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American Land Seller Podcast
Discover the pulse of the land with the 'American Land Seller Podcast', your essential guide to the dynamic world of land-related real estate. Each episode is a journey into the heart of the land, exploring diverse and timely topics from the lucrative potentials of crypto mine sites to the evolving landscapes of carbon credits and alternative energy ventures. Our expert insights and lively discussions make this podcast not just informative, but a delightful and educational experience. Whether you're a seasoned investor, a real estate enthusiast, or simply curious about the land beneath our feet, this podcast promises to enlighten, entertain, and inspire. Join us as we uncover the hidden gems and untold stories of the land market in our fast-paced, ever-changing world.
American Land Seller Podcast
Episode 26: : Nic De Castro and LandTrust are Changing the Game for Landowners and Outdoor Enthusiasts
In this captivating episode of the American Land Seller Podcast, we explore the innovative intersection of land management, outdoor recreation, and community building with Nic De Castro, the visionary founder of LandTrust - The Recreation Access Network. Hailing from Bozeman, Montana, Nic shares his entrepreneurial journey and the genesis of LandTrust, a platform that's redefining access to private lands across the United States.
Discover how LandTrust fosters unique partnerships between landowners and outdoor enthusiasts, creating a sustainable model that benefits both parties and the environment. Learn about the platform's commitment to community, as it connects people with the land, generating economic benefits for rural areas while promoting respect and understanding between visitors and those who steward the land.
Nic also delves into the core values of trust and integrity that drive LandTrust, ensuring a transparent and fair experience for all users. This episode is not just a discussion on land access; it's a deep dive into how innovative thinking and technology can preserve the heritage of rural lands, support local economies, and open up new opportunities for recreation and conservation. Join us as we uncover the story of LandTrust, its impact, and its vision for the future of outdoor access and community connection.
Contact Nic @
Phone: 406-223-3254
Email: nic@landtrust.com
www.LandTrust.com
Today on the American Land Seller, we dig deep into the evolving world of land management, conservation and an innovative platform transforming how we access and enjoy the great outdoors. I'm thrilled to welcome Nick DeCastro, a visionary entrepreneur from Bozeman, montana, and the founder of Land Trust, a recreation access network. Nick's groundbreaking work with Land Trust is reshaping the relationship between landowners, outdoor enthusiasts and land itself, creating a sustainable future for rural America. Land Trust is more than just a marketplace. It's a partnership that brings together landowners with their unique landscapes and experiences, and recreators with their passion and respect for the outdoors. This pioneering platform facilitates these connections with ease, offering landowners not just the opportunity to share their land, but also the peace of mind that comes with insurance indemnity and competitive revenue share unmatched by any other online network For outdoor enthusiasts, land Trust has created access to private lands, challenging the notion that such experiences are reserved for just the wealthy. It's a safe, straightforward, fostering a diverse community of sportsmen and women and recreationists who can now access lands that were once beyond their reach. Community and trust are at the heart of Land Trust's mission. When neighbors partner through Land Trust, not only does the local community thrive financially from an influx of visitors and the billions spent on land access annually, but it also fosters a mutual respect and understanding between guests and landowners, bridging gaps and building empathy. This approach has cemented Land Trust as a leader in the Recreation Access Network, where positive experiences are the cornerstone of its success.
Speaker 1:As we chat with Nick DeCastro today, we'll uncover the story behind Land Trust, the impact it's making on rural and working lands, and how the ethos of partnership, community and trust is not only preserving but enriching our access to the great outdoors. As always, we hope you take something away from this episode. Hey everybody, welcome back to the American Land Seller Podcast. We are here today with Nick DeCastro from Land Trust. I'm really fascinated by what you guys are doing, nick. How are you today Doing?
Speaker 3:well Appreciate having you Cody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good to have you, so tell us just a little bit about. Let's just start out with what is Land Trust?
Speaker 3:Yeah, happy to. So, first of all, we're not a conservation easement organization. Those are traditional Land Trusts. We are Land Trust one word, LandTrustcom. So we are a for-profit company. Yeah, a lot of people think about us like Airbnb for do-it-yourself outdoor rec on private land. So we do a lot of hunting, but we do have other activities, as we're just talking about fishing and birdwatching, camping, etc. So for a lot of our landers or multi-generation under operator producers, whether they farm or ranch, and they've got this asset that sits underneath their feet every day and there's a lot of people who'd love to have access to it. So Land Trust makes it really easy for them to be connected with them and generate income from allowing people to come out on their property and hunt your fish or do these other things in a do-it-yourself manner.
