Readers respond:

Jonah, Your clarification regarding the article was spot on. The concerns the author noted of both hunters and fisherman regarding access to lands and streams is completely accurate. Her article was excellent as a matter of fact. Her conclusions however were incorrect for a number of reasons.
1. In states that have adopted hunter access programs( I am from West
Virginia, but Idaho’s program is the one I am most familiar with) the ACCESS
YES programs were passed with strong bipartisan support. Those who objected
were usually Dems from urban areas.
2. The taxes used to support these programs are excise or retail sales
taxes. No problem with Conservative support there, and the vast majority
of hunters support this if you use it you pay for it tax. The
Pittman-Roberts Act passed in the mid 1930’s is an example of this type of
excise tax. A portion of every sale of hunting merchandise is taxed and the
money goes to fund conservation programs. It is the sole reason that
hunting big game(deer, elk, pronghorn) is still possible in the lower 48,
and is supported by 100% of hunters.
3. Elitists are buying up and closing off access to vast tracts of Western
lands and Rivers at an alarming rate. Some are buying up this land to hunt
and fish on themselves but many if not most of this “New Royalty” are in
fact affluent leftist’s who hate hunters, and gun owners. I can see
progressives going after their chief source of contributions. As far as I
know every ACCESS YES program is voluntary. What will the progressives do,
go after Ted Turner if he doesn’t allow a bunch of hunters on his land.

And…

Jonah,
I’m a long time reader and fan. I also happen to be a hunter living in
Ames, Iowa. I hunted Colo Bogs mentioned in the article last fall. The
problems described in the article are accurate. The best hunting I
found last year was in southwest Iowa where my father is a member of a
hunting club that owns land. Here in central Iowa the population is
higher and its very difficult to find land that isn’t overcrowded with
hunters. The only time I had the opportunity to hunt public lands
without overcrowding was when I took a weekday off work. Even then the
hunting pressure had pushed most of the game off of the public lands so
while I had some land to myself, I had little success.
While I found the article described the problem well, I wasn’t convinced
that progressives will make any political hay out of it. Nearly all
Iowa politicians are in favor of more public hunting land. The Kansas
walk-in program is fairly new. As far as I know the program has never
been proposed in Iowa and I follow hunting issues pretty closely. The
first mention of programs like these that I have ran across was just
this week in an issue of Wyoming Wildlife. I would guess that if the
descriptions of the success in other states are true, Iowa politicians
will be falling all over each other trying to claim credit for starting
it in Iowa very soon.
The vast majority of hunting issues are state issues especially in Iowa
where we have no federal lands (or at least none of any importance).
Virtually all republicans and most democrats in the state strongly
support hunters since opposing them usually results in political suicide
unless you have a strictly urban district. Many hunters in Iowa still
carry a grudge over our governor vetoing a bill that would have allowed
dove hunting. Opposition to that bill was led by progressives so I
strongly doubt hunters are going to start liking progressives any time
soon in this state. At best, progressives might be able to reduce the
number of hunters with negative views of them with strong support for
this issue and I simply can’t see republicans in this state opposing it.