Should rural acreage be priced off hunting demand instead of the timber math

Take a 140 acre cutover parcel where the timber cruise supports maybe half the asking price, with frontage on a county road, a creek, established food plots, and a broker who says flatly that his buyers want a place to hunt and camp and don't run a stumpage spreadsheet. That's consistent with what surveys keep showing, timberland values holding flat to up a few percent on recreational and diversified demand rather than wood prices. So the question isn't whether recreational value exists. It's whether it should be paid for. One view says yes, that's the market. The buyer pool for small tracts is dominated by recreational buyers, so recreational attributes are what the exit depends on, and pricing off timber value alone means nothing ever gets bought. The other view says a recreational premium is sentiment that can't be underwritten. It doesn't produce cash unless leased, it can compress when rural discretionary money dries up, and paying for it means the biological growth is subsidizing an overpaid price. Timber value at least has a mill behind it. Operators who've bought a few of these parcels tend to land on both sides at different times, paying the premium on one and refusing it on the next. Which was the mistake usually depends on what the buyer pool does next, not on the theory.