Speaker 1:Sure, and that's actually. I mean, you're kind of pioneers on that. Am I correct on that, there wasn't really too much before you guys got started, yeah you know I couldn't take credit for that.
Speaker 3:There definitely have been people who tried to build what we're building before. Yeah, I would say over the years I've been working on this almost five years and people say, oh, I've had that idea Like, yeah, it's just an idea, it's not my idea. Certainly we're the largest We've executed, probably best on it, but there were people who tried this. I mean, shoot 2014, 2015,. But I just think it was too early from a technology perspective Cell service, Wi-Fi, smartphones, like there's just a lot of other kind of stuff that is out of my control. It's more of just a timing perspective, but there were people who tried it before.
Speaker 1:That's very cool. So what about you, Nick? Where are you from? What's the history of Nick?
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, so I live here in Montana. We're based here in Bozeman, montana. I actually originally from the beach, from Southern California. I grew up there, I think, probably in the last bit of the heyday. I was very developed. I grew up in a small little town and surfed and fished and played baseball and, yeah, I went to school out in the synom and was in advertising and marketing sales for pretty much my whole career before I started this company. So I kind of lived all over the place and traveled everywhere. But I came to Montana in 2016 and then started working on Wood is Land Trust today. I had an original idea in 2017 and I quite do anything with it until 2019. So 2019 was when we really went into that.
Speaker 1:So 2019, the timing on that is historically significant. So did that help or hurt you going? Because I know there's a lot of people believe it or not that the COVID scenario did actually help their business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hard. Honestly, it's hard for me to say if we had existed for a couple years before and then got to see like a baseline. So it's really hard for me to say, because I went full time July 1st to 19. By the way, we had our first daughter August 5th of 19. So literally a month in no health insurance. Oh, I really love that.
Speaker 3:And then we launched October 2nd, so we kind of launched in hunting season. So we only had like a partial season. And then, yeah, covid, we were growing nicely, obviously small numbers. But January, february, march, all were just like 25, 30% a month over the last one. And then April was just, yeah, everything went to zero. But then you know what, in May and June we started to come back. So, like I said, I don't really know the things that really hurt us in April was obviously kind of a shut down and I think even Nebraska, like states like that, started. They shut down non-resident hunting so they stopped selling tags to people from the state. So a lot of those states in the Midwest started doing that. So that hurt for sure, but it's really hard to say. It obviously didn't kill us by any means. We were only a few months old at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's just kind of fascinating. That was a. If only people knew, you know what was coming, yeah.
Speaker 3:What about their non-resident turkey tag sooner?
Speaker 2:That's for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so take me through the process here. I'm a landowner, I've got some property, I think a lot of things like. I think what's going to be fascinating to people is is, I think, still to this day, a lot of landowners in my area. You know they still are the old school. You know somebody comes out. They don't realize that there's value right On the leasing of their ground for hunting. Take me through that. You know how does it, how do we get started? If I'm a landowner?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So I guess it's good to talk about the context too. So let's just let's talk hunting, because hunting is obviously one of the kind of the bigger activities. Traditionally farmers or ranchers, landowners who own grounds, you know, if they wanted to monetize or make any sort of money off their hunting they would do a traditional kind of annual lease. That was really the only way to do it. Now you can lease directly to a group of guys and you can lease to an outfit and a great shanty. Here's some pros to that. I wanted to get kind of a chunk of change up front so you get a check at the beginning and you know if you like the people that you lease to. That's great. You deal with one group of people.
Speaker 3:What we've heard over the years is that, especially for under-emperators who are living and working, they don't like selling away their property. Right, because that's essentially what you're doing with the hunting races. You're selling a property right away for a period of time, whether it's a year, a couple of years or whatever. Sure, and part of that is if their family, their friends, their neighbors, your kid down the street, want to use the glout and hunt or fish or use the ground. They really can't let them do that and that's always been kind of the rub. So with Land Trust, our land is retaining all the rights and control. So if any of you are using it as a VRBO etc. You're basically just putting it on a platform that's free to do and you're saying, hey, I'm willing to allow people to impose people on these days for this much money for these activities, etc. So the land interstate is completely in control and they've loved it because, one, you can make more money often doing that. But two again, for the friends, families, neighbors, business partners, whatever, they can still say, yeah, we'll block it out for you that week or whatever. And so we actually have quite a bit of ground in your state.
