In my view, there is a significant difference between (a) a lease with people I know, trust, and can reach agreements with, and (b) a lease with strangers and rules that are set by someone else. Scheduling would likely be a big issue. I wouldn't pay $500 for a lease with 20+ strangers when I may or may not be able to schedule the lakes of my choice on weekends.

The fact that there are 40+ lakes scatters around DFW doesn't really make me want to pay more, as I most likely would only ever hunt a small number of those leases. In fact, the fact that there are 40+ lakes says to me that there will be more people in the "club," and this more competition for the best lakes. Perhaps you would be well served to divide it into divisions or such, and have separate leases with smaller numbers of people. Others might not agree, but I'd rather have access to 10 ponds or even 5 shared among 10 people than access to 40 ponds shared by 20+ people.

$1,000 seems high for this type of arrangement (strangers, little or no input on rules, etc.). I agree with Guy in terms of the price per quality hunt being the key. I think it sounds better than it really would be to say that there are 40+ ponds with reservations availble.

just some thoughts off the top of my head, for what they're worth.

Nate...it can and is being done both ways. You can lease out one spot to one group or person or have multiple groups or people and have multiple spots. As long as the outfitter is organizing it there is no reason to say the multispot approach would not work.

[quote=Hopedale]I guess my question should have been stated as, will the members have a real voice in the lakes, or is this more of a business model like joinging the gym?When you join the gym, the club rules are already in place. You get full use of the equipment and facilities, but you really don't pick out the hours of operation, type of machines purchased, etc.Based on the number of lakes you have, I'd suggest some creating a solid communications plan, as folks don't want to show up to a lake that is over crowded. That is what public is for.

The club rules will be set, but set based on input. Hunting will be by advanced reservation only. This will allow us to control who is on the property and hunting pressure. We do this for our fishing members and it works well.

Any more thoughts from anybody?

Leveraging Nate76's post, it has been my experience that with a lease like this, there are 40+ lakes, but only a handful will produce and everyone will want those lakes. Most of the time they do not manage them, they're just buying up water. Sometimes the duck hunting operation is second to a goose hunting operation they are running. So, you just have to really analyze it.

Even the big clubs which charge a lot more money for fewer members have the same problem. They get over pressured, etc.

I quite doing these leases and looking for more of a personal lease I can get a few ponds with a couple friends. Something you can work out with the owner to manage it over the year.

But, if you need a place to hunt and you are out of time. $1k is cheap if you don't want to scout and put the time in on public areas around you. You just wake up and go to your drawn duck hole and hope not every member is hunting it different days of the week.

Id do the small lease...too many people complicates everything! Sounds like the big leases are too much like hunting public land!

Do you already have food sources growing on these lakes?

I was running a pipeline, and came across this property. There were two guys in the water, pushing a little boat around. I was utterly confused.

No food than what is existing naturally. We plan to add food sources both in Spring of 2012 and again if necessary in late summer/early fall of 2012 for the 2012-13 season. More than likely our food of choice will be Japanese Millet for most of the lakes.

This comment makes me utterly confused. I haven't a clue what you mean.

The food source is key but do you see a lot of duck traffic during the season? To highlight some of what was mentioned before, if 5-8 of those 40+ lakes are in a flyway it creates a bottleneck of 100% of your hunters competing for +/-20%. The solution IMHO would be to divide the lakes into multiple 'classes' (for lack of a better term). Scout them this year and provide the premium lakes at a premium price. You can throw a few good spots on each class and this will give each hunter a better opportunity for more hunts.

when do they go on sale? and when can a perspective buyer look at them?

Spring of 2012

Great comments and input. Please note that we will only be making 8-12 lakes available for 2012-2013. All of these lakes will be 2 hours or less from DFW. Some will be south, some north, and some east. I don't think we will have anything west of Fort Worth. We have many of the same pressure issues with fishing. We feel we are very good at managing pressure on our properties. We have done it for 14 years and UNDERSTAND what pressure does for a property. Our goals are not to sell memberships to a new set of hunters each year. Like any business we hope to sell it once and have a huge retention rate, because we are offering a great value. Having said that, we understand that some lakes will hunt better than others and thus be in higher demand. We have the exact same issue in fishing and are able to manage the resevations/pressue effectively. We won't be perfect and some people will always feel you can do no right. But, I can tell you we will do the right thing for both our members, PWF and our landowners. Again, thanks for the input, great stuff!

The reason I ask is that the law states that you may not hunt waterfowl or cranes over manipulated planted millet unless the millet was planted not less than one year prior to hunting.

Here we go again....

That's incorrect gunner, read this...

http://www.texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2528450/1

I'd be more than happy to help you guide. I would be a cheap source of labor. dunlevyr@greenvilleisd.com

I hunt nothing but private, 2 places I own, and I lease up to 5 depending on water. There are 4 in my group, and you can add up to 3 more family members depending on whether or not the kiddos want to go. I pay an average of $2500 per lease per season, we split this 4 ways and it still seems like a lot if birds are thin. The problems I see are birds, they get educated really quick, and if you do not mandatorily rotate the water out, they will become useless. I also don't see anyone mentioning the get in and get out theory. We have one hole that we hunt, pick everything up and move to allow the birds to get in there and feed and rest. If we lolligag we end up flaring birds, so we move out about 500 yds or more to clean birds, remove waders, take pictures and pack for home. This same hole is good for one hunt a week, it will hold several hundred birds at times, but if we hit it more than once a week the hunts drag out too long and it is about 5 acres in size. We also have another hole we could probably hunt 3 days a week, it has a lot of turnover, good food sources and plenty of water.

There should be some type of monitoring, we found a lease 4/5 yrs ago and the day we went to look at it there were 9 dead birds on the water, and it had been hunted that morning and the hunter showed the owner his and his dad's limits

Very true David, when you have different people hunting a lake every weekend, staying too long, wounding birds, and not respecting the land, you will burn that lake fast.

Thanks for all the comments and opinions. The insite is great and amazing how many opinions are out there. Obviously, what ever model we choose will not fit all waterfowl hunters, but we have been pleasantly suprised by the sheer number of hunters who are interested.

Thanks again to all who have responded.