Throughout the country, the majority of hunters are private land hunters. In many states, there’s minimal public land to hunt, so hunters must either buy, lease or gain permission from landowners in order to go hunting.
In Pennsylvania, more than 80% of hunting land is privately owned. Even though there are more than 4 million acres of public woods to hunt in in the Keystone State, the majority of the hunting land is private ground.
In the Bradford area, local hunters are blessed with an abundance of public hunting ground throughout the region, and the majority do their hunting on it. Just a bit south and west of town, we have access to the Allegheny National Forest, which comprises more than 500,000 acres of public hunting land. There are also state game lands as well as large tracts of ground owned by the Bradford Water Authority as well as Collins Pine and Ram Forest companies that are open to public hunting.
However, in the past couple years, several thousand acres of woods now owned by Lyme Timber Co., previously open to public hunting in the Bradford region, have been put out for sale as hunting leases. Lyme Timber owns nearly 160,000 acres of land throughout Pennsylvania and New York. The majority of the land it owns is in Pennsylvania, especially in McKean, Potter, Elk and Cameron counties.
Three Rivers Forest Management LLC, a Lyme portfolio company based in Coudersport, manages Lyme’s regional timberlands with David Andrus as general manager.
Contacted for comment, Lyme representatives wrote, “Lyme’s investments in Pennsylvania are supporting hundreds of jobs in logging, trucking and sawmilling. Currently, there are roughly 135,000 acres in our recreational leasing program with 13,500 acres still available to lease. We lease these properties to individuals and groups so they can have a controlled recreational or hunting experience at a cost significantly lower than full ownership of the property. Our customers hunt, fish, camp, hike, trail ride and enjoy the great outdoors that our area is known for. Leasing recreational rights to our customers gives them a sense of security to call a place their own.”
Many local hunters, however, are grieving the fact they now have to look for new areas to hunt. Even though there’s still a lot of other public land available, some hunters are saddened because they grew up hunting the Lyme land, previously owned by Seneca Resources. This is land they became attached to, especially if they used it for family traditions.
“I lost areas that I have been hunting since I was a little kid,” said Bradford resident Anthony Sprague. “I lost some of my best deer and turkey hunting spots. To me it’s cruel, yet understandable, I suppose. If you don’t hunt national forests, I guess you will have to buy or lease land to hunt.”
Even though Sprague cherishes the memories he has hunting the Lyme Timber woods, he says it’s not worth paying to hunt on.
“I don’t want to pay to hunt in my home state,” Sprague added. “I understand the point behind it, but we have plenty of other public land around here that makes up for it.”
Selling and leasing hunting land is becoming a highly profitable business. Millions of dollars are being paid by hunters every year to either lease or buy hunting land. In Pennsylvania, the average cost to lease per acre is $15 to $20. That might sound cheap until you realize that most leases are usually several hundred acres. Some can even be thousands of acres. So a 300-acre lease is going to cost around $4,500 to $6,000 per year, on average. Most hunters create group leases to make it more affordable. On a $5,000 lease, a group of 10 hunters can split the cost at just $500 a year per hunter.
Nick Goetz of Mount Jewett is leasing a portion of Lyme property near Bradford Airport with three other hunters. When the property was posted and went up for lease, they took advantage of it.
“This was one of my favorite places to hunt. I couldn’t risk losing it,” said Goetz. “This place means too much to me to give up.”
One of the main reasons why Goetz and his group decided to lease the land was the caliber of bucks it held before the area was posted.
“The genetic pool in this area is excellent. The buck that won the Mount Jewett buck pool was taken off this property this past season. The third-place buck as well,” he noted.
Nevertheless, the bigger the group sharing the lease, the less ground you have to yourself.
Hunters like to buy or lease because they can have it to themselves and limit the amount of hunting pressure in the area.
“The idea of having just four people hunting this property and managing it is very exciting. I can only imagine the bucks that are going to be running around there in the next two to four years,” Goetz said.
Another advantage is that you are often given the rights to make habitat improvements. For deer hunters, this means you can create food plots and do habitat work to make the land more attractive to deer and other wildlife.
On the majority of public hunting ground in Pennsylvania, hunters do not have permission to make habitat improvements. This is one of the biggest challenges of hunting public land. Habitat can and often changes from year to year which can have a great impact on how much wildlife will live in the area.