Speaker 3:And for those landowners who are interested, we have guys on the ground. So we have what we call landowner success managers. We have two in Nebraska and they'll come out and visit with you. It's not a sale because we don't charge you anything. So we only make. We're business partners with our landowners. We make money on transactions. So when we bring a customer and you do the transaction, we take a commission. It's 80-20. So landowners keep 80%, we get 20%. But yeah, they'll visit with you. We know this is always a family decision. It's never one person who gets to say, yes, let's list our ground, answer questions, talk about liability, kind of how the process works. They'll take photos of the property.
Speaker 3:We build digital maps of the property so that when people do book we just send them over like, hey, here's the property maps, here's waypoints for, like, a gate to park or here's where tree stands are. You know, no go zones, all that stuff. So we kind of get everything set up. We have a team here in Bozeman and in Fargo. We do landowner onboarding so they'll build your listings out. We do, like, all the work. We know that our landowners are very busy people and so we basically white glove service the whole thing and they get to look at it and see if it looks good. And if it looks good, they give a thumbs up and they're like, hey, I'm going to get it live and you start getting your inquiries and booking requests.
Speaker 1:That is really, really fascinating, and I guess I didn't. I kind of that was what I was really curious about was is like what is the responsibility of the landowner? And you're basically saying, nope, that's our, that's our deal.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So again, we are business partners with landowners. Landowners are not our customers. We share a customer, which is kind of all the people who want to get outdoors Getting a, getting a property, getting your land live on land trust. We, we will take a lion share of that responsibility because we just want to make it easy. Now, once it goes live, your only responsibilities are to respond to people when they make inquiries with you and, just to you know, do that in a relatively timely. We set the expectation with our guests that, hey, these are working farms and ranches, so give them 24, 48 hours to get back to you. But yeah, just being responsive and accepting bookie requests, and I mean that's really all you have to do. You can all do it from your phone once it's set up, sure.
Speaker 1:No, that's really really fascinating. Well, if you don't mind, let's take a quick break and we will be right back. We are back here with Nick Castro from land trusts. That's land trust, nick. You know, as a land specialist, I'm always looking to create value for my clients, right? That's like wake up in the morning before I, like, while I'm having my coffee, before I even get ready for work, I'm considering what can I do? And that's why I kind of really do appreciate what you guys are doing, because you know it's like you said, they don't have to sell their entire soul on the hunting rights of their farm, right? They can just pick and choose the dates and and again. So let's talk just a little bit about that. What are some of the interesting like? What are the? What are the reasons why somebody wants to hold back part of the rights on a property?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good question and again I would say so we have about a million and a half acres and 40 or so states right now. So we get to see a lot of the country and I would say that the lion's share of our land and is our owner, operator, producers, and the cool thing is like they're all different but they're all the same. You know, there's different parts of the country and they might go different crops, but there's a lot of similarity. For those types of landowners specifically, we have seen that you know, they really really first and foremost, before the income, is the control, and being able to control their property, their property rights, kind of their way of life is really like number one. And then, yeah, I'm generally income and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So for that type of landowner, when they had done kind of that traditional lease or outfit in the past, like yeah, they basically have lost the say and who gets to come out, how often they come out? They can't let their friends, family, neighbors come out because they sold that away. So really that has been a very attractive thing to that type of landowner. So, because the other thing too is these folks have lived on that ground their whole life and for generations. Often they know what you know from a hunting perspective, from a wildlife perspective, what good looks like and what doesn't. I want to say, first and foremost, we're not against outfitters, by any means. Outfitters are service providers. There's great ones, there's terrible ones, there's great ones and there's, you know, everything in between. They provide a service, but they also have a business model that kind of necessitates them to sell hunts, regardless of whether the ground is good, bad.
Speaker 3:I mean, they basically paid for something up front and they got to make that money back. Our landowners I'll give you an example like Kansas, last few years have been Pretty bad drought and we have quite a few landowners down there. They were getting all sorts inquiries from bird hunters and turkey hunters this last year and our landowners are saying, hey, listen, we're actually not going to do any of this year. It's just, the populations are bad, it's been a drought, and so they like that is probably something that wouldn't have happened if you had paid for a lease. You're trying to pay that money back.
