MP, about 25 yars back I worked in a land-use/environmental-protection program. We got to the point where jokes and cartoons abounded about "whose ox is gored", "striking ahappy medium", etc. The comment you made about hunters reminded me of the ox.
Lotsa bird hunters are unconcerned about "assault weapons" controls. Lotsa benchrest folks are unconcerned about handgun restrictions. (Not all, of course; not all!) I imagine lotsa deer hunters vote Democrat...
From reading, the problem with the undeveloped areas of Africa is dodging folks who want to kill Whitey.
Regardless of all that, hwoever, there has been an unending assault on individual liberties during my lifetime, and it continues unabated in both the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism. We once had a good political system, particularly as regards the rest of the world (I've spent a good bit of time in 20 other countries.) but we seem to be headed off in the direction of Canada and/or Greater Europe.
Salt may have been somewhat erroneous in some of his assumptions, but he is correct in being concerned about the overall picture.
We have anti-hunters influencing policy on public lands, and some of the a-h crowd have jobs and influence within such as the BLM, Forest Service and the USF&WS. This is pushing more folks into private-lands hunting, where costs of leases or day-hunt fees have been rising.
It's less the actual urban sprawl covering up hunting lands than it is the voting strength of urban populations--where these populations understand very little of "Nature", etc.
Art