To get anywhere in hunting, fishing or target shooting, you have to find a good place to go. Here, in the issue of access, we uncover a natural conflict among fellow hunters and anglers. Those of us who already hunt and fish are veterans in the competition for good spots, and it’s intense if you don’t have money to trade for a honey hole. Even if we don’t bring any new people into these sports, it feels like there aren’t enough good spots to go around.

So whose great idea is it, to add more hunters and anglers, all of whom are hoping to find a good place to go? It can be a bit of a double-edged sword, but the survival of our sports depends upon a steady flow of newcomers, who eventually replace current players.
Creatures at the top of the food chain need a lot of room to operate, which can imperil their very survival. If you’re a grizzly bear or timber wolf, you want, and are willing to fight for, a large territory over which to roam and hunt. It isn’t the same thing, but hunters and anglers also need room to operate, multiples places to search for what they are trying to catch or kill.
If you’re a deer hunter, in your perfect world you’re the only one allowed to hunt on a huge tract of prime land. In the real world, most hunters rarely secure exclusive permission to hunt big blocks of ground. In the real world, plenty of hunters exclusively hunt public land, where there is never-ending and unpredictable competition for the best areas. On private or public places, many hunters spend considerable time scouting deer movements and set up numerous stands to choose from, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Nothing ticks them off more than sneaking into one of those stands and finding another hunter already sitting in it.
The borders of private property often feature deer stands that face meadows on the neighbor’s place, and there isn’t even the pretense that whoever is sitting in those stands will be watching their own land while scanning for an animal to shoot at. Substitute an image of duck or pheasant hunters who covet undisturbed wild spaces, where they can play their favorite sport. Substitute two trout fishermen who bump into each other while eyeing up a good-looking stretch, or two boats that slide onto the same redfish flat looking for the same thing.