Speaker 3:This is their ground. They want to see that resource thrive, because it's not only from a monetary perspective, but it's like, hey, this is, they have pride and ownership, there's stewards of the land, and so you know, we do see that. And I think that ability for those landowners to say you know we're not gonna do that this year, just because it's just yeah, drought or that fire or for whatever you know Myriad reasons why they might not want to, they get to say that, whereas if they had leased it, it's like, well, okay, well, I guess it's gonna. We have to just kind of sit back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what's well and there's all kinds of different reasons why you may want to take a break with stuff, you know. I mean, like with turkeys especially, you may want to take a year off every once in a while, cuz they'll leave and never come back. So yeah, exactly, that's, that's, that's really, that's. That's pretty smart and Realistically so. What's walk you through like landowner? What's the process? They just reach out to you. You said you have people in in every area, or closed every area you kind of have yeah, we've.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a good question. So certainly, if you go to land trust, calm, there'll be a for landowners kind of button on top and that's just a page. We have video testimonials from all the landowners from across the country who've been worth land trust for years now. Just more about the program and you know insurance and safety and all that kind of stuff. But there's also a phone number there too, so you know, if you call us, real people will answer the phone. This isn't like you know AI chat box or something like you got people who will happily talk to you on the phone. And then, yes, if you have that call and it sounds interesting, if you're in North Dakota, south Dakota, montana, nebraska, iowa, kansas, missouri, like a lot of that kind of swath of land We'll have people on the ground who'll actually come and visit with you and, like I said, answer questions, take photos, build digital maps, like basically get you all squared away and ready to go. Very cool.
Speaker 1:So when you guys go in there we'd kind of talked about this on the break our company has started deer tracks, which basically is you know they're a company that goes in and helps develop Recreational properties for certain purposes. So if you're into the deer and and you know, if you're into hunting, then that's what we're gonna go in and try and help you get the best carrying rate on your property. Is that something that you guys kind of help people with too? Is when you go in there and kind of give some recommendations and you know these what they could improve.
Speaker 3:It's a good question. Well, we're playing around with this, but really we want to leverage partners for this because we're not the experts with that. You know, what we want to be is the best marketplace facilitator that we can be. That's our job is like. Let's build a big marketplace that has a bunch of great quality land and great quality kind of sportsmen and people who love the outdoors and that's a big. You know, that's our value. We partner with some of the nonprofits, like National Trick Federation, national Deer Association, you know a lot of the species-based organizations, because they're the experts in that.
Speaker 3:Now, certainly we do want our landowners to Start thinking about these things again. These are not quote recreational properties, although they are generating 20, 40, 60, 80 thousand dollars a year from recreation. So they're still production ag Properties. But I think our landowners, and once they start generating some fairly significant income from it, they're coming to us and saying, hey, how can we make? I'll give you the example of turkeys. I still have yet to meet a rancher who, when you first go and onto the ranch and say, hey, you know what about turkey hunting, like you can go shoot all the turkeys you want right there, like kill them all. That's usually the kind of the thought process at first, like no, no, no. There's a huge market of people who love they'll drive from Missouri to Montana to go hunt turkeys. It always blows their mind.
Speaker 3:But we've had many instances of landowners who started hosting kind of turkey hunts on their property with land trusts and they make five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen thousand dollars that year and they're like holy cow. How do we have better turkey habitat? And it's it's you know, because it's a, it's a revenue, it's all profit center for them. So we want to be able to connect them with the people who know how to do that. We don't pretend to be like habitat specialists by any means. We want to connect them with habitat specialists because it's better, for it's in our best interest as their business partner to make sure that that Habitat is really healthy and has the best populations they can have right, and that just is smart because, like you're, you're connecting them with the habitat specialists.
Speaker 1:And then then there's that partnership, yet that triangle of partnerships that you can have Absolutely, let's create more value for your company.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, again, we're in the other thing is is yeah, it's like the profit motive.
