You do have to have permits to guide on public land. These permits are issued by BLM and National Forest some places do have state owned leases. Outfitters do overlap in area's at times but mostly are giving certain areas to keep the peace so to speak. I don't know about other states but I'm sure National Forests maintain a standard policy on outfitting then it moves to individual regions within the rule book for different districts.
Here's the thing unless an outfitter gets in trouble and loses a permit or NF office opens up more use days your going to have to "buy in" the game.
You can't sell a permit that's not legal.
What happens is you buy a bunch of blue sky aka equipment and stock from the outfitter with the agreement between you and the Nation Forest that you will be taking over that outfitters permit as long as you qualify under the guidelines of the regional office to be a outfitter. This will only be a temporary use permit up to 5 years while your on probation until they deem you priority days. Sounds pretty scary starting out. Sure there's bad outfitters just like bad carpenters but to run a operation for a couple of decades you don't make mistakes that jeopardize your business.
Even legal outfitters have to have approval to do "pack in" into other outfitters areas.
A pack in is where the client provides all their own personal and camping gear. You are only providing the pack in service.
Drop camps is where you as the outfitter is supplying you equipment aka camp for the client in your area unless agreed upon by the adjoining outfitter to go into that area with a camp. It's just not worth the hassle to go through that mess just for one or two camps. Professionally what we as outfitters normally do is pass that client on to the outfitter that uses that area. Less headache in the long run.
Like I said not sure about other states or even other Nation Forest districts but I'm sure most of it is pretty standard.
Regardless of what anyone says those priority days that outfitters have acquired over years of being in business are like gold. You can't sell them but you can't just get in the door on public land unless someone dies or screws up. Hence it is a felony to illegally provide outfitting services without a permit on public lands. I have plenty of shade tree illegal outfitters I watch. Someday they will make a huge mistake and pay dearly.
I may not have all the information for every instance but your more than welcome to pm anytime on a situation if you planning on buying a business and have questions.
You can't always make everyone happy but those people were not going to be happy anyway. For the 5% bad there 95% that are coming for the adventure. The rest should of went to motel 6.