eastwood you bring up some interesting points, most older hunters are generally from the countryside and most people who lived in the country did hunt, very few people from the city hunted, as a result hunting was a county thing so there was plenty of property to hunt on without bumping into another hunter. When I first started hunting in the early 60' s I could hunt an entire season and never bump into another hunter while hunting, but when you went to the checking station at the end of the day the place was packed with hunters. It was also very easy to get permission to hunt because every body knew everyone.

As farming has become more modernized it took fewer farmers to farm a large farm and as a result many people who were raised in the country moved into the cities for work, but they kept their hunting traditions and people from the city due to them started hunting more. Well urban sprawl and higher harvest rates from less land has led to less land to hunt.

There are a lot more hunters today than there were 40+ years ago, less land to hunt on and fewer people willing to let you hunt, as a result public hunting grounds are over run.

In a nutshell 40+ years ago hardly anyone hunted who lived in the city and almost all country folk did hunt, now there are a bunch of city folk hunting and we still have the country folk out there to.