Hunting Leases with U.S. Hunts

This week's episode of the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast covers a topic John has been wanting to talk about for quite some time. Greg Willis runs US Hunts, a website that helps hunters find leases for deer, waterfowl, varmints, bears, and more. Greg has been helping connect hunters with land owners for many years now, but has recently upped his game and his outreach. US hunts is a simple to use website, which can filter what a person is looking for, much like any other online shopping.

Greg and John obviously talk about Gregs business, but they also cover many topics that are good for anyone looking to lease land should know. Obviously everyone wants to kill giant deer, but there are other things to consider as well like neighbors, water, food, accessibility for both hunting and other recreational uses, and don't forget about the land owner themself. The guys also talk about the advantages to leasing over owning. Such as being able to hunt multiple areas, or being able to simply pick up and go if something were to happen to the quality of the game a person is pursuing. 

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!

[00:00:00] Hey guys and gals, welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, brought to you by Arrowhead Land Company. Here you'll be educated, entertained, and equipped to get more out of your outdoor experience. So hold on tight because here we go.

What's up folks? Welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast. I am your host, John Hudspeth, and I hope you guys are ready because first off, I got a nice long intro this week, but second of off, we have a really cool podcast this week, one that I've been wanting to touch on for a while. And we're gonna get to it here in a little bit, but I just I'm pretty excited about this one.

Anyway yeah, like I said, got a lot to talk about h here in the intro. One, I just finally have some time to do it. Two, a lot of things have been happening, so [00:01:00] even though it's June, whatever it is now lots of stuff in the works. So first off, I was able to make it out to the ranch over the weekend.

Got quite a bit done. I wouldn't say I got everything on my list done, but got quite a bit done. Mainly I got a lot of my mowing done that I wanted to, and so yeah, hooked up the brush hog to the tractor headed back and man, I have no idea how many acres I mowed, but it was a decent amount. And for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, haven't been listened to the last few weeks.

My goal with this I keep calling it hocus pocus and witchcraft and stuff, I learned somewhere that if you mow. Native grass around the summer equinox that it can help it grow back, thicker, fuller, healthier, that type of thing. I've taken that to heart. I haven't done it the last two years.

I did it three years ago. It seemed to work pretty well. And so that was my goal for the summer because I didn't get to do any of my burning this spring. The weather and stuff just never worked out with my schedule, and so I wanted to do something and so that's what I decided to do. And so I went about it in a different [00:02:00] way this year though, just stuff I've learned over the last couple years, things that I've witnessed.

I didn't want to just Take everything down to the ground. And so I did. I don't know, I just did it a lot more strategically than getting out there and just mowing everything. Fence line and fence line. And so first thing I did was I came off the fence line. I left a good, at least 20 yards between the fence and where I mowed.

And I had lots of reasons for that one. A little buffer strip between the neighbors two. I'm not exactly sure if this is gonna work or not. And if it does work, then great. If it doesn't work, at least I still have some thick stuff that wasn't mowed. Next to the neighbors.

Three, what am I at now? Three. One thing that I was really trying to accomplish with this, something that I, learned about a lot last year when I was in Nebraska, I wanted to create edge. And so that's another reason I didn't take it all the way up to the fence because either way I'm gonna wind up with edge.

Let's say this works and all the native grass takes [00:03:00] off and shoots up and is awesome. Then that stuff that I didn't mow, maybe it's not as good and you'll have that edge or the other way. Let's say I ruined it and this stuff's not gonna grow. Then that stuff that I didn't mow, it's still tall, thick and everything, and so I'll still have edge, just the other direction.

Another thing that I did that a lot of the, farmers and ranchers are probably rolling their eyes at anytime. I came up to a big patch of like blackberries or brush. I mowed around it, let it go. Again, just, there's some structure out there now. There's some edge, there's berries, a food source.

So just lots of reasons. So I left a couple big Blackberry patches. Another thing, I think I'm up to like number four here. There in certain parts of the areas that I mowed. There were tree saplings coming up and I could tell the majority of them were oaks. A lot of them were either some type of white oak or post oak.

And I basically used the mower to thin them out and pick the better trees so I [00:04:00] left the better trees. If there were areas where there was a bunch of 'em growing real close together. I thinned them out in the left, one or two. If there were two growing next to each other out in the open, I went ahead and took one of 'em out.

Just that they were no longer competing. I let you know that one. Good one's now gonna get all the nutrients, all the good stuff out of the ground. I, there's been a few trees that I've been letting grow, since we bought the property with the goal of hanging a tree stand in them. And so I cleared out around those a little bit, just to help those grow faster so I can hurry up and get a tree stand in them.

Gosh, what else? I mowed a few little paths. Just some things that I normally. Mow every year anyway, to kinda help maybe direct the deer a little bit. So for instance, one spot that I ended up not hunting last year, but there's a group of post oaks that have been growing up. They're probably in the like 10 to 15 foot range.

And I tucked an old tripod that I had in the middle of those post oaks and it's out in the open. It's really close to the saddle on this hilltop. And so basically I mowed a path about 15 yards in front of that tripod because then it'd be [00:05:00] really cool to hunt there at the longbow. You can be hidden in those little treetops.

