Yep, used to have a 160 that I could hunt for free in the special SW zone. The landowners saw dollar signs when elk were made legal statewide. We got the boot and there was no way I could afford the lease.
Elk in Dewey County Oklahoma? Free roaming elk in the special northwest zone? Where? How?
- Thread starter Whitetail Regulator
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That’s a bad deal. I can relate though. I used to lease thousands of acres on the Cimarron River, and salt fork river all along the Kansas border for 20 yrs...I paid 1.63 an acre up to 3.00 an acre for prime river bottom...the land owner hated deer and wanted us to take as many as legally possible due to crop damage...we took many trophies from 190” on down...then the land owner wanted us to kill only 1 a year...for a while...then a veterinarian and a lawyer added a zero and then some to what I was leasing for. paying 15.00-25.00 per acre. Without even scouting or looking at the place...when I first started hunting up there it was more of a service to the land owner...it had no reputation of trophies...until monster bucks started making movies across the state line in Kansas. Believe it or not, I had a hard time getting hunters to lease Cimarron River bottom on the Kansas line for 1.63 an acre...which came out to 500.00 a gun....wow times have changed
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However a few years ago...a perfect storm of blue tounge, oil drilling, pipelines, hunting pressure and drought. Dropped the harvest rate by 80 percent from 2000 animals a year to a mere few hundred... this makes hunting for a 180” deer comparable to finding Sasquatch...I felt bad about even shooting a deer. This left lots of hunters paying double digits per acre and watching the tumbleweeds blow ...there numbers are up to 1000 being harvested...still 30-50 percent down...a few pockets of good bucks left, but nothing like the early 90s...heck beaver river is close for deer season due to low numbers I think.
Is this a new story or the same story in the other post?
I heard it on the news today. Lincoln County farmed elk.
Hey CowboyNeil just curious what rates were on leasing out there if you can share some details like price per acre or per gun, river or creek frontage , crop land or food plots. But if you choose not to I totally understand...just curious, no big deal thanks... FYI I’d like to see some free roaming okie elk picks if u can post em.
Had 1200 acres that we were paying 2 dollars an acre on between 4 guns. That was about as much as we could handle, now they're asking for $3/acre and the other guys are wanting out. Mostly crop land along the river.
