Lots of good details of the reasons for decline. But I think everyone of them are directly attributable to one thing; TOO MANY PEOPLE! That causes a lot of things to occur, including huge increases in urban and suburban population. These urban and suburban people then are influenced by those things many of your have mentioned in addition to the loss of hunting grounds.
I'm sorry to say, I see no realistic solution on the horizon to stem the decline of hunting in much of the US.
I believe Chuck came closest to it, but stopped a little short.
It's a loss of cultural identity = tradition. With the growing and merging world population it's inevitable and irreversible. Cultures only survive in isolation and ours is well on it's way to disappearing. We annihilated a bunch of cultures in a couple of centuries past; ours will be absorbed and diluted beyond recognition in a few decades hence.
National Geographic discovers an isolated tribe of naked hunter gatherers....the next generation is seen wearing Nikes and drinking Pepsi.... the third generation has forgotten how to hunt for grubs in rotten logs.
His brother stays and works the farm, but John Boy marries Tiffany from the city and moves to the burbs. Tiffany doesn't like guns the two of them raise the kids on video games, etc, etc.
Subsitence hunting became unnecessary and was replaced by market hunting which became unsustainable/unjustifiable and was succeeded by sport hunting which is becoming unfathomable and will become reprehensible and soon extinct.
In the meantime, we killers of animals like to point fingers at our brethren, saying MY way of killing is OK, YOUR way of killing is unethical......when in fact, shooting a pheasant is no more "justifiable" than killing a whale.