Speaker 3:It keeps us all aligned and that's the funny thing. I know that there's people out there who are detractors. All you know hunting and profit. It's like actually, when you put the profit incentive in the right place, the properties that do best on land trusts have healthy wildlife and habitat. I mean that's full stuff. So, yeah, it may get profitable to have healthy habitat and wildlife. And we're already starting to have some of these conversations with some of our landowners saying, hey, maybe leave a little bit of standing. You know, crop around the edges or leave those brushy edges and actually could save money. You're not wasting burning fuel like taking care of that stuff. It's overwinter habitat. So what are these? Like very low lift things that you can do to just provide better habitat that actually save you money. And then you can make that some of your most profitable acreage from a few look at it Per acre basis. That marginal ground from an ag be doing two to five thousand dollars a year per acre. You know.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think that what you said that's really the truly intro that I kind of go back to is is we're looking at Astronomically high land prices, and so you know, like I have producers that ask me all the time how do you think we're gonna make this work? You know, and so a lot of that goes towards well, carbon credits, right, or you know, in different avenues like that are available.
Speaker 3:But what you see, where those markets go, you know. Yeah, it's a wild west. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's crazy, but still there's opportunities there at this time. So you know. But but what you're talking about is like, seriously, I don't think a lot of landowners know what they could do with their land, like on even a year round hunting or whatever you know and even in the break you were talking about Birdwatchers you know, like, some of the stuff that you guys are looking forward at and that's right, yeah, yeah, and that's that's really.
Speaker 3:You know we're not a hunting company. Yes, hunting is probably 90% of the bookings we see today because that's where we started and hunting is a great, it's a high value activity. It's a great thing to start with, but we're starting to see more and more fishing bookings. If you have farm ponds, if you've got, you know, craig, you know river access, whatever fishing camping, you know people who just got you know I've got three young daughters, for Almost three and little over one, you know we get a travel trailer. I don't want to go to a KOA like. I don't want to go camp next to 60 other people like I'd rather just go pull up next to a Farm pond and have a little piece of property to ourselves. There's a huge market for a lot of different people who love the outdoors and it could just be wild by a few and bird watching, photography we're doing photography, so there's a lot of uses that aren't hunting. That is now enabling our lanner is to monetize year-round because obviously hunting is regulated at the State level. There's certain monetization windows, like a season can't do hunting out of season, it's poaching. So we want to find those other opportunities for our lanners to be able to say, yeah, we're, you know. Give them that opportunity to say, yeah, you can come out and shed hunt, you come out and fish the farm pond, you can camp over the summertime. And I think the last Category of activities that I believe will be the biggest one is what we call farm and ranch experiences. Oh, really is. We'll be the first to tell you we don't, we don't know enough about it yet. We know it's a thing, but we have some of it happening on the platform now. But if this is basically just like cool experiences that you can invite people out to host and make some money from, I'll give A couple examples.
Speaker 3:Over a Christmas time up here, we had a ranch just outside Bozeman who was doing sleigh rides. So they have some horses, they got the thing and you know that had families booking sleigh ride and they basically booked it out and they probably made a few thousand dollars just from taking people around telling about the ranch, just taking them around. I took my wife and kids to a Herford ranch right here in town and they were bottle feeding caps, just learning about the operation being connected with agriculture from the people Actually doing agriculture. And I know that when my wife posted photos of the, my girls like with the calves like 20 moms direct message Sure on Instagram. Be like where did you do that, you know? And it could be regenerative ag tours, it could be, you know, harvesting could be brandings, whatever.
Speaker 3:I think that will be, honestly, probably the biggest activity in the future. I'll be the first to say we're still figuring it out and we're trying to make it really really easy for our producers to be able to participate in, but that is a that is one that you can do and I think, from a higher level perspective, I want to reconnect the non-producing public, which I'm included in, with the producers, because I think there's no better way for agriculture to To diffuse the crazy kind of BS that they hear it's all over the mainstream media, like farmers are killing the world and All the craziness, and to have people actually come out to your place, interact with you, see the operation and hear from the horse's mouth. And, by the way, it's kind of a good way to sell direct some direct consumer stuff too. We have people who are, you know, booking hunts and getting us a side of beef or, you know, coming out and buying like agricultural products too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is really fun. I mean, you know like that. What you said is exactly right. I think the struggle that most far you know ag producers have In the world is is the fact that our customers are undereducated. And I think you know, out here, isolated on the farm, you really don't think about the fact that it's your responsibility to educate people on your on. You know like what you're doing Because you know you have people that are disconnected, that think that farmers are out here raping the land and doing all kinds of horror to it and In reality, that's the exact opposite. And so, if you can use your platform to educate people on On and get paid to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hey, to do a profit of making extra bucks?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's too shabby.
