Charging for hunting
Charging for hunting on non-profit lands was an idea that was discussed at a Stewardship Roundtable meeting last year. The numbers that were thrown around for typical hunting leases were much higher than I expected. Here is an article about Washington Township, Morris County consideration of leasing municipal lands to hunt clubs click here for the article.
If the numbers in this article are correct, leasing hunting rights could solve some of our stewardship budget problems. However, I think if you charged this much it would be hard to place any demands on the hunting club such preferential harvesting of does and sharing the property with the general public. Perhaps there is a fee that would strike a nice balance between meeting the stewardship budget requirements of managing a particular property and keeping control of the important aspects of deer management.
I don’t believe that the numbers in this article are correct. $80,000 for hunting rights on 120 acres seems way off the mark. If the hunters got 40 deer from 120 acres–which is a really good harvest–they would be paying $2,000 per deer. I doubt that you could find clubs willing to pay that fee. D&R Greenway charges for hunting privilages and it expects the hunters to do stewardship work. The income–between $7,000 and $8,000 per year–is nice and although it would be even nicer to get ten times that much it is more important that the hunters realize that hunting is necessary to achieve a healthy woods and that they are partners in that process. We underscore that feeling by making it clear that if they do not kill enough deer they will not be back next year. I think that if the fee were too high they would not have that feeling and it would be hard to get a harvest that we set or to get stewardship work.
Unfortunately I missed the meeting regarding hunting fees, but I can share with you all that NJAS charges $1 for clubs to manage deer on our property. In exchange for the right to hunt, all hunters are required to give NJAS 10 hours of stewardship for the length of the contract (August to July). I have found this to be of tremendous benefit and have gotten some amazing work done already – plus, it is easier on me to know that trails are being maintained throughout the year. I can see how a revenue stream could be helpful to return to stewardship, but this system has worked well, and is also in line with what Green Acres is willing to approve.
We had a similar situation as Gylla for the past several years, but we were never able to manage our hunter-volunteers to get a lot of stuff done. This year we moved to a incentive fee system whereby each hunter pays a $250 fee that helps us manage our program. We have 6 deer feeders set up that we maintain and this funding certainly covers that and the other costs of the program. We call it an incentive fee because we will be lowering the fee next year for those hunters that took the most deer and we will be raising it on the ones that don’t. We thought about the idea of setting up a reverse cap-and-trade type deer harvest system, but that just got too goofy. At any rate, I wonder if we are pricing ourselves too low at the moment? Again, this isn’t to make a profit but at least to cover our stewardship and land management costs and (possibly) the restoration costs associated with deer damage.
It is also worth considering that charging a fee for hunting may eliminate certain protections offered to landowners under the Landowner Liability Act.
It is also worth considering that charging a fee for hunting may eliminate certain protections offered to landowners under the Landowner Liability Act. This law offers significant protections to landowners who open their properties to the public for outdoor recreational uses for no consideration. Landowners are not protected under this law for liability associated with recreational uses for which fees are charged. It is also questionable whether there is a similar problem for those groups that require volunteer service from those hunters, as that work could also be viewed as consideration.
Fortunately there are other ways for landowners to handle the liability associated with hunting. These include carrying your own liability insurance, requiring hunters to carry insurance, and requiring hunters to sign liability waivers.