I think it is all a perfect storm. The first time I went out of state hunting was in 1969 and I was 14 yrs old. We lived in Minnesota, and had watched an Eastman hunting movie and wanted to mule deer hunt. There werent mule deer in MN, so we went to wyoming. Had there been mule deer in MN, we probably wouldnt have made the trip. Had we not watched the Eastman movie - we wouldnt have gone. That movie was a form of social media
My dad had a good job, but back then, a lot of mothers, mine included, stayed home with the kids. We owned a single vehicle - a station wagon. There wasnt money to be traveling all over the country for hunting trips.
I ended up in Arkansas in 1980 with my young family. There were quail, squirrels, ducks, and turkeys aplenty. Enough deer. I had bird dogs, duck dogs, and rabbit dogs. I didnt have to drive over an hour from the house to experience excellent hunting for a variety of species. Fur prices crashed in the late 80’s and by the early 90’s, quail, rabbits, and turkeys were following suit.
We started going out of state to turkey hunt, because their numbers had dwindled in our own state. We picked areas in adjacent states with the help of where to go articles in outdoor magazines - another form of media. By the late 90’s, I was going out of state a couple times of year to bird hunt - we had an unhuntable population of upland game. And by that time, we were turkey hunting several states. Almost every wife worked. Almost every family was a two car family and some were three car. Most folks I knew had a 4wd truck - almost unheard of in the 60’s. Leasing started big time around my place in the mid to late 90’s, closing down tens of thousands of acres of commercial timberlands, once treated as public land. That meant you had to go farther and wider to find good hunting.
Our ducks ran out about five years ago. Never in my wildest imagination did I think living in Arkansas, I would not have ducks. I go out of state now to duck hunt. As more and more people had more and more expendable income, and were traveling to hunt and fish more, outfitters started leasing large acreages to serve the traveling hunters, and squeezing the locals out. It became a perfect storm - declining wildlife populations, declining land availability, increased expendable income, and now enter what most of us call “social media”.
Personally, I dont believe social media was the cause of the situation, but it definitely exacerbated the situation.