You just, you're fairly low. And hopefully I can get a deer walking right down that path at 15 yards. So did some stuff like that. Mowed some areas that I wanted to promote the native grass. There was a I could see a lot of blue stem, big blue stem, little blue stem, Indian grass and stuff that was just starting to come up.

And so I'm thinking, just like a yard. You knock that stuff off and it's go, gonna grow back thicker, fresher, and yeah that's the thought behind it. And there were some other areas that just, you know, from last summer with the drought and grazing it hard with the cattle that the weeds had just taken over and And it just looked nasty.

There's a bunch of old like dead goat weeds and stuff like that, just stuff that's not beneficial. So I went ahead and took tho those areas out and yeah, like I said, just did a stinking ton of mowing. That's basically all I did. All on Saturday. I did check out my soybean plots and oh my gosh, guys, if you're not following me on Instagram, you need to be, I I, I [00:06:00] shed a tear of happiness when I got to that first plot, looked at in it.

And that plot was definitely the best also. So that didn't, didn't help, but just. Just beautiful lush soybeans. We've gotten super lucky and gotten some random rains. Actually the night, I guess it was the night after I got done mowing we ended up getting I wanna say like an inch and a half of rain or something that night, which is fantastic for the soybeans.

Fantastic for the stuff I mowed. Just fantastic in general and so I hope you guys have been getting some of the rain that we've been getting. We haven't got a ton, like I'd say we're still below average. But we have just been pretty fortunate to get these little random storms to where I wouldn't say we're lacking.

And, ever since I've planted my soybeans it's been pretty perfect about every, week or so, we seem to get just some random rainstorm. So yeah. That's been awesome. We also, I also woke up Sunday morning with zero cell service and zero internet because apparently lightning hit the tower close by and just knocked it out completely.

And so [00:07:00] I had no idea what was going on. When I woke up Sunday, I couldn't get ahold of my wife. I couldn't tell her what was going on. I couldn't tell her that I was okay. Luckily she doesn't care about me that much and wore me. About me that much. She does care. She just doesn't worry about me. She knows better than to to, than to count on me, texting her every 10 minutes.

But yeah, so that was crazy. What else about that weekend? I guess that was it. I did not get to fill my protein feeders. I actually went Sunday morning to do it, and my brother had borrowed my keys and had not given them back to me, and I was locked out of all of our equipment.

And because I didn't have any cell service, I couldn't call him to ask where the keys were out. He had already left for church. So I was not able to fill the protein feeders unfortunately. But luckily, pretty much everywhere I have a protein feeder is where the soybeans are growing, so my deer aren't lacking for nutrition.

It'd just be nice to get 'em up, give 'em that extra boost, give 'em that extra option. And like I said, a big part of the reason. Yeah. I'm not even feeding real protein. A big part of the reason I'm doing it is just for the [00:08:00] attraction to try to, keep the deer off the neighbors. So yeah, that was my weekend.

I did get one other awesome, amazing piece of news over the weekend though. I talked about it on my Instagram story I posted on Instagram. I officially successfully drew an Iowa archery. Tag. I'm going to Iowa. My first real draw hunt, which is funny cuz it's in Iowa. It's not out west after elk or mule deer or anything like that.

I drew a whitetail tag. But guys I'm so dang excited. I like I was actually, I was, I kid you not, I was standing in my soybean field and I was ecstatic because they looked so good. And that's what made me think of Iowa. And so I pull out my phone, I look it up online and I was successful. So I'm like literally dancing around in my soybean field for so many reasons.

Like I don't know what I did, but like this season so far, and I'm knocking on wood here big time cause there's a lot of things that can go wrong. But so far this season is lining up to be [00:09:00] one for the books. So yeah, I got my Oklahoma stuff is going pretty well. I got a little bit more prep to do. I'll still have access to my buddy's place in Texas.

I plan to go to Nebraska still. Something on that here in a little bit. And then I drew an Iowa tag. And yeah, like I said, I believe that puts me at 1, 2, 3, 4. At least five buck tags In Texas, you get three. But the way they do it with the different counties, like I have definitely one county to hunt, potentially two or three counties.

So my buddy's new place, technically he is in two counties. But I don't know how much freedom I'm gonna have on his new place. He's holding it a little closer to the chest. But but yeah, all that to say, I'm gonna get my feel of white-tailed deer hunting this year. So very excited. A few little just things I'm doing to keep my hopes in check.

We'll start with Nebraska. So first thing off, they are limiting non-resident deer hunters this year. I got an email about two weeks ago talking about that, and so the tags go on sale, I believe [00:10:00] sometime in July. I was like, it listed a bunch of different dates and honestly I was a little bit confused by which date was which.

And so I think I'm actually gonna call them. And figure out what day that is. Cause I'm guessing those are gonna go pretty quick. So I'm, it's not guaranteed I can go to Nebraska yet. And then still on the note of Nebraska, the spring when I was out there Turkey hunting, I found three deadheads on the land that I permission to hunt which means last year.

