Hi, all. I am new here. I love hunting and interested in buying land in North TX or South OK area. Generally, how many acres are enough to hunt? Also, what other things do I need to research for purchasing punting land? Any reply would be greatly appreciated.

What experience do you have with hunting N. Tex counties? It can be feast or famine as far as game #'s go so do your homework. Know who the neighbors are and what they do with their land. 160 acres per hunter is a good middle of the road #. I would want 300+ acres. 160 acres is not enough for me from my experience in Montague county but I know guys with less up there and tons of deer and more and not much deer. It just matter where you are and the cover.

generally, you would want to find out what the land has been used for in the past, is there any water on it, how deep is the water if you have to dig a well, mineral rights and % owned, if any, condition of homes, if any, and other improvements. also check if the property has any easements on it.

as far as tracts go, i would want probably a minimum of 200 acres, with at least a few ponds on it. doesn't neccesarliy have to hold fish, but water for wildlife is important.

when looking at a piece of property, it is important to get out of the truck and walk the land, getting a feel for the place and studying game trails, feed areas, etc, if looking for a hunting place.

check into financing first and formost. Land loans have gotten very tight as of late and often require more down then in the past. and as txtrophy85 it takes alot of leg work.

Dig deep, very deep... especially on title and survey issues. Also pay special attention to any access easements if you cross another property to get to yours. This post is a little long, but it could save you a TON of head ache.

My father-in-law has 315 acres under contract on the river in southern Oklahoma, just north east of Gainesville. It is remote and there is a well maintained access easement to get to it that crosses another person's property. We did all the survey and abstract(title) work on the land and everything checked out OK. We got a clear title opinion.

The papers were drawn up to transfer the access easement to our name and the people who owned the land it crossed were all on board. At the last second we thought we should get our attorney to dig into that easement because it was our life line. As it turns out the legal description was wrong and it had to be re-surveyed, AND that family had passed it down through generations without probating people's deaths correctly. Therefore the existing easement was never any good in the first place.

Had our attorney not caught this, we would have closed and never known we had a problem with our access. One possible way around hiring an attorney might be to ask the title company to insure the easement. That way they are on the hook.

Our closing has been held up for over a year trying to clean up this families issues. We're 99% there though.

Hope this helps.

One more thing I learned. Always ask how many oil/gas wells are on the place on your first phone call. They will tell you how spectacular the place is and post all the right photos, then you will drive up and there's a well every 100 yds. I know that could happen anyway if you don't own the minerals, but why start out that way? i considered several that had a handful of wells, but some of them were just covered.

Also here are a few good web sites. I have about 30 more, but the properties from most of them show up on these when you search by county.

Lands of Texas

Lands of Oklahoma

Prudential Texas

Lands of texas is a great sight i actually advertise on that one. and if you are in area where there is good timber you might talk to a forester and establish the value of what they would pay for it and also if you replant there ca be tax breaks for doing so.

I can already see folks rolling their eyes at me, but here goes. You really ought to find you an agent located in the area you are wanting to buy in. See, there ya go, rolling those eyes.
All kidding aside, that's what you should do. Find one you are comfortable with and have them represent you as a buyer's agent (if they don't have the listings you want). As your agent, it is his/her DUTY to represent YOU. A good agent will know the area, have good working knowledge of other listings, and may have knowledge the general public doesn't have on a specific piece of property. He may know what it sold for last, helping you in negotiating your purchase price. He will know what questions to ask about the property. This way, you can feel more comfortable in that all the bases should be covered. JMO Then again, I am an agent.

I looked for land for 3 years straight, drove thousands of miles, worked with many realtors and did a lot of my own leg work. Here are a few important things I learned and a lot of it depends on how much time you have to devote to the process.

1) Do your own leg work first. Start with using the internet to find listings and to pull aerial photos and topo maps of the area. Once you settle on an area just spend a couple of weekends driving every road you can find. I usually had a few tracts I had pulled off the internet I wanted to drive by. Pack a lunch and have a good map because you will end up lost if you do this right.... trust me.

2) Koolade is right. A good local realtor can be immensely helpful. No matter how much research you do on your own, it can be worth finding a local who knows what's going on. They will almost always know of something you didn't see. I usually found a realtor by calling on a piece of land they had listed. If they sounded like they were knowledgeable and in the loop I asked them to help me in that region. If not, I moved on.

3) Look out for the rookie realtors. The land rush caused many residential realtors to hop into the land game. People who had no realty experience jumped in as well. I can't tell you how many I ran across that didn't know the difference between a cow track and a deer track, or an oak tree from a cedar tree. It's kind of hard to find out much about a piece of land on the phone with people like that. I had one lady meet me at a piece of land in high heels after a good rain. It was pretty funny.

4) I was looking for land in a huge area, from Cooke County, to Jack County, to NW Wichita County. Don't use one realtor for that big of an area. I had three good realtors helping me cover it. There was a little overlap a time or two, but for the most part it worked out really well.

second that koolaide.


find a good ranch agent (a women in a business suit generally isn't what your going to be looking for) and let them represent you as a buyer

oh and something we forgot to mention is that as a buyer you dont have to pay us. that is something that is calculated into the listings so you might as well have someone knowledgable working for you. The only time it might differ is when working hip pocket deals but generealy still the same case.