Despite a downward trend of losing deer hunters, the demand for purchasing hunting land in the U.S. remains high. Pennsylvania sold 647,242 licenses in 2010, that number dropped to 534,000 in 2022. Since the pandemic in 2020, land prices have increased dramatically, but the mature buck hunting craze hasn’t slowed down one tick.
According to a land survey from the University of Missouri, hunting and recreational land had the largest statewide increase of all land types, increasing 14% from 2022 to 2023. Georgia land values rose from $3,960 per acre in 2022 to $4,350 in 2023, per the Ag Information Network Report.
Twenty-nine states have a private-land hunter access program, but gaining access in prime whitetail states continues to be a concern for a lot of hunters since most of the U.S. public hunting land is in the western U.S., far removed from where most whitetail hunters reside.
Between 2012 and 2020, the average annual growth in Wisconsin farmland was just 3%. In comparison, between 2020 and 2022 alone, the average annual growth in value was 13%, according to the UW-Madison Farm Extension.
These increased land prices favor those in a position to purchase land, and it’s becoming less likely the next generation will be the ones to do so, due to rising costs of living and steady decline of new hunters. Michigan reported a decline in youth hunters by 37% since 2013, despite not losing more than 3-4% of youth hunters in any given year from 1996-2014.
Those who stay interested in hunting and land management have become more passionate than ever before and they’re trying to buy as much land as possible. So, with hunting participation numbers dropping, what is driving these skyrocketing prices for hunting land and booming business of deer hunting?
INVENTORY, THE GREAT ESCAPE, AND THE COLLAPSE OF FARMING?
Depending on your minimum standards of acreage, the
