Around here (PA) there has never been a better time to be a deer hunter. We have a contingent that yearns for the old days, but it was more of a socialite crowd centered around the deer camp traditions, namely, drinking. That aspect, of which the hunting was mostly a casual affair, has decayed. A lot. For actual hunting, it's tremendously improved since AR (antler restrictions) and generally more habitat-based improvement.
A lot of this predates me but from talking to old timers it seems hunting that was underutilized, like most hunting out west, a lot of bowhunting pre Xbow explosion, has definitely suffered from the exponential increase in hunting as tourism and how much it has become a major form of self-expression in the past 20-30 years.
It was never like that before. You were either rural and were too busy farming most of the time, or you worked in the towns and some of those guys got away to camp a week or so a year. No one had the time or money to make it an identity thing and certainly nobody could imagine it becoming a career option or "industry". I don't quite fully know why, but that vein of the evolution of hunting I find rather repulsive. I think maybe because I find hunting a calming escape from a too-modern world, and those people want to have it both ways. That's what the socialite version of hunting has become.
Habitat is never constant either. We had unnatural booms of small game and large game in the 1900's as habitat was regenerating from the homesteading and logging boom. Later 1800's PA did not have many trees left at all, so it spent a good portion of the century as a mosaic of perfect habitat. Then a lot of that habitat aged out into mature forest.
Times are always changing. Comparing eras or generations is a waste of time.