The Giant Sucking Sound: How Out-of-State Corporations Are Killing West Virginia’s Hunting Heritage

The Giant Sucking Sound: How Out-of-State Corporations Are Killing West Virginia’s Hunting Heritage

By Shon Butler, Longspur Tracking & Outfitting

Listen carefully. If you’re a West Virginia sportsman, you can hear it — a giant sucking sound as your hard-earned money leaves this state at a rate we’ve never seen before. It’s the sound of our hunting heritage being stripped away, acre by acre, lease by lease, and generation by generation.
And most people aren’t talking about it. So let’s talk about it.
The New Land Grab
Out-of-state corporations are quietly buying up thousands of acres of West Virginia timberland, abandoned coal company property, and family farms. These aren’t small purchases. These are large-scale land acquisitions designed not for stewardship, but for extraction — and this time, what they’re extracting isn’t timber or coal. It’s your access.
Here’s how the math works against you. These corporations pay $3 to $4 per acre in property taxes — sometimes less. They sign up for managed timberland exemptions, farm-use classifications, and dip into abandoned mine land programs funded by your tax dollars. They realize millions in savings while West Virginia counties hold the bag. Then they turn right around and lease that same ground for $10 per acre or more, pocketing a handsome profit while West Virginia sportsmen get priced out of land their families hunted for generations.
As lease prices skyrocket, only two groups can keep up: the wealthy, and out-of-state money chasing trophy experiences. Local hunters — the people who built this culture — get left behind. And when access disappears, so does the will of young people to pursue the outdoor heritage of hunting and fishing that defines who we are.
West Virginia Has Been Here Before
This is not a new story for our state. We have watched this play out time and time again. Our old-growth timber was stripped and the profits left the state. Our coal was dug for generations and the wealth flowed elsewhere. Our natural gas and oil sits largely in the hands of out-of-state corporations who answer to shareholders in cities that have never heard a gobbler sound off on an April morning.
At some point, we have to recognize the pattern. West Virginia keeps providing the resource. Somebody else keeps keeping the profit. And we keep sitting here holding the bag.
The land access crisis is the same story, just wearing different boots.
The Real Stakes: The Next Generation
Here’s what keeps me up at night. When a kid can’t get access to hunt or fish, he doesn’t grow up to be a hunter or an angler. It’s that simple. The tradition doesn’t pass itself down — it requires land, mentorship, and opportunity. Take away the land and you break the chain.
We are already fighting hard enough to pass this lifestyle to the next generation against the pull of screens and indoor entertainment. We don’t need corporate land speculators helping to finish the job. This is our wildlife. These are our public resources managed through the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The land may be private, but the deer on it, the turkeys on it, the fish in those streams — those belong to the people of West Virginia.
A Proposal Worth Fighting For
I’ll be direct. If I ran for Governor of this state, here is what would be on my platform, and I’ll stand behind it publicly.
Any corporation or landowner holding 500 acres or more that takes advantage of a taxpayer-funded tax break or program and then leases their land for more than the county’s average per-acre rate will pay an 80% luxury tax on the profit from that lease.
You want to lease your land — lease it. Private property rights are real and I respect them. But you do not get to take money from West Virginia taxpayers through exemptions and programs, and then turn around and gouge our sportsmen for maximum profit. You can’t have it both ways.
That luxury tax revenue goes straight back to the people of this state. It funds our elk program. It funds Hunter Education. It funds Hunters Helping the Hungry. It gets reinvested into the very hunting culture that these corporations are benefiting from while slowly destroying.
If your business model requires squeezing that kind of profit off the backs of West Virginia sportsmen to survive, then you are not a responsible land steward. You are an extractive operator, and West Virginia has seen enough of those.
The Elephant in the Room
Nobody wants to say it out loud because it sounds like you’re attacking private property rights. I’m not. I am saying that when you accept taxpayer subsidies, you take on a public obligation. When your business practices price out an entire generation from their cultural heritage, that is a public problem.
This is the elephant in the room. Access is disappearing. The culture is eroding. And only the well-to-do will hunt and fish if we don’t make a stand right now.
West Virginia sportsmen built this state’s outdoor identity. We are the ones who fill the license bureaus, buy the tags, and keep the wildlife management system funded. We are the boots on the ground doing habitat work, running youth hunts, and dragging wounded deer out of the dark with trained dogs and thermal drones.
We deserve a seat at the table. We deserve access to our own state.
It’s time to stop being polite about it. Let’s make some noise.

Shon Butler is the founder of Longspur Tracking & Outfitting, author of West Virginia’s drone legislation for ethical game recovery, and a lifelong West Virginia sportsman. Follow Longspur  Tracking and Outfitting on Facebook