Many Iowa landowners have an opportunity to earn added income and offset the slump in commodity prices by leasing land for hunting, according to Tom Steen of the Hunting Lease Network.

"The income for the hunting leases is basically found money for landowners. I don’t know why more people don’t look into it," Steen said recently at Iowa State University’s Soil Man­age­ment and Land Valuation Conference in Ames. "In a lot of cases, the land is probably being hunted by somebody anyway, so a landowner might as well be paid for it."

There are plenty of hunters from...