Archery season in the Hills Deer Management Unit opens October 1 and runs through November 20, with gun season and dogs following on November 21, according to the 2026–27 calendar from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks. The Hills Unit takes in Tishomingo, Prentiss, Itawamba, Lee, and Monroe counties; Alcorn is in the North Central Unit with its own dates. Between now and then, a lot of landowners in the eastern hills will cash a lease check. Mississippi law treats that check as the moment the landowner’s liability protection changes, and most people who sign a lease have never read the section that says so.
The shield, as written
Mississippi’s recreational landowner statute is short. Section 89-2-23 says a landowner owes no duty of care to keep land or premises safe for entry or use by others for hunting, fishing, trapping, camping, water sports, hiking, or sightseeing, and is not required to warn anyone about hazardous conditions, structures, or activities on the land. Section 89-2-25 adds that giving somebody permission to hunt does not, by itself, make them an invitee you owe a duty to, and does not make you responsible for what they do.
“Landowner” in that article includes a lessee, an occupant, or anyone in control of the land, so it reaches a hunting club that subleases as well as the person whose name is on the deed. The statute dates to 1986 and was touched up in 2024.
Where it stops
Section 89-2-27 lists three things the article does not limit. The first is willful or malicious failure to guard or warn against a hazard. The third is injuries to third persons, the neighbor across the fence, caused by the people you let on.
The second is the one a lease runs into. The limitation does not apply to injuries in any case where permission was granted for a consideration other than money paid by a government agency. A lease is consideration. So is a per-gun fee, a day rate, or a trade of labor for hunting rights. Once money changes hands, the landowner is back to ordinary premises liability, the same footing as anybody who invites a paying customer onto their property, with a treestand, a creek crossing, and a rusted gate on it.
That is the whole finding, and it is not complicated. The statute protects the landowner who says yes for nothing. It withdraws that protection from the landowner who says yes for something.
The part that doesn’t help our case
If you let your brother-in-law and two of his friends hunt your 80 acres off MS-25 for free, the 1986 statute already does a good deal of the work, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. No duty to keep the land safe, no duty to warn, no invitee status. A landowner in that position is in a reasonable spot without buying anything.
It’s also worth being clear about what the statute does not touch. It says nothing about what a hunter does to another hunter or to a passing vehicle. That is the hunter’s own liability, and the landowner’s paperwork doesn’t change it. And it does not shield anyone from a hazard they knew about and deliberately left unmarked.
Where a lease sits in the insurance world
Hunting lease liability is commonly written as its own small policy. Most of the time the club or the lessee buys it and the landowner is listed as an additional insured, an arrangement many written leases already call for. A landowner who leases and is not named on the club’s policy is relying on whatever the homeowners form in the drawer says about land rented to others, and forms vary on that point more than people expect. Some treat lease income as a business question. Some don’t. The policy is the only thing that answers it.
A useful thing to do before October 1, and it costs nothing: read the lease for an insurance clause, then ask the club for a certificate showing you as additional insured. If there isn’t a clause, that is worth knowing before the first check clears.
Reading your own
Whether a piece of land in Tishomingo County is under the shield or outside it is decided by one question the statute asks: was anything paid? Whether the landowner has coverage for the answer is decided by two documents, the lease and the policy. Both are readable, and neither one is settled by what the club president said in the truck.
See our home insurance page, come by the Belmont office with the lease, or call or text 662-454-7831 and we’ll read the two of them together before the season opens.
This article is general information about how coverage typically works, not advice about your specific situation. Your policy is the contract, and it’s the only thing that says what you have. If you’d like someone to read it with you, that’s what we’re here for.
