I don’t know how you fix it
You can't. US population has more than tripled since 1910. Most of the whitetail's range has been urbanized. We have plenty of deer, but nowhere to hunt them.
As somebody who has worked in the industry for a long time in several capacities, most of your hunting industry money in the east comes from private landowners. Almost nobody caters to eastern, public land hunters because what do you sell them? For example, in retail, I could sell a private landowner cameras, feeders, feed, seed, really nice and expensive permanent stands, UTVs, and a host of other things. Most of those are illegal on public land. Anything I could sell to public guys I could also sell to private. And for services, obviously you make killer money in recreational real estate. But you also have whole industries focused around managing the land, harvesting timber, building nice cabins, putting in road systems, digging and stocking bass ponds...the works.
Out west, you have more public land, but it takes money to get there. Cue the arrival of Sitka, Kuiu, First Lite, MeatEater, and all the other brands that sell nice equipment to folks who have the disposable income to throw at it, along with plane tickets, guide fees, and multiple years of putting in for lottery hunts.
The drone thing will be popular and successful, because increasingly the people who hunt are the people who can pay $500 a pop for the handful of animals they kill each year. Deer hunting isn't quite in the realm of cruising in private yachts or playing polo, but it's still well beyond the means of the majority of people, and getting more that way each year.
In every other civilization, hunting has become the sport of the wealthy once labor and private property became the norm. It's no different here. Most folks work too much and/or earn too little to hunt. Our public land system seems to have slowed that change, but I think it's going to be too little, too late. I'm judging this not just by my own experience, but through talking with dozens and bordering on hundreds of other men in my state. It takes a lot of money to be a successful hunter. Or, it takes even more time. So most folks enjoy average or below average success for a few years before eventually realizing that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze, and that golf and fishing are way cheaper and piss the wife off way less. To be clear, I'm not just talking about Bubba Joe who works at the feed & seed who can't really hunt. I'm talking about Mark from accounting, who just can't take time off from a full-time job, two kids, and various social obligations to really be serious about the thing.
I speak from experience. I took up the fancy, uppity, "rich white guy" sport of fly fishing and realized that a few thousand dollars for a nice rod, reel, boots, and waders was cheap compared to what I had in hunting. And I can fish water in every county in my home state for nothing more than the cost of a $17 freshwater fishing permit. And I can have fish to show for my efforts after every trip. Only about half of our counties have public land access on them, and that situation is unlikely to improve despite DCNR's "best" efforts. I'm doing good to shoot deer half of the time I go out, and I know
very few people who come close to that. 1/10 is more like it, even with "good" hunters.
I'm not saying all of this to be a downer. I'm just saying it to set realistic expectations for what this looks like in 20 years. I've gotten to the point where, sure, I encourage young guys to hunt as a general rule. But if I really know and care about the kid, I'd encourage him to learn to love other things while he's young enough to. Although I hope saying so galvanizes people to try and change the fact; hunting's a dead end for most folks.
How's that for a late night, end of the year thread derail?