And I, I asked my fa, my sister's father-in-law about it. He said they had a real dry year last year, so I'm guessing the deer had got knocked down quite a bit by E H D. I did on my camera that I'd left out over the year. I did have several good bucks in the, like November, December, January range, and so I think if they were gonna die by the disease, they would've already been dead.

So there is some hope there, but yes, that is not a guaranteed tag anymore. And then moving on to Iowa, still in that e HD range, I just feel like every time I turn around social media, if you're listening to all the, all the big [00:11:00] Iowa people, Lee and Tiffany, I just watched a video of theirs.

I think Bill Winkys talked about it. Several other people. They're all just scared to death that there's going to be a huge e h d breakout this year. I guess it's just been super dry. They've not been getting these rains. That is like the hub, the Midwest is like the hub for E H D. And so I've waited seven years to draw this tag and I could be going into one of the worst e h d years on record.

Like I said, Lee Koski, he was talking about the year so far. It's not over yet. There's still a chance, but he was saying so far this has reminded him of back in 2012 and 13, that. Just decimated the Iowa deer herd so yeah, keep that in your prayers. Keep them in your prayers, not just for the deer, but all the farmers and ranchers in Iowa and Nebraska, Illinois, like the whole Midwest.

I feel very selfish, complaining about the deer herd and stuff when there's people whose livelihoods are on the state. But yeah, all that to say, I am extremely excited. I'm [00:12:00] probably gonna do a podcast here in a few weeks. One, I'm gonna probably have Mr. Emperor himself, Dan Johnson, on to talk about Iowa.

What to expect, what I should count on stuff like that. Some dates. I'm still trying to figure out when I want to go. Probably gonna talk about, my schedule. Now I have enough of these hunts planned and enough states that I'm gonna have to really sit down, which is something I don't like to do.

I'm not a big planter I'd rather fly by the seat of my pants especially when it comes to deer hunting because, I'd love to play around weather and stuff like that, but with as many hunts and as and with, oh man, with as many hunts as I have, and with as many irons in the fire as I'm gonna have this year.

I do need to sit down and do some more careful planning, need to plan it out with the wife and when she's gonna be available to keep our kid. Am I gonna need to take the kid? When I want to go to Nebraska in September, my wife's actually gonna be out of the country on a mission trip, and so I gotta figure out if I'm going to take my daughter with me, [00:13:00] if my sister can help me babysit, if my mom can keep her, if my mom wants to come with me and help babysit.

So yeah, lots and lots of. Coordinating this year. So it's gonna be very interesting. But like I said, it's setting up to where it could potentially be a season, a season of all seasons. One for the record books, that type of thing. But there's still definitely a chance that things could go terribly wrong, and I have all these hopes and just nothing ends up working out.

So yeah, we'll see what happens. We'll talk more about that later. Gosh, what else? What else? The One Nation Expo, I haven't thrown that out here in a while, that's coming up in August, I believe. Wanted to throw that out there for those guys. That's all I can think of right now. Like I mentioned, I guess last week, guys, dear season's gonna be here before you know it.

So like I said I hopefully will be in Nebraska in September, so that's two months away, essentially at this point, a little over two months away. And if you're just sticking around Oklahoma a little over three months away, [00:14:00] so it's definitely time. Get the bow out, get the gun out, muzzle loader, whatever you want to use, crossbo, whatever it is, get out there and start practicing.

I know it's hot as all get out. This coming week when this drops, it's supposed to be like, I wanna say the lowest high I saw was like 101. It's supposed to be miserably hot. But get yourself a shade tree garage. Whatever you need to do, get out there and start practicing with your weapon because you don't want to put in all this work.

And when the moment of truth comes, screw it up by, a bad shot. So yeah, that's my 2 cents on that. All right. We've been going for 16 minutes or something on this intro. That's probably good enough. Like I said, we got a really exciting episode this week. Today we are talking to Greg Willis and Greg's with US Hunts, and they are a leasing company, so they specialize in deer hunting leases in Oklahoma.

I've seen on their website I know I saw one or two in Texas. I think I saw one maybe in Kansas, but they. [00:15:00] Primarily focus on Oklahoma, and I've been wanting to do a leasing episode for a long time. It's been on my mind for a while actually, because I just know a lot of people in Oklahoma and other places rely on hunting leases in order to get out there and do the things that we love.

And I, I can't get into it now story for another day, but I might be looking for at least myself for the next year or two. And yeah, I was very excited to have Greg on. And I think this is gonna be a really good educational episode. So I got a lot of questions lined up. Very excited to have Greg on.

I hope you guys are ready for it. As usual, thank you guys so much for taking the time outta your day to listen to me ramble and talking to a can here. So yeah, huge shout out to you guys. Thank you for Greg, or thank you too, Greg, for coming on. And yeah, we're gonna hear a quick word from our partners, and then we're gonna get into my interview with Greg Willis right after this.

The more I look at [00:16:00] land, the more I see that good looking Arrowhead Land Company logo. The guys and gals at Arrowhead are making a huge splash in the Oklahoma land market. So if you're looking to buy or sell, be sure to give them a call. They have agents across the state ready to help you out or answer any questions you may have.

