Where Can I Find Cheap Hunting Land?

As a Land Specialist Realtor in Pennsylvania, I often get the question, “where can I find cheap hunting land.”  Cheap is relative and the prices of land have gone off the rails in the last ten years due to oil and gas production, timber price fluctuations and market forces.

Relatively cheap hunting land can be found by looking in remote locations in the United States. Look for land that has the mineral rights separated and can be partitioned. If the higher valued part of the land is sold, then the remainder will be left at a low net cost.

Some states and regions within these states have lower-priced land that has good hunting opportunities.  Here in PA, we have lots of strip mined property that is not worth much since it has been stripped of its resources.

In this post I will review where to look for cheap hunting land.  I will discuss what to look for when buying hunting property and where it may be located.

States with Cheapest Land

Some states consistently have low priced land available and some good hunting.  These states are:

• Arkansas
• West Virginia
• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Kansas
• Remote areas of the Western States
• Strip mined areas in the Appalachians

States Best For Hunting

Of course, you can buy cheap land in the desert, but if you are reading this you are looking for some good hunting land to call your own.  So cheap land must coincide with good hunting.  Some of the best hunting states with lots of game and cheap land include:

• Pennsylvania – lots of public land with prices as low as $1,400/acre
• Wyoming – more deer than people, game everywhere, land that is not desert sells for $1,500/acre
• The Dakotas – diverse terrain and game, best pheasant hunting in the U.S. – $1,000 – $5,000/acre depending on amenities
• West Virginia – lots of remote, rugged and strip mined land – $1,000/acre
• Kansas – best deer hunting in North America – $1,000 – $3,000/acre depending on tillable acres
• Wisconsin – one of the historically best deer states for big bucks and lots of turkeys. Good hunting land for $2,000/acre
• Minnesota – diverse opportunities with lots of public land – $2,000/acre
• Idaho – Beautiful state with great weather and nice small cities – land prices vary greatly depending on amenities
• Montana – huge state with more game available than anywhere else – $1,000 – $3,000/acre depending on water available

I have not hunted all of these states so I will review the ones I have been in and have cheap land.

Pennsylvania

With about 3 million acres of public land, PA is a hunter-friendly state. Even if you only own a small tract, if it is near public forest, you have room to roam. Every region of PA has some State Game Lands.  However, you want to avoid SGLs close to high population centers.

The best places to look are the north central and the Alleghany mountains. In north-central PA the region is mountainous and rugged with lots of public land.  One can purchase some steep wooded ground with some small area to build a camp or put in a food plot rather cheaply.

If the gas rights have been separated and the timber is not great, the land is worth around $1,500/acre for large tracts. In the coal stripping land of the southwest region of PA, land that has had its timber removed and the coal depleted can be purchased for less than a thousand dollars per acre.

You will want to look for land that has been restored according to DEP guidelines.  Some folks are scared of land that has no mineral rights.  But once a mine is stripped and restored, there will be no more coal operations.

Plus, the surface owner has rights as far as what happens there.  I often get the comment that someone can drop a dozer and start trashing the place any time they want.  This is simply not the case.

Gas rights are not really an issue since the lateral wells they drill with fracking techniques happens a mile underneath the surface and have no affect on the surface.

Don’t let the lack of forest cover fool you.  This land has lots of planted softwood trees and young forest growth as well as grass lands.  There are plenty of ways to get funding for projects to increase the wildlife use of the property.  There are plenty of deer and turkeys using reclaimed strip mines.

Recently, a 275-acre strip mined tract came across my desk with a price of $384,000.  That’s about $1,400/acre, which is about the average price for remote raw land.  This tract is located near some huge State Forest and PGC holdings so the hunting opportunities are tremendous.

I have a couple of listings that are closer to civilization for around $2,000 per acre.  One has minerals in tact and the other just outside of Altoona.

South Dakota

I was in a Cabela’s in SD several years ago and I asked a sales guy where I could hunt.  A farmer overheard me and invited me to hunt at his place.  I had a great time chasing pheasants.

Turns out, though there was no timber on the land, it was close to river bottom land that held lots of deer.  They were able to kill nice bucks there buy hunting brushy and wooded areas.  The small game hunting was excellent and there was public access hunting nearby.

When I worked for Pheasants Forever, we had a conference in the Black Hills area.  This was some of the most beautiful land I have ever seen with game everywhere.  I saw every big game animal native to the Rockies in the Black Hills Park.

Caught some trout too.  No wonder the Native Americans fought hard to keep this land.

Kansas

Home of the big bucks!  I shot the biggest deer of my life in Kansas. It has the best soils and some thick cover and wide open spaces that deer thrive on.  Corn and soybeans cover the landscape so there is plenty of food during growing season.

If you have some good cover and put in food that deer can eat during the winter, you will have the best deer hunting available anywhere.

If you look for land in SE Kansas that has some shrubby timber with little tillable acres surrounded by large farms, you can have great deer and turkey hunting.  Western Kansas is more of a desert terrain with mule deer available as well as whitetails.

Wyoming, Idaho and Montana

Deer season starts in September in Wyoming and there are more deer in the state than people.  Montana is loaded with whitetails along the creek bottom lands.  Mule deer are everywhere in the BLM lands that checker the landscape.

Antelope are easy to find and ranchers are often interested in having hunters take them out.  Rocky Mountain states are where the rugged mountains and high desert keep human populations low.  So there is plenty of game and more public land than private.

Minnesota

The land of 10,000 lakes has about 8 million acres of public land.  Cold in winter but for the canoe camping enthusiast it is the best place to go in the U.S.  It has everything from big deer, pheasants and ducks in the southern part and include good bear hunting in the North.

Conclusion

There are places in every state where land can be had for a low price.  Desert land in the hundreds of dollars to tillable land, timberland, river bottoms out west, coal mine regions in the Appalachians where land can be bought cheap.

The key is to find property where lots of game exist and the land is undesirable for anything other than recreation.  Remote land without power far from cities can be found everywhere.  Start with the best hunting states for the game and type of hunting you like, then start searching for land out in the boonies.

Land is a great investment but you have to be smart about it.  For more information or for consulting on land purchasing decisions, give me a call anytime.  My job is to help people buy, sell and get the most out of their land.