Texas has little federally owned land…only that which the state gave them so non event here. I have availed myself of other western states federally owned lands and it would be tragic to see some of it privatized.
On the other hand, there are millions of acres of marginal land ( not good for much) that haven’t had a human traverse it in a long time.
This type of land (little to no public use and 0 ag value) availability could soften up the real estate market for those seeking to purchase solitude.
One thing is reasonably certain and that is some western politicians will likely carve out the choicest bits for themselves and thier cronies. This is why it’s not a good idea in my opinion.
The Texas model (mostly private land) runs the gamut from costly to absurdly expensive for hunting rights, and time has fractured large holdings into smaller and smaller tracts and will continue to do so. I envy the western hunter with access to large public access tracts in close proximity to their homestead. I speak from experience when I say this. If you have the health and fortitude there are places where an individual can find and use vast amounts of public land for hunting and have nobody else in their zip code to compete with. Ive also observed those tracts get saturated with knuckle heads after a TV or YouTube personality broadcast a successful elk hunt or something and ruins the space for a decade to come. Tragedy of the commons stuff.
I have marveled at the state of Montana having little to no say in what happens in Montana about the public land there due so much federally owned or controlled real estate.
It’s quite the conundrum and there are no answers that satisfy all involved, but one thing is certain, a dude that never has and never will utilize ANY of the subject real estate for any purpose should sit down and shut the hell up
