Will, you have some very odd ideas about "boomers" as you circular file them.
And your PoW spring bear observations was pretty close to 180 degrees from my one PoW spring bear experience.
What I see here on HT is also very different than your "boomer-blame" hypothesis. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Just sayin'.
To flesh this out a bit more, if demand outstrips supply even just 1% you feel the effects. I'm not sure where we are at now, but maybe it's 10%?
Who knows. I don't think there is one singular cause for the increase in demand, and I think R and NR hunting have some overlapping causes but also some differences.
Populations of western states of increased, so more residents that's huge.
Private landowners have closed off properties in other states.
Less private land habitat.
Definitely increased information on public hunting, and folks hunting because of influencers.
All of the various ways outfitters in various states have tried to increase the slice of pie their clients get.
Herds have also declined.
But then there is definitely a demographics piece, it can't be purely a coincidence. First boomers turned 65 in 2011, youngest boomers are 59 today. When did the pressure spike start?
Baby boomers are also way healthier at their age then previous generations, which means folks using a resource longer than previous generations. So even if all else stayed exactly the same that one piece might cause some supply constraints.
The red box is your key out of state hunting demo... college kids are buying $1000 elk tags.
Just population wise, there will be a decrease in hunters in about 10 years.
Millennials will screw it up again in about 30 years.
Hunter personalities by age...
Jim Shockey 65 - Boomer
Cam Hanes is 55... so gen X
Rinella 48 Gen X
Joe Rogan 55 Gen X
Jason Matzinger -44
To your last point I'm definitely a high resource user, I've gotten to spend a ton of time hunting and had a ton of tags, I'm not sure if my experience is necessarily representative of the mean.
Last... there is definitely some weird pieces of data I can't explain, like CO has a huge pressure increase... but if you look at historic numbers we are waaaaay down in totally elk hunters numbers in the last 15 years. How does that work?