Speaker 3:We'll give you one example on that point too, because I think it's a really good point. We have a.
Speaker 3:We did some kind of early tests with burgers people who want to watch birds right as a bird hunter my life long, I like to watch them too, but just over the barrel of shotgun you know, and so we had a big ranch out there in the sand hills and there's six generation a place and we had some people from the Audubon Society go out there and they said they saw more of this like very rare type. I think it's a grasshopper's barrel. I saw more grasshopper's barrels on that ranch. It's a big place like 46,000 continuous acres. Then they've seen on quote protected lands and the rancher Wouldn't be able to tell you what that bird is but his practices and the way they've run their operation for generations. Yeah, it's actually really healthy and again, there's more biodiversity there there on their place as a cattle ranch than in quote protected areas. So I think that's that. Those are the kinds of stories that can only be told you. You know, when you're actually out in those places and see with your own eyes and meet these people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's just, you're connecting people with an opportunity to do that and again, it's like you said and monetizing it in the same sense. That's right, that's. I guess I'm learning more than I thought. I thought I knew what you did, nick. I didn't know what you did, but let's, let's take a quick break and we will be right back.
Speaker 1:The American Land Seller podcast is brought to you in part by American Legacy Land Company. At American Legacy, our seasoned agents set us apart, providing unmatched service with a personal touch that goes beyond expectation. With a wealth of market knowledge and a diverse portfolio Including farms, ranches, development lands and recreational properties, we forge lasting connections with clients through honesty, integrity and transparency. Visit us at AmericanLegacyLandCocom and find the land that defines your legacy. All right, we're back here with Nick Castro for Land Trust, landtrustcom.
Speaker 1:Really fascinating what, what you guys are doing. Nick, you know, like I think that you know something that I don't know if it's gonna be something you're gonna want to talk about, but it kind of seems like the stats that I've seen are Hunting, like some of the sportsman stuff, the outdoor sportsman stuff has kind of been Trickling down like in a decline. I guess you know, after visiting with you. I kind of question Is that maybe because of the fact that it's really really expensive to do it and people just don't have that opportunity? And if that's the case, maybe this is a way that people can? I mean, I looked at your, I looked at your site Like a day on some stuff, you know it's it's not super expensive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so it's a good topic. So a Lot of the news stories that have ran over the last few years about hunting being on the decline, they come and they cite the US Fish and Wildlife Service does it every four years, four or five years. They do a survey, sure? So they survey like 1500 people and they extrapolate the data, and you know they make this kind of an overarching statement that it is on the decline. Well, we also get we also have just pure license sales data, like actual what you know, basically what was sold. Those numbers have been incredibly stable now per capita, you know. Yes, less people hunt today than did on a per capita basis in 1950, for sure, but we usually in that 15 to 17 million hunting licenses and tags sold in the US, and that's been a very stable. The last, let's call it five to ten years, sure, our population is growing. So, again, per capita it's a little bit lower percentage, but we're pretty stable. Certainly, though, one of the biggest barriers to entry is maybe not price but access.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you know this really comes down to we're losing I don't know. I've seen stats like we're losing 175 acres an hour of ag lands to development, and you know. So basically you have a relatively fixed demand and you have shrinking supply. And so you know, look, we're out here and I'm out here in Bozeman in Montana. We have a tons of public land. You're in Nebraska it's 99% private. Most of the hunting population in the United States live in states with less than 20% public land.
Speaker 3:So if that's the case and you're losing ag, you know, undeveloped land, ag lands to development, yeah, it's gonna be harder and harder to find places to actually go hunt and, frankly, public lands are getting more and more pressure. So you know, for me at this stage of my life, you know I don't get to go hunting and fishing a ton because I got little kids and a company and all that. You know, just a season of life. When I do go outdoors, I don't want to go out with 30 other people. I go outdoors and relax and you know, showing up to a trailhead or a parking lot and there's 30 trucks is not very relaxing to me. I'd rather go and have a piece of property to myself, even if I don't, you know, kill anything or whatever. It's just I'm going out there to be outdoors and disconnected.
Speaker 3:And so I think a lot of people that use land trust really like that.
