When the Gates Went Up: The Public Land Controversy

By: Ashley Holm 

The Way It Was Supposed to Be

Hunting was never meant to feel complicated. It was supposed to be a simple exchange: time in, lessons learned, animal taken with respect. The woods were where you went to feel something old and honest. Something that didn’t need permission slips, contracts, or explanations. Just early alarms, steady boots, and the quiet understanding that you belonged out there because you worked for it.

But somewhere along the way, the ground beneath that belief started to shift.

The Land Didn’t Change — The Access Did

Drive through any rural county and you’ll see it. New fencing. Fresh “Posted” signs. Land that used to welcome neighbors is now tied up in leases, clubs, and outfitter agreements. Gates that didn’t exist when you were a kid are now locked with coded padlocks. The stories of “just knocking on a door and asking” feel like something from another time.

It’s not that people got greedy. It’s that land turned into something you hold instead of something you share.

And once the land became valuable, access stopped being free.

Public Land as the Last Frontier

So we go where we still can: the public ground. The leftover land. The land with scars and stories and miles of pressure. 

There’s beauty there. Real beauty. The kind that makes you feel small in the best way. But there’s also the unspoken reality of too many boots chasing too few animals. Trucks lined up at trailheads before sunrise. Headlamps moving through the timber in every direction. The quiet of the woods is replaced by the awareness that you are never really alone out there.

Hunting public land teaches grit. It teaches patience. It teaches you how to lose with grace. But it also teaches how many of us are standing outside the locked gates, wishing things felt the way they used to.

Behind the Gates, a Different Story

And then there’s private land, the land that still holds quiet. The kind of quiet where animals grow old. Where patterns stay true. Where sunrises break without the sound of someone else’s glassing from the next ridge over. It’s not that success is guaranteed. It’s that the landscape hasn’t been stripped of its stillness.

And stillness, these days, costs money.
Most hunters don’t have.

This Isn’t About Envy

It’s about acknowledging a culture shift.

We tell the world that hunting is for everyone.
But that only stays true if everyone can actually step into the woods.

Mentorship, tradition, and heritage are things that only survive if there is space for people to learn. Real space. Physical space. Land that welcomes them instead of turning them away.

The Heart of the Matter

Hunting has never been about the kill. It’s about the land and the chance to be out there, to feel something real, to carry on a tradition older than we are.
But every new “No Trespassing” sign means fewer places to do that.
People aren’t losing access because they don’t care.
They’re losing it because the gates keep going up.

We can change that by standing up for public lands, volunteering for cleanups, supporting conservation groups, and teaching respect for the spaces that sustain us. If we don’t protect them, no one will.

The Question We Need to Sit With

If hunting stays on a path where land becomes exclusive, where access becomes purchased,
where opportunity belongs to those who can afford it—

What happens to the culture?
What happens to the next generation?
What happens to the story we claim to care about?

Tradition doesn’t disappear all at once.
It fades one locked gate at a time.