Its all Randy's fault, never mind the 350 outfitters in Wyoming that take a metric chit-ton of people to all kinds of places on public land. Those thousands of hunters they guide don't wear blind folds to the hunting areas. The mountain of publications and web-sites that do NOTHING but make recommendations on areas, go hunt, hunting fool, epic, eastmans, toprut, and probably another couple dozen I've never heard of.
Anyone want to talk about scouting services? Yeah, probably not.
How about facebook and hunting boards like this one?
How about google earth?
Lets get real, how about every single GF website having a hunt planner? There's more readily available information on the GF websites these days than you could find in 2 years of asking your friends and relatives about 20 years ago.
Its not one person, its not one thing that is driving the demand...and to put the blame on one guy is pure crap.
There are people that chase units when they discover them in Eastmans, a hunting board, etc...but IME, by the time they are "discovered", many that hunt there find themselves behind the curve and hunting on memories. The good hunters are already on to the next spot.
Units change, management changes, pressure changes, hard winters, drought, all influence units, wayyyyyyy more than who's drawing tags there.
The savvy hunters aren't married to any particular area, and those guys are usually way ahead of the curve and secure enough in their abilities that they know the unit isn't important as the "how" when it comes to taking above average animals.
I've said it a hundred times, you can give a crappy hunter the best tag in the state, they'll still find a way to blow it. Conversely, you can give a great hunter the worst tag in the State and they're still going to find and kill a great animal.
I have so much hunting available to me, the last thing I'm going to worry about is an increase in applicants in a couple areas I hunt.