Speaker 3:And I think for the for new hunters, new people getting into this sport, public lands are very daunting because they know that they don't really know anything and there are a lot of people out there with deadly weapons and that's a kind of a daunting thing to get over, whereas with land trust they know that they can go out to a place and have it to themselves, it's safe, they could talk to the landowner beforehand, the landowner can show them the place and, frankly, they'll probably have a much better opportunity to actually just see wildlife.
Speaker 3:And that's really what you get hooked. I mean even getting close to a doe you know white tail doe is pretty cool and that's the kind of experience that you can get people hooked on. And especially, we see a lot of people with children who want just a more controlled, safer environment, and I think our platform offers that. So it's definitely. Access is and there was a survey that just came out at the end of this last year on hunting and the number one reason for people stopping hunting was Access to places that was like 86%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and that's, yeah, that's. I mean, that's exactly it. And again it's, it's gaining access that with this, with this tool, you can gain access to, To land that you know, for you know that may not have been available before because of the fact that they didn't want to lock it down, so that's right. Again we're going back to the beginning and saying you know, we, you know, the value is, is multifaceted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know it's not. You know they didn't want to lease or they didn't want the liability. You know it's just a matter of fact that 40, 50 years ago we're just a much less litigious society. You know lawsuits were not, I don't know. It's. It's kind of sad that that's where we are today, but when I was starting this company that was like it's always still the number one question.
Speaker 3:You know what about liability, and so I think it's good to talk about that. So from a liability perspective, I think it's first you start at the state levels. So in the top 34 ag producing states, the state wants to incentivize this type of ag activity. They call it agriturism. Everything we're talking about hunting, fishing, whatever, tours, whatever is all agriturism if it's happening on ag land. So the state wants this because they want farm and ranch Operations to generate more income, and so they know that liability is a big kind of like stopping point. So the states limit liability at the state level for any sort of agriturism activities unless there's gross negligence. So the state's protecting you there.
Speaker 3:Then you get to land trust. So anybody that you'd ever host on land trust has already accepted our terms of service, in which they hold you as the landowner harmless. So they're holding you harmless and demifying you. We do ID verification. So they, you know, when they create their account They've got to upload a picture of their driver's license or passport and we ensure they're real people, they are who they say they are. They're paying up front with a credit card. So now you have your ID and a credit card. Now then we have property protection.
Speaker 3:So you, even though that guest of yours would be liable for anything if, for whatever reason, they break a gate, they I don't know the fame shoot a cow. It's never happened, but it always gets asked about they're responsible. But if they don't, we'll pick up the. We'll write you a check up to $10,000 per incident. We have participant insurance. So for the guests, if they step in a badger hole, break their leg, again, technically they're liable for themselves, but for whatever reason, they can come to us. We'll pay up to $10,000 medical bills.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, you've got about a million dollar general liability policy. That's a backstop to any policies you have. So we try to take a multifaceted approach. And then I guess the other last piece is after every trip, after every booking, just like Airbnb, vrbo, uber, any of these other things. You both rate each other. So Lannner gets to rate their guests and the guest gets to rate the Lannner. So you kind of have this accountability after trips. That has never existed, and not in the hunting world certainly, because before us you could go, knock on one door, be a jerk, and then walk down the street and knock on the neighbor's door and they'd have no idea of knowing.
Speaker 1:Sure, that sounds like you guys have thought through everything. And again, agritourism I've heard that before. That's a great. That's basically what you guys are doing all the way around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know that word can conjure up certain things in people's minds like you know, a Haymays or Apple Picking or whatever. That's not what we're talking about. All this stuff is agritourism. Nothing against those operations, but I know a lot of our producers are like I can't deal with that. This is just under the general umbrella of agritourism from a state perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Okay. So we got a few minutes left here, Nick. Let's talk about some crazy stuff, Like what's some of the craziest stuff that's going on on Land Trust? We were talking a little bit about a few things in the break, but what's some of the fun stuff that maybe people don't realize that is out there for?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we have. I mean for a hunter, we kind of have everything almost. We're getting in more in the South Sea of Hogs, where I think we have an alligator hunt listed, so there's like some cool stuff. And we're getting more into Florida. So I think you'll see like equanas and alligators and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:And look, I don't know if you hunt or not, but hunters and fishermen we're always looking for new stuff, right? You know, I live in Montana. We have elk hunting which many people want to go do. But I want to go like hogs and for the people down in the South they're like why would you want to do that? I want to go hunt elk, you know. So there's always that we want to go do things that we don't have access to. We've done.