So check out Arrowhead Land Company and let their hardworking agents go to work for you. There is truly no place like the great outdoors in Oklahoma. When you're out in the wild, you want your wireless devices to work unlike other carriers. Bravado Wireless believes that coverage in rural areas is important so that you stay connected with competitively priced plans and coverage where you need it.

The mission of Bravado Wireless is to keep you connected no matter where you are. Visit bravado wireless.com or check them out at one of their retail locations. Bravado Wireless, the power of connection. Hey everybody, welcome to today's show, and today we're talking to Greg Willis. How you doing, [00:17:00] Greg? I'm doing great.

How are you? Oh, not too bad. Not too bad. It's been a long, busy day, but I'm ready to just calm down, sit down and talk about some hunting stuff. All I'm ready to roll. Awesome. Awesome. Real quick, before we get into too much of the fun stuff, why don't you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yes. I'm Greg Willis. I live in Choctaw, Oklahoma. I've been married to my wife for so long that I can't even tell you how long it's been. It's been quite a while. And we have three kids and we have, I think we're up to eight grandkids now. And I was born and raised in Oklahoma and grew up hunting and that's my story, if you will, in a nutshell.

Awesome. Awesome, Greg. We're here to talk about a topic that I've been wanting to and trying to talk about for a while. Just been waiting for the right person and I think you're it. And so I'm pretty excited about it. But you have a company called US Hunts and it is a lease company, a leasing company.[00:18:00]

Yeah, I know a lot of people that listen to this rely on leases. A lot of people throughout the country rely on leases and so really excited to have a conversation about it. Just to start us off, why don't you give us the quick, like 30,000 foot view, what is US hunts? I will do that.

Thank you. So us hunts actually. We just rolled that name out in our brand new website approximately two weeks ago. It started off back in 1999 as Okie Hunts and most people in Oklahoma Hunt have heard of. But we started that off in 99. I didn't really do much with it until about five years ago after a really good landowner friend of mine passed away.

And he had always told me, man you ought to do this. You're good at it. People like you, and he just very complimentary. But He he kept telling me that I went to his funeral and at his funeral I'd gotten to know his kids and his grandkids. And my daughter used to stay over there with the grandkids when we would go hunting some [00:19:00] and they got real close and stuff.

And anyway, at the funeral I had farmers come up and ask me if I was the guy that did that for the landowner. And I said, yeah. And they started asking me if I'd do it for them, and it just, Snowballed and we ran it as Okie hunts, like I said, for oh, about five years. Started advertising a little bit on Facebook and trying some different ways to find land owners and we started having success and, picking up land and growing our amount of acreages that we had, our number of, that were doing business with us every year.

And it really developed into this thing where I thought, man, I could maybe expand this thing and go outside of Oklahoma at some point in the future. But I didn't have a website that would allow me to do it without miserably failing. So we just built a new website again, US hunts and It's built V [00:20:00] R B O.

You can get on there and sort by hunter amenities, not civilian type of amenities. But you can sort by, if it has waterfowl, if it has certain type of animals, if it has ponds or rivers. There's different things you can sort by. And that's pretty much where we're at today.

We're starting to market and advertise into other states now. And we're trying to broaden our horizon now that we have a tool that actually will allow us to grow. Awesome, man. That's a great start. Yeah, I didn't realize that. I have heard of the Okie hunts and yeah. Coming full circle.

That's awesome. Very nice. Very nice. Yes. A lot of fun. Awesome. Cool, man. I definitely wanted to, want to dive in a little deeper and learn about some of this stuff. And so my first question's pretty easy. I think it's easy at least. Just off the top, what are some advantages to leasing over owning?

Over owning, of course, would be the capital outlay for buying a piece of [00:21:00] property. Another benefit I think that there is that. You can pick different regional areas that you may wanna hunt. You may pick an area like for the last three, four years in western Oklahoma, it has been super, super dry.

If you had land over there that you had bought and you were trying to grow deer the minerals in the ground weren't there. It wasn't in the plants and because they weren't getting any rainfall. So you might wanna. Have a lease over in eastern Oklahoma somewhere that's, has more rainfall.

But those are your primary reasons. There's a lot of advantage to owning your own property as well. Yeah. Gotcha. That's definitely the two that came to my mind. Cheaper and and then, yeah, like you, you mentioned like being able to move around and pick spots, but also you're not, if something like that happens that you just mentioned, you're not stuck with this piece of ground that, you know may have lost value for that reason or whatever reason, all you do is cancel the lease and pick a new one. So that's it. Yep. Okay. So when people [00:22:00] are looking for a lease, obviously the first thing they're gonna be interested in are big deer. I think that's a given, but it is, what are some other things that they should keep in mind or ask about or be concerned about, other than just, are there 200 inch deer on this property?

And that that's definitely true. I would say, everyone is always asking if there's livestock on the property. We live in Oklahoma, man. There's livestock on just about every piece of property. I think I have. Out of all of my properties, probably 5% of them don't have livestock on.

Now the thing to keep in mind is how many livestock is on that property? How many cows per acre on the property? Those are things that you have to look for because if it's a feed lot you're not gonna have much success hunting. So that's one thing. Water on the property, especially in Western Oklahoma.

