It's interesting. The pressure is still intense by me, but the duration is as short as it's ever been.
In my neck of the woods, every inch of public land seems to get pounded for the first weekend of rifle season, and then it's crickets until next year. Those same public acres get all sorts of harassed leading up to rifle opener. There's about 3 weekends of non-stop prep work going on leading up to opener. Make firewood, mow the grass, mow the trails, check stands, set up blinds, clear shooting lanes, sight in the rifles, bring the kids so they can rip around on wheelers and the dog can run the woods for grouse. The impact that has on the forest critters for just a couple days of hunting is immense. There is no normal hunting pattern there like they pretend exists on tv. Second and third weekend are a bust because of it. Those deer get so damn spooky, they won't come out until 2 hours after dark.
I can tell the exact day this starts because the number of deer that shack up on or near my place triples and my plots get taken down quickly. I don't see very many of them during the day, but the nighttime groups go from 1-2, to 5-8 in one photo in the yard plots. It seems the carpetbaggers show up nocturnal, and the residents stay on a day pattern.
There were about 2200 acres logged this winter within just a few miles of me. That's gonna be upwards of 50-100 hunters having to find a new spot next season, and there ain't another 2200 acres of unmolested land to occupy. Not looking forward to that, but those giant blocks of clear cut ought to really help the deer numbers for the next few years.