that number.

Part of the reason AL has as many hunters as we do is because it was established and actively marketed, long ago, that AL was a free for all, kill'em all opportunity, with one of the longest seasons in the south with the absolute most liberal bag limits in the nation. Combine that with what has become well known, both in state and out of state, that there is very little to no enforcement by the GWs, and even if, by chance, you were to get caught, the fines are just as ridiculous as the harvest limits and season length. This is the recipe, for exactly what hunting in AL has become today. You'll never convince me that the length of the season and the exceptionally lax harvest limits, methods, restrictions and regs were not intentionally designed and implemented, based solely to bring $$$ from both the metropolitan areas and bigger cities in state and also from out of state, into the rural areas and small towns. Heck Pine Apple, AL has a hunter appreciation weekend celebration every year and I'm sure other small towns around Bama, that rely on hunter revenue in the fall, do too. For all those that say Bama cant produce big bucks, why do you think there's a good age structure and some absolute slammer bucks all over the suburbs of B'ham? Dang sure isnt because the habitat is great. Why do the big money guys with big land holdings kill studs and much better than avg bucks as compared to the surrounding area? It's because those deer are mostly protected, not hunted to death and allowed to get age on them. They arent being hunted and killed 4 months out of the year when they are young and stupid at just 1.5, 2.5 and 3.5 years old, like 90% of the bucks are, all over the majority of AL.

Lease prices are like everything else, once they hit a certain price, the simply dont go down and if they do, it is only temporary and will run right back up to whatever the high point was and continue moving up and setting new highs. Groceries, vehicles, stock market are great examples. Any reduction is an anomaly and merely temporary.

^^^^^^ +1