That's been a really big deal. And southwestern, Oklahoma, most of the people down there have water tanks for the cattle and solar pumps or electric pumps, and the deer will [00:23:00] come up and drink out of those things at night. But I would say primarily a good landowner is key.

You want you want good communication with the landowner, or even a company like ours who will respond when you have a question. Those are primarily the things that I think are important. On hunt leases, I'm gonna throw out there probably good neighbors too. Yes. If you can have good communication with your neighbors I always encourage people to try to meet people driving down the road that are next door neighbors because you may need to call them and get permission to go pull an animal off their property and if they don't know you or you don't have their phone number.

And we do help hunters with that. We've had some call us before and tell us a deers cross the fence and could we try to find that person? And we found them. And they met 'em out there and helped them. They never did retrieve the deer, unfortunately, but they did help them. So that is, that's important as well.

Yeah. Okay.[00:24:00] This next question I almost hate to ask it, but I just know there's people out there wandering since we're gonna talk about money just a little bit. When you're, looking at the price of a lease, is that price reflective of the quality of the Deere? Or is it more just about, the size, the amenity, the makeup, or is it could you say it's somewhat, you get what you pay for?

If you, if an area is proven to produce big deer, is that gonna be a little bit more expensive? Yeah it definitely plays a role in determining that. But I don't really set prices. Excuse me. I don't really set prices, landowners if they don't have a clue. I will tell them what I think their property's worth.

But a lot of landowners today, they're educated. They're on Facebook, they're on, different websites. They're shopping, they talk to the local warden in their area. And they're educated. And then some of 'em also, they don't want to mess with it unless it's worth it to 'em In some [00:25:00] cases, the properties, if there's no cattle on the property, the price goes up.

If there's wheat and soybeans and corn located in the area, the price goes up. If, there's lots of things that determine that tree ground cover plays a big part in it. But. On the properties that I've had out in Western Oklahoma since 1999. I have quite a few of 'em out there.

Out there it's the landowners haven't been as involved with that. I do have some that call me every now and then and say, Hey, I want to go up this year. But for the most part they don't. I've had two price increases since 1999. One of them was because I added hunting, lease insurance for all the hunters and the landowners.

It covers ladders, stand accidents, tree stands, UTVs weapon accidents, things of that nature. But I don't really go up on price as much, but Phil Landowner calls me and tells me they want more money, that then I go up on the price. But yeah, you're [00:26:00] right. A lot of it is based on the quality of deer.

It could be based a little higher because of the county that it's located in, being known for, big deer. But anymore in Oklahoma, you can go on public land and shoot a monster deer. You can go just about in any county and shoot a monster deer. It's changed a lot since I grew up hunting and, if you saw a doe it was a big deal at the campfire that evening.

Yeah. Yeah. I I did an episode with my great uncle. I guess it was about a year ago now. And he grew up along the Red River and I remember he, he talked about seeing his first deer ever. He's he's 83 years old now, I think. 82, 83. And and yeah, we talked a little bit about, how we started hunting and all that stuff.

So it, it was very in, walking around the woods today. It's hard to imagine that, not that long ago, 60 years or so, that seeing a deer at all was a huge deal. Oh it's very true. Nowadays guys will come in from camp [00:27:00] or from hunting and they'll say, ah, I only saw 10 dos today.

Yeah. I only saw five do this morning. Yeah. Or I only saw a basket rack buck. Back then if you saw Buck, it was a real big deal. So it's changed a lot and that's great. But it's definitely not what it was when I was a kid growing up hunting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I wanna talk a little bit about, your specific business, your website and everything.

So let's say I'm listening to this and I'm interested in a lease. What do I need to do to get one? What you would start off doing is you'd go to the website, which is us hunts dot com. And when you get on there, we, like I said earlier, it's kinda like a vbo. So when you get on there, Go to select a state, select a county that you wanna hunt in somewhere, maybe around your house.

You can select lease type, and then you can click on search. And once you do that, let me just do it here real quick while I'm on the phone or while we're on the line here [00:28:00] together. So once you select the county and let's select whitetail, let's go to search. It's going to sort all the properties that we have based on the criteria that you just Asked about, and then up at the very top there's more filters you can filter this by.

And one of the most important filters I think for any hunter looking for a place is lease status. It's a dropdown. You click on that and then you click available cuz you don't really want to see what's not available. If you're looking, once you do that, it sorts the properties by available you can scroll through the properties.

We have photos On the website and then some of our properties have drone videos on 'em. You can watch a video of the property and you can read there. How many cattle are on the property or is there cattle on the property camping if it's allowed or not, or guests allowed. We started something this year that.

It's it's called the shared bag limit. And the way that works [00:29:00] is it's not on every one of our properties, but it's on a lot of them now. So if you have a property and your buddy, two hunters go in and purchase a property, and the landowner is okay with making it a family member lease, which means your wife and kid could come with you in the state of Oklahoma.

That one wife and kid. Could shoot six bucks. Okay? And that's too many off of 160 acres. That's too many off of 320 acres. And it's really too much on six 40 acres in my opinion. But, so the way it works is that your wife and your kid, If they both shoot a buck, you're done. So they count, it counts towards your bag limit.

