Couple thoughts in no particular order. Based on growing up hunting in Northern NY and VT. Pretty sure I did my hunters safety course in 1984, bowhunting in 85. So i cant comment on the 70's and earlier, and I was pretty young so I also dont rely on my knowledge of all the various opportunities and regulations. I hunted a lot through the early 90's when I got really into climbing and really came back to it 10 years later in the early 2000's.
What I can say is that in the 80's there were still a ton of farms reverting to brush and young forest from when they went out of business in the 50's and 60's and 70's as small dairies werent able to invest in refrigeration, kids werent interested in taking over, along with some other local pressures. My dad would take me out hunting but he wasnt a hunter himself, a colleague of his took me out and a lot of my first hunting lessons, as well as some of my access, came from him.
Most of the areas we hunted are now suburban developments and strip malls. The areas that are left are mostly crap middle-aged pole-sized forest that really has very little wildlife value. Lots more posted land has the pressure we do have more concentrated, but luckily access can still be had for the asking across much of the area I hunt in Vermont and Northern NY.
I grew up on a river in midstate NY. We wouldnt even dream of eating fish out of that river, and most folks wouldnt swim in it. The river had numerous PCB spills and hazardous waste sites getting cleaned up in the 70's and 80's, water quality was crap then. Today lots of people do eat fish out of the river. It's not the cleanest river around, but lets just say it no longer has an oily sheen to it. When I was a kid we used to bass fish on lakes in the adirondacks. it was nothing to catch 100+ good sized bass on a good day tossing a spinnerbait from the canoe while my dad or mom paddled to keep us moving, and I recall many days scraping my thumbs till they bled from lipping fish. Today most of those lakes are overrun with milfoil and the fishing is nowhere near as good as it used to be, despite upgrading to a bass boat and spending an inordinate amount of energy chasing green fish.
In Vermont where I now live, Turkeys were almost or completely eliminated and had to be reintroduced in the 1960's, and until the mid 70's there wasnt even a turkey season. My understanding is that the population was about 20% of current level until the late 90's, and it really took off in the 2000's, so when I started hunting again in earnest in the early 2000's I had never turkey hunted...it just wasnt nearly the thing it is now, and that's a good opportunity I have now that virtually didnt exist back in the 80's.
Deer are another change. Deer wete almost exterminated from vt in the 1800’s, got reintroduced in the early 1900’s. Both of those sttes where I'm most familiar had a boom in the 60's through the 80's as hunting practices favored rapid population growth and cover was plentiful, but by the 60s that population was very high compared to the available forage and we used to have terrible winter kills. The population we have now is lower, but its way more stable.
Moose are another change. Moose eere also totally gone after the 1800’s. NY never had a moose season (and still doesnt), but moose were so uncommon there that when a single moose flew the coop from neighboring VT when I was a kid and went gallavanting around midstate NY, it made the national news. Today, we see moose tracks fairly regularly where I hunt in NY, enough that while there still isnt a season it is not uncommon to see sign. here in VT they held their first modern moose season in 1993. I was a co-hunter on a tag in 2005, which was during a time when VT fish and wildlife was trying to reduce the herd a bit in NE VT. At that time moose were plentiful and it was a rare day bird hunting in tht area that we wouldnt flush at least one moose out of an alder bottom. Today, with the increase in winter ticks, the moose population across most of vermont is really hurting and tags have been massively reduced as a result.
Hunting pressure was much, much higher in the 80's and 90's here as well. In Vermont where I live, the highest one-year hunting license sales was 147000 in 1987. In 2020 that number was 74,000, which was the "covid spike", but that number has been flat or declining steadily since the peak. In NY I dont have the historical info before 2006, but just in those last 15ish years hunting license sales have declined about 10%, and the downward trend has been very consistent. My understanding from talking to the guy at VT F&W who compiles license data is that far more hunters hunt more than one season today though--so rather than just hunting the opening weekend of deer rifle season, more people hunt rifle, archery and muzzleloader. Even then, I usually dont run into other hunters on public land.
