A lot of farmers now view leasing their land for hunting as just another form of generating revenue that wasn't available in the past. One of my cousins recently had some fellows from out of state offer him several thousand dollars to lease his land for deer hunting. He doesn't hunt and neither does anyone else in his immediate family, so he would be crazy to not jump at it. Folks are gonna have to accept the fact that they are gonna have to pay to be guaranteed access to hunting in the future. You may pay an outfitter, get your own lease, or buy land. But one way or another, more and more folks are gonna have to pay. But of course, if an epidemic wiped out most of the deer population, especially the trophy deer populations, I'll bet that hunting would get back to being cheap or free pretty quickly.