Guide · Hunting lease & ranch

Hunting Lease Safety: Marking Every Stand So 911 Can Find It

The hard part of a hunting-lease emergency often isn't the phone call — it's explaining where you are. On private land with ranch roads, no street addresses and a guest who has been there once, "I'm in a blind somewhere past the creek" costs time. Marking every stand with its coordinates fixes that before it matters.

By Henry Elsner (Hank) III, Von Ormy, Texas · October 23, 2026

Why location is the weak link

Most lease emergencies happen far from a named road: a fall from a stand, a cut while cleaning a deer, a truck stuck after dark, a medical problem in a blind. Dispatchers are trained to work out where a caller is, and phones can share an estimated location, but in rural country that estimate may not be precise enough to pick one blind out of several, and responders still need to know which gate to come in and which ranch road to take.

A caller who can say "I'm at blind 07 on the Elsner Creek Lease, coordinates 29.12345, -98.12345" (sample) gives the people coming a point they can navigate to. That's the whole idea behind an emergency location marker.

What to put on every stand

1. A number that matches your lease map and stand board.
2. The lease or ranch name — what neighbors and the county know the place as.
3. GPS coordinates of that exact spot, in decimal degrees (e.g. 29.12345, -98.12345 — sample). Check the minus sign on the longitude.
4. A QR code that opens the map pin, so the location can be sent by text in one scan.
5. A contact line — "Emergency: call 911" plus the lease boss's number.

Engrave it, don't write it. Marker on a board fades in a season; a sticker peels. A laser-engraved metal tag keeps the numbers readable. Our Lease Locator Tags carry all five lines on a 2.17 x 3.35 in black anodized aluminum tag with two mounting holes.

Verify every pin on the ground

Take the coordinates standing at the blind, not from a satellite map at home. Satellite imagery can be dated and it's easy to tap the wrong clearing. After the tags are up, walk to each one, scan the QR code and make sure the pin lands where you're standing.

Build a one-page lease emergency sheet

Tape it inside the camp door and text a photo of it to every member and guest:

• Lease name and the county it's in
• The address or coordinates of the main gate (where an ambulance should meet you), and gate code handling — who opens it
• List of every stand number with its coordinates
• Nearest emergency room and the route out to the highway
• Lease boss and landowner phone numbers
• Where the first-aid kit, trauma kit and fire extinguisher are kept at camp

Habits that make the markers work

• Sign the stand board. Write your name next to your stand number before every hunt, and your expected return time.
• Tell someone. Text the stand number to a hunting partner or family member when you sit down.
• Charge the phone. Carry a small battery pack; cold drains phones fast.
• Know the signal. Find out which stands have no coverage and where the nearest bar of signal is. Where it's offered, text-to-911 can get through when a voice call won't — call if you can, text if you can't.
• Wear a harness. Hunter education courses stress a full-body fall-arrest harness every time you're in an elevated stand, from the moment you leave the ground.
• Meet them at the gate. If you call for help, send someone to the main gate to lead responders in, and send them the pin from the tag.

What markers are — and aren't

Stand tags are private location markers that help people describe where they are. They don't replace a plan, a working phone or common sense, and they aren't an official sign or ID of any kind. Used with a stand board and an emergency sheet, they take the guesswork out of the most stressful phone call anyone on the lease will ever make.