Hunting and fishing were the reasons I moved back to MT after 8 years studying elsewhere. And it was and continues to be a massive pay cut, with politics moving far away from the more reasonable MT of my youth, and a pretty abysmal dating scene. There may be plenty of fish, but they are swimming in a different sea. I also won't be buying a home anytime soon.
On the plus side, that means the disposable income I do have gets entirely devoted 100% to hunting and fishing. On the minus, the disposable time I have gets almost entirely devoted 100% for advocating for hunting and fishing.
Same reason we decided to move here 33 years ago. When you consider I took a 30% pay cut and Mrs. Fin took a 60% pay cut, the cost of our resident tags was over $15,000 in our first year of residency; 1992. More every year after that.
When I was at the legislature one time a smart ass Rep asked me why I got so worked up over a $12 elk tag. I told him these were $20,000 elk tags for some of us.
The same applies for people who decide to stay here when they could make a lot more elsewhere. Many living in the west for the outdoor life make some huge financial sacrifices for that, both in terms of lower income and much higher costs of living.
None of that changes the issues that we face that are at the core of these threads. Hopefully it gives some reasoning to the comments of “move here if you want the same hunting.” I understand that comes off as being a smart ass when western residents say it, but there is a good bit of reasoning behind it; they have made, and make every year, a significant financial sacrifice to have that residency status. And as
@neffa3 stated, nobody who makes that smart ass comment actually wants 100K people coming to a town near them.
I spent four days in Seattle last week meeting with folks who are fighting that craziness of the game commission out there. In the course of discussions it comes up how they'd like to just leave for ID, MT, and WY. Many of them know someone who already has moved or someone who has a near-term plan to do that. Probably half of them just can't do it because of the financial realities of a higher cost of living in places they could get a job and the job would be at a lower salary, or kids in school, or caring for an aging parent. To their credit, many of them are sticking it out in WA and fighting the fight. I admire them.
As has been said many times, by me and many others, a lot of these problems are lessened if we get back to higher animal numbers, a solution not included in the OP. If we can get back to those higher numbers, a majority of that policy battle and hands-on work will likely be done by residents. Not that non-residents don't want to help, it's just a function of distance, geography, and political residency.
These type of discussions, though well-intentioned and with much thought by the OP, do nothing to solve the bigger problem - smaller and decreasing herd numbers. The suggestions tossed out in this thread and focusing the fight on R v. NR is waiving the surrender flag and resolving to just fight over the remaining scraps. I refuse to succumb to that scarcity mindset. Maybe I'll be proven a fool. I'll go down with that ship before I will fight over who gets to kill the last critter.