Sure
Demand for mountain West hunting tags among NRs has steadily been going up for years at the same time as populations of ecologically sensitive game species have declined due to habitat loss and human encroachment (antelope, bighorn sheep, mule deer, sage grouse, etc.). But by far the biggest cohort of NR big game hunters with adequate disposable income to purchase these NR tags are Baby Boomers, born '46-'64. Statistically, there is a sharp decline in hunter participation when someone makes it to age 70. So the last of the Boomers will be hanging up the hat over the next 10-15 years, and younger generations of Americans include far fewer hunters. The "looming cliff" of total U.S. hunter participation both in terms of absolute number as well as % of the population that hunts is anticipated, so many efforts have been made to try and boost new hunter recruitment, so that people will buy hunting licences, vote for things that matter to outdoors people, continue the hunting legacy, etc. However, these efforts are failing badly. Yeah, a few man bun, skinny jean neo-urbanites have taken up the bow and put some non-GMO protein on their kitchen tables made of recycled milk jugs, but overall the trend of hunter participation would need to change in a radical new way in order to have the same number of hunters 20 years from now than we have today.
While all this is going on, there are nearly
ten million acres of public hunting land in the mountain west that the public can't set foot on because there is no access.
https://www.greatfallstribune.com/s...-hunting-trespassing-public-lands/1589146002/ A lot of this is BLM land, especially checkerboard BLM, which in some (or all) states cannot be legally crossed to via the corner of adjacent public land. To someone like me, who primarily grew up in the midwest, this is an infuriating situation. Many states, mostly in the East, make it illegal for
any public land, or even any body of water, to be inaccessible to the public, which in my mind, is how it should be. I understand if a state like WY wants to landlock it's own state land, but BLM is Federal ground. The BLM has historically allowed individual states to determine public access to these lands, and doesn't attempt to provide access to the citizens of the US to whom the land belongs. Many Western States give preferential treatment to ranchers, developers, oil, gas, and mineral companies, and other corporate entities to essentially produce their own profit from the public resource at little or no cost, by using BLM lands that the public cannot get to.
What I mean that it could all change by the stroke of a pen is that the US congress could pass a bill mandating public access to all BLM land, and could be signed into law by Trump, which would override States' policies of locking up these lands to the average Joe public land hunter. The same could be done for other types of landlocked public lands such as NF and NG. Of course, the likelihood of such a thing happening is basically zero because the corporate entities are getting fat off of their free or low-cost access to landlocked federal public, and the people in State government they are in bed with contribute millions to the GOP to keep things just they way they are.
If these lands were opened to the public, it unlocks a massive public resource, allowing state G&F agencies to issue more tags for big game animals residing on such lands to be pursued by resident and NR hunters alike. Granted, these areas overwhelmingly already get hunted via outfitters and others who pay for access, but the pressure is generally light, and overall they can sustain a greater harvest of game than they experience currently.
