No, your second comment is in line with the issue. I apologize. I'm honestly extremely introverted and have a heck of a time putting thoughts into words on a computer at times. I do much better in personal conversations.
Anyway, the people who are selling leases to large "Sporting Clubs" in cities out east, are the same ones who tell everyone around here to "buy local", as far as buying groceries local, not going to Walmart, using our local lumberyard, instead of going an hour to Home Depot and using our farm store, instead of Orscheln's an hour away and so on, so forth. So basically, they are telling people to support our mom and pop shops, instead of large corporations, but when they are the one's getting paid (via massive sums for lease by city "Sporting Clubs") that's Ok.
So no, no locals got a shot at anything, because alot of it was done and not mentioned much (because they knew they were being hypocrites), until 90% of the good hunting areas were already leased. They kept things pretty quiet till the damage was done, so to speak. It's truly amazing how fast it happened. A couple months, maybe. Knowing now what the outfits pay, I don't think any one person around here would've wanted to pay that amount and it's actually gone up now that people know what city folks are willing to pay.
Now their justification, with the outfitter that moved into town, is that they are supporting a local guy. Even though he literally ended up here 4 years ago and picked here only because it was halfway between all the leased land they hunt. Still though, he only has people from out of town as customers. I don't know of anyone locally, who pays him to take them hunting. So even though he's "local" it still screws alot of us. I will always have a place to hunt, so I don't even really have a dog in the fight, but I do realize there's an issue and hypocrisy is the root cause of it and realize it puts alot of locals in a spot, if they want to hunt.
To my point of they could make money locally, I mean that now, alot of people are so hard up for hunting ground, a landowner could say "Alright local guys, $200 dollar hunting leases and we'll fit in as many as we can". I'm not sure they'd make what the city places are paying, but they'd for sure do alright and help out the locals. Especially considering how fast the turn around would be on some of these places. I know several guys who wouldn't mind paying 2 or even 300 bucks, if they could fill all their tags. That's still some cheap meat. A guy could literally show up and bag 2 or 3 deer in a couple hours. Then get the next guy in tomorrow and another in a couple days and so on so forth (of course it is still hunting and sometimes things don't always work out as planned), but there's a *s-wordload of deer out here. That's sorta how I'd try and do it if I was a landowner.
Maybe that makes more sense, hopefully. Let me know if it doesn't.