So that's called the shared bag limit. Some of our properties you'll see when you're scrolling through have big game limits selected as yes or no. And that's a, oh, I can't remember now what it is, but it's a buck that's I think 18 inches wide, four points on each side, inch [00:30:00] and a half bases.

Is the requirement on those properties. So we've tried to get a little bit more management focused. I just I think that's really important because you don't want a hunter to move leases every year. Get on one, shoot, six bucks, get on another one, shoot six bucks. Next guy comes in and there's nothing there.

Yeah. So that's why we've gone that route. But basically, that's a long answer to your question, but you scroll down. You can see, like I said, the photographs, and then there's a map and it's driving directions. If you click on that, it'll open up Google Maps and you can get how far away it is from where you're at and including directions to the property.

Some of the properties were acquired that We contact the landowner and set up a meeting because the landowners want to meet the hunters before they give them, full access to their property. They want to check a box, basically. We do screen hunters when they call. We talk to 'em, get to [00:31:00] know 'em a little bit, see what they're like.

We really want high quality people going on this private land. And that's what the landowner want as well for the. And basically we set up an appointment, the hunters will go out, they'll meet with the landowner take a tour of the property visit for a while, and if they decide they want the property, then they can purchase it at that point.

Gotcha. All right. Very cool. All then yeah, I was playing around on your website obviously before we got on here and stuff, and I noticed there was like some early bird stuff. So talk a little bit about uhhuh kinda subscriptions and how that stuff works. Sure. So on the BURG membership, we had hunters for a long time.

I used to keep a spreadsheet and people would call me and they would say, Hey, gimme a call if this property opens. Or, Hey, give me a call if you get a property in Cado County or wherever. And I did that and I did it for a long time, and it just got to the point where, We had too [00:32:00] many requests for that.

And so we came up with the early bird membership and that basically allows you to preview a property if you're a member. Every time a property opens that wasn't renewed, or we add a property, you'll get an email and it'll allow you to view the details. That's not available to. Just a general person visiting our website, it'll allow you to schedule a meeting to go see it, meet with the landowner, and even purchase the property before it even goes live on the website.

And that's that expires once you purchase it, the property, it'll expire once you purchase a property for the $89. But the annual pass, which is $135, does not cancel except for yearly. So that's for people that are looking for. Three or four properties or more than one property. Because they want to be notified early, but they don't want it to expire as soon as they purchase a property. They wanna be able to do new ones that come out. So we have two [00:33:00] different memberships. Gotcha. All right. Very cool. You answered my next question I was gonna ask if, so let's say somebody has a specific thing in mind, they want to be in a certain county or they're looking for, maybe they're looking for a bear hunting property or something like that.

Y'all don't take like specific request for that. No. No, we don't. It's if you purchase a membership whether it be the 89, the hundred 35 1, you're gonna get notified of every new or unrenewed property that becomes available. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then I noticed on several of them, it had camping is allowed or not allowed or something.

Do y'all ever get any properties that have little house or cabin on them or what about like campers and stuff like that? Yes, we do get properties. We've got one up in the Wata County that's got a cabin on it, and we've got properties that have homes on them. And we do have some landowners that [00:34:00] will allow campers to be brought into their property.

Some of them won't. And so then that's becomes a challenge for the hunters to find a. Campground or K OA or something in the area. Where they could stay at. But I always try to encourage the landowners to allow camping on their property, because that's a big part of, the hunting experience.

Yeah. With the families and everything. Definitely. Definitely. So just because it says camping doesn't necessarily mean you can bring a camper. No. If it says camping, you're gonna be able to your RV or something like that. If says camping allowed and the box checked, then you're. Bring your rv, your tent, or whatever.

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Good. You have the right to the best wireless service. Bravado Wireless provides the best mobile, wireless, high speed internet latest devices. And customer service at prices. You feel good about Bravado Wireless strives to put these values first and offer you [00:35:00] the best wireless service available.

See what they have to offer@bravadowireless.com or one of their retail locations in eastern Oklahoma. Let Bravado Wire Wireless connect you to your family, friends, and business partners all over the world. Bravado, wireless, the power of connection. Man, I got one more question here and we actually touched on, we touched on it a little bit, which I wasn't expecting and I haven't decided if this is a question or more of just a statement or a word vomit, but just because you're in the leasing business and you've been all over the state, I thought you'd be a good person to talk this, talk about this with Two big names in the hunting industry.

Bill Winky and Lee Koski. Both of 'em in Iowa, both of 'em very well known, both very smart, successful deer hunters. But as I've studied and learned from 'em, they have two very different just. Ideas, when it comes to land and hunting ground and stuff. Bill Winky, he would pretty much only buy [00:36:00] land if it touched his current land, and I know he sold his farm a few years ago, but I think when he sold it, he had almost 2000 acres all. Contiguous, basically his thinking was that I can control deer somewhat on this, I know deer wild creatures and stuff, but hypothetically, a deer could live its entire life on this property.

I have control of it. Yeah. Whereas Lee, he takes the other approach. I wanna say, I think he has one or two, larger farms, but. He has tons and tons of, 150 acre track. I think he has one that's 40 ac. Basically he's doing like a checkerboard pattern and his thinking is not putting all of his eggs in one basket.