Speaker 3:We have, I think, one of our ranches up here because in Montana, if you're listeners, don't know, we have a lot of like dinosaur fossils. So there's some ranches here that you can go and like do digs for dinosaur fossils. I don't know if you get to keep them because they are very valuable, but you can go and do that. One of our ranches up here was gosh. It still has the teepee rings from Custer's Battles and that stuff. So there's like they actually went through there. So there's a lot of cool stuff you can do. And then we just have like some really interesting farm ranches experiences too that you can go and browse through. That are fun things to do with your family. So you know, luckily nothing crazy has happened on the interest. We've never had any incident. You know, knock on wood, I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Just because this is the law of large numbers. As you get bigger and bigger, you know that kind of stuff could happen, but nothing too crazy has happened.
Speaker 1:Yep, and so you and you also have had some pretty crazy, or you do have a substantial amount of fishing too on here, correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, fishing is one of those things that it's just such an easy. You know, out here in the West it's a little bit more kind of like if you're along rivers or creeks, but then you get to the Midwest and it's ponds. You know, if you've got you're in the Prairie Pothole region or you got farm ponds or whatever, there's just a lot of people looking for opportunities to go and have a kind of a nice, again un-crowded fishing experience in a beautiful kind of quiet place. So yeah, there's a ton of fishing opportunity.
Speaker 1:Well, that's really cool. I appreciate you taking the time today, Nick. Thank you for having me yeah, it's been fun, I've learned, I tell you, I thought I knew again what you guys do, but apparently I did not know at all.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why these longer conversations, or podcasts, are a really fun medium, because you get to have, you know, a longer form conversation and answer your questions, and you know I like them a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, and that's kind of why I started. Mine was because, like we were talking about before we got going this morning, is as I listen to them all day long, every day, as I'm driving around the country going to listings and going and checking out stuff. So, being a land agent, you get some money on vehicles, we do so, but yeah, so how can people get a hold of you or who do we contact if we're a land owner?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the easiest way to get a hold of us, if you're just driving or you like to just make a phone call, you can call or text us at 406-709-8450. Say it again, just for folks if they're driving, it's 406-709-8450. So that calls the office. Again, you can text that number too if you're just kind of in transit and we've got real human beings here who will be happy to sit here and talk to you for answering any questions you might have. And then, yeah, if it's interesting, one of our Land, ours success managers, will be happy to come out and visit with you. That's the easiest way to get a hold of us. Or Landtrustcom is our website. There's, you know, all the information that we've talked about here is on there as well, and you can, if you're interested, you're a land owner or you're a sportsman, listen to this you can go to Landtrust and just browse the listings in your area and see what other families, operations are listed there, or ranches, and what opportunities there are for you too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can. I was playing around getting ready for this podcast and it's. You've got some really cool mapping features that you can just kind of like, and I can tell the vision is it's not going to just be the United States at some point. I think your vision is is to be to be a little bit more. Yeah, so that's that's fun, but yeah appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Landtrustcom, again, I really super appreciate you being on here today. You're having a great product. I look forward to maybe talking to our dear tracks guys and having them. Maybe, maybe they can forge a relationship that is beneficial for for you and them, because I know I think it would be a great, a great feather in our cap, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1:Yep, all right. Well, that's it for today, and we will see you all down the road.
Speaker 2:As we wrap up another episode of the American Landseller podcast. Thank you for joining us. Visit wwwamericanlandsellercom and find us on one of your favorite podcast platforms. If you would be so kind and you enjoyed today's insights, please like, subscribe, rate, follow and review us on whatever app you are listening or watching on. Connect with us on social media for updates Until next week. Kobe wishes you success in your land endeavors. God bless you and have a great week.
Speaker 1:Landhubcom where your land journey begins and American Legacy Land Company. At American Legacy, we redefine excellence in real estate. Explore our top quality offerings, featuring farms, ranches, recreational properties and even development projects spanning 10 Midwest states. Visit us at wwwamericanlegacylandcodecom for a premium experience that aligns with your land ownership goals. Whether you're looking to buying or selling, we're dedicated to helping you find the land that defines your legacy.
