Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 834 is my conversation with Nic De Castro, the founder and CEO of LandTrust, the leading land-sharing marketplace for outdoor recreation. Often described as the Airbnb of private hunting and fishing land, LandTrust lets sportsmen book day, weekend, or season access to private farms and ranches. Nic walks me through how he built a two-sided marketplace from a single New Jersey farm to more than 1.25 million acres across 40 states, and how trust holds the whole thing together.
Listen now: Megaphone · Apple Podcasts · Spotify
LandTrust is a land-sharing marketplace for outdoor recreation, often described as the Airbnb of private hunting and fishing land. Instead of renting a home or an RV, you book access to a landowner's private property for hunting, fishing, shed hunting, RV camping, or farm-and-ranch experiences. Listings can be booked by the day, the weekend, or the full season, which makes private ground accessible without buying it or signing an expensive annual lease.
Nic De Castro is the founder and CEO of LandTrust, headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. He grew up hunting and fishing in Southern California, spent his twenties in advertising and technology sales in cities across the country, and moved to Bozeman at the end of 2016. Frustrated by how hard it was to access great private land around town, he launched LandTrust in October 2019.
By the time of this conversation, LandTrust had roughly 1.25 million acres listed across 40 states, with Montana as its most mature market and strong density in states like Nebraska and Kansas. Most of that acreage comes from owner-operator production agriculture families who farm and ranch the land themselves.
Pricing is set by the landowner and runs the full range, just like a home-sharing site. Nic describes everything from small-game or prairie-dog hunts around twenty-five dollars a day to week-long archery elk hunts in the thousands. The early New Jersey farms started between fifty and eighty dollars a day.
Trust is in the name for a reason. LandTrust handles insurance in several ways and leans heavily on a two-way trust system: guests trust they will be hosted well, and landowners trust that visitors will be respectful, since most hosts are multi-generation families who live and work on the land, that trust is the foundation of the whole marketplace.
Yes. You can search by state, species, or activity, and when you create a free profile you tell LandTrust what you hunt or fish and which states interest you. After that, LandTrust effectively scouts for you year-round, sending a text whenever a new matching property comes online.
Access is the thing I hear about more than almost anything else from listeners. People want to hunt and fish, and they either do not have ground or cannot find a way onto good private land. When I found what Nic was doing with LandTrust, it struck me as one of the most practical solutions I had seen. He is not a guy who inherited a network of ranches. He is a sportsman who got frustrated by the same problem you and I have and built a marketplace to fix it. I wanted to hear the whole build, from the first listing to a million acres, in his own words.
Press play on the player above to hear how he did it.
Nic kept getting told no farmer or rancher would ever do this. A two-sided marketplace is brutal to start because buyers will not show up without sellers and sellers will not show up without buyers. He tells me exactly how he begged, borrowed, and scoured Craigslist, Facebook groups, and hunting forums to get his first landowners on board, and why one younger farmer in Southern New Jersey ended up being the spark that lit the whole company. The story of that first cluster of farms is worth hearing in full.
It took Nic a while to figure out which kind of landowner actually fits LandTrust. The answer surprised me. He explains why the multi-generation owner-operators who farm and ranch the land themselves are a far better fit than absentee owners who just hold ground for hunting leases. The difference comes down to stewardship and the relationship with the land, and he draws that line clearly in the episode.
I asked Nic the question every landowner asks: you mean strangers walking my property with guns? He walks through how LandTrust is not leasing and subleasing, how the landowner keeps one hundred percent control and sets every rule, and why hunting is both the hardest yes to get and the key that unlocks everything else. Listen to how he handles that conversation.
We get into where LandTrust could go next, including other countries and the kind of access problem I run into personally in places like the Bahamas, where you are never quite sure whose land you are on. Nic is clear that there is still a ton of work to do in the United States, but the vision is bigger than one country. Hear where he thinks it goes.
Listen to the full conversation: Megaphone · Apple Podcasts · Spotify.
What stuck with me after talking to Nic is how a single frustration, handled with enough persistence, can turn into something that helps thousands of people get outside. He wanted access for himself and ended up building the access tool for everyone else.
If you have ever stared at a map full of private ground and wished there were a way in, this is the conversation that shows you one. Go set up a free profile and let it scout for you.
Press play on the player above, or grab Episode 834 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
LandTrust · Nic De Castro (founder and CEO) · Bozeman, Montana · Airbnb · VRBO · Outdoorsy · RVshare · Craigslist · Southern New Jersey farms · Montana, Nebraska, Kansas markets
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Nic De Castro is the founder and CEO of LandTrust, the leading land-sharing marketplace for outdoor recreation, headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. Raised hunting and fishing in Southern California, he spent his twenties in advertising and technology sales before moving to Montana and launching LandTrust in October 2019. Under his leadership the platform has grown to roughly 1.25 million acres of bookable private hunting, fishing, and camping access across 40 states, built on a two-way trust model with owner-operator farm and ranch families.
Subscribe to get the latest episodes, show notes, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.