If there's e h D or cw, whatever, if there's like a disease or a drought, maybe it takes up this herd, but not this herd and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I said we talked about this a little bit at the beginning, if you had your rathers. Would you rather have one 1000 acre property or would you have two 300 acre properties?[00:37:00]

Could I have two 1000 acre properties? I guess if you got the money if you got the money, go for it. But the reason, yeah, I dunno, man. That, that's a tough question to be honest. I don't think either one of them are wrong. 2000 acres, you can manage it, you can, grow your deer.

Now, I don't know what's on the other side of you, but if you communicate with the landowners next to you or the hunters next to you, Anymore. Most people. They're trophy honey. They're not out shooting anything that moves. The guys today, we're not eating the deer like we used to when we were younger.

And it's a mess to clean 'em, it's a chore to clean 'em. And so if it's not worth cleaning, a lot of guys don't pull the trigger. Now, I know that's not true of everybody, but that's true of a lot of people today. So having a big track to land gives you a lot of management opportunities.

However, because everyone's trophy hunting today, I don't really see that near as big of a problem. You do still have people that are hunting for me. But. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know that either [00:38:00] one's wrong. Yeah. I guess I thought you might be the person to ask because like I said, one you get to see all these different properties and travel all over and stuff but also, like I can't afford one, 1000 acre property much less too, like you mentioned.

I understand. If I get together with a couple buddies and we can lease. 2000 acres or whatever that's an option. Or maybe I just go in by myself and for the same amount of money, lease, 80 acres here, 160 acres here, that type of thing. And so I was just curious what your thoughts were on that.

I see both take place in my business. Cause we do have some very large pieces of property and it takes multiple people to go in and sit down together and formulate a plan. But then I have leases where it's two hunters and most of my leases are at least two hunters because most guys wanna hunt a buddy.

But I really don't have a solid answer. I'm sorry, but I just think that either option works well. But again, it always depends on the property you're hunting [00:39:00] too, like we said earlier, some properties that cost a lot less don't have a lot of the same attributes as properties that cost a lot more.

And with some of the landowners just going back on pricing, they'll contact me and, they'll tell me what they think their property's worth. In fact, had a conversation with the guy just last night about this and. I had been speaking to him, I think three days earlier, and he made a comment to me that he thought all his properties were, was worth $10 an acre.

And I said I haven't laid eyes on him yet, and I haven't seen him, but I know the area and area that seems a little rich for those properties. And so I have Onyx just like everybody else or hunt wise or whatever app you used. And so I called him back last night and I. Shoot straight with you here.

I said, I've looked at your properties and I said, You've got a bunch of properties and there's a lot of them that just don't have any cover on them. Now I can't see 'em and they may have, mesquites or [00:40:00] bushes. Lots of things like that. Or real tall grasp, it's doubtful that they're gonna bring 10 an acre and I don't want to mislead you and make you think.

That we're gonna put 'em on the website at that and they're gonna lease cuz they'll just sit there. I said, you, you gotta be reasonable. And I said, just like when you buy property to run cattle, you're looking for how many cattle will it hold? Is there a life creek on it for water? There's things that you look for that makes you pay more for that property.

I said, it's no different with hunters. They're looking for certain attributes and if those attributes are there, It makes your property more valuable, but if you don't have those attributes, you're not gonna bring, the top dollar that you're looking for. So I try to educate the landowners as best as I can.

Landowners are proud people and they should be. But I try to educate 'em as professionally and gently as I possibly can. The other thing too, is I'll have landowners that call me and or send a website response into me, and [00:41:00] they're wanting to know how much I can get for their land.

On the form that they fill out on the website, it says, is this property currently leased? And they select yes or no. So if I get that form in, I'll give them a call and I'll start talking to 'em about what's going on with the property and, what's the relationship been with the hunters?

Oh, the hunters are great. They've been just perfect. And I said, then, let me ask you, why are you calling me If you've had, good luck with your hunters and you've got a good rapport with them and you can trust them and I just want to see, how much more it's worth.

And I tell people, I don't take property from hunters. And I think that there's a lot of people out there that have this misconception that I'm going around stealing land from hunters. I don't do that. In fact, I steer people back to the hunters. I tell 'em, go talk to your hunters. See if they'll pay you a little bit more per acre.

I'm sure they will. Cause they don't wanna lose their property. Now I've had landowners call me before and say, If they've leased properties to people from out of state or something, for example, and they trashed the place who didn't follow the [00:42:00] rules. Now that's a different story. I will help that type of a landowner.

But if they call me or I've got, I don't know how many times it happens, when they call me and they talk to me, I encourage 'em to go back and talk to their hunters because I do not take property from other hunters. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to open up private land. That other landowners have never leased out before, and they don't know how to do it.

They don't wanna fool with it. It's not worth their time, so they just wanna hire a service like mine to take care of it for 'em. And that's probably 90% of the properties that I have. They're landowners that wouldn't normally lease their property For whatever that's worth. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up cuz that's something I meant to touch on but didn't have in my notes.

Yeah, you have a spot on your website where if people are landowners, maybe they're not hunters or just looking to put a little extra money in their pocket that they can reach out to you to help so that you can help find them somebody to lease their property. Yeah. And I've actually helped [00:43:00] landowners before that didn't want to use my service for whatever reason.

I don't know why they wouldn't but I've helped them lease their property out. They've asked, called and asked me questions and what should I do in this case, in that case, and, there's so much land out there. There's tons of land for everybody. There's no point in being selfish or ridiculous about it.

Glad to hear there's plenty out there. That's good. That's good news. Yep. All right. I got is, I got one more real quick question that I get asked all the time, especially since I'm a part of the Sportsman's Empire. So I have lots of guys from other states that message me and stuff, and everybody wants to know where.

The best place in Oklahoma is to hunt. So you know, if you'd use the interstates and split it up into four quarters. I've asked this to several people, so I'm gonna put you on the spot. If you had to pick a corner, which corner are you picking? Man, that's tough. I see pictures of deer all over the four corners of the state.

Yeah that's honestly my answer. Usually when I get asked, it's man [00:44:00] there's pockets and anywhere you wanna go, you can find some good deer. Yeah that's true. I I look for land that hasn't been leased before. I look for land next door that's maybe Indian land or government land or some land that, that you're, no one's allowed to hunt on the property.

And Know, or, I think it's really good to have land right next door to a public hunting area as well. All I look more at those types of things, to be honest. Yeah. It has, if it's never been leased before, that's a big deal. And then if there's land all around it that's never been leased before, isn't, there's no hunting allowed on it.

That's a big deal. Yeah. To answer your question, I like western Oklahoma, Northwestern Oklahoma. I love Putnam, Oklahoma. It's a beautiful area out there. It's different, it's a different style of hunting. You take a guy that's been hunting, over around Ponton County or Wata County and there's trees and hills and all this stuff everywhere, and you send them out there, they're like, [00:45:00] what?

Why would you want hunt here? But it's a it's a just a different style of hunting. And I do love eastern Oklahoma hunting as well. It's beautiful. But I think I would have a spot on both sides of the state, which I do. Yep. That's, I get to see both sides of the beauty uhhuh and that's what I always tell people too honestly, I think it really depends on how you want to hunt.

If you're a big Yeah. Timber person, stay east. If you're a spot in stock, probably find somewhere in the middle. And, if you wanna hunt some big country, some draws, some canyons, just go further west. Yep. And so we, you're right. We're pretty blessed. We're pretty blessed. Yes, we are. We do have a lot of different topography in Oklahoma.

It's pretty nice. Yep. The other thing I was gonna tell you too is on our on our service, the hunters get to renew their property every year. So we don't like Take it away from him or try to charge him extra. Now, if a landowner calls me and tells me he wants to go up, we're gonna go up.

If we have an increased cost, like adding the insurance, when we did that, we're gonna go up. [00:46:00] But for the most part, every year everyone's renewing at the same price they paid the year before, and we send out email reminders. To the hunters reminding them that, Hey, your lease is expiring in 30 days.

Hey, your lease is expiring in 20 days. Hey, your lease is expiring, and so on and so forth. And they can auto renew. There's a control panel on the website where they can get in and manage their account. So that's the other nice thing is that, they do get to renew their property and we're not gonna go up automatically every year just cuz we've got hundreds on a property.

Yeah. That's not how we operate. Nice. Very nice. Awesome. Real quick, before we get outta here, Greg, anything that I missed, anything you wanted to say that I didn't bring up? Any last minute details? I don't think so. Between you and I think we covered a lot of the important things. If if anybody wants to, learn more, they can always give me a call.

Phone number is (405) 674-4868. You can also email [00:47:00] me off the website and I'm always happy to, I talked to Hunters. A lot. Yeah. They call me a lot. We talk about properties, we talk about hunting. Last year was a weird year for deer hunting for a lot of us, including myself.

But I'm always available to chat and just reach out with any questions you may have. Okay. Awesome. Greg, I really appreciate it. This was very informative. I think I got pretty much everything I was hoping for out of it. So yeah, if you're listening to this, go check them out at US Hunts.

And until next time, I think that's gonna do it this week. Greg. Thank you, John. I appreciate inviting me on and enjoyed talking to you. Yes, sir. Thank you. We'll see you later. Yep. Take care. Another great episode in the books. An awesome topic. Something that I, I keep saying this, but I've wanted to cover hunting leases for a while.

I just have basically no experience with them. I've hunted on other people's leases, but I've never actually had a lease myself. And so thank you Greg, for [00:48:00] coming on teaching us all about it and and yeah, just showing us the ropes and how it works. So go check 'em out. Us hunts.com, get out there, chase some cool critters, explore some other parts of the state.

And like I keep saying, guys, dear season's going to be here before we know it. And so that's all I got for y'all. Pray for rain as always. It's looking like this next week is going to be brutally hot. I'm seeing like some hundred and. Fours and stuff like that. Yeah my, my hopes and prayers go out to everybody.

Stay cool. Pray for rain. And that's gonna do it for this week. So thank you guys once again for listening, and until next week, I will see y'all right back here on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast.[00:49:00]

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