If you were to come out to the west unless you know someone you'll almost never get permission to hunt private land, the cattle ranches have mostly gone to lease hunting so unless you have deep pockets your out of luck. I have no problem with anyone hunting in a way that is legal but as it is with alot of things in this country the costs are getting out of hand to where the average guy can't afford to hunt the prized areas anymore. I don't know about other states but here in Oregon alot of the ranches have been bought by out of state investors or corporations that don't care about anything except raping the land and wildlife for a profit and when it quits producing they will off load it. I could tell you alot of stories about how out of line some of the places out here are but I'll hold it to two. There is a ranch in central oregon that charges by the day to hunt elk I've been told that the fee is 1500.00-2500.00 a day. I stopped one day on my way back from hunting to see a bunch of guys on 4 wheelers herding elk back away from crossing the fence on to public land back on to the ranch property and to top that off some guy in the back of a pick up stuck a bull with an arrow when they went back by him. I call the state police but they said although they had repeated complaints against this ranch unless they saw it they couldn't do anything. This same ranch landlocks a piece of blm land and friend of mine shot and elk on top of a butte and the elk ran down the hill side and piled up with in yards of the ranches fence. My friend who is a state cop asked if he could recover the animal through the ranch rather than haul it back up the hillside and they told him for a 1000.00 dollars he could. They were obviously within their rights but that is the mentality of alot of the people. The other incident happened to me directly, I was hunting the badlands in central oregon and cut bull tracks, after a bit an airplane flew over at about a thousand feet or so and after it passed me it circled back around and buzzed me at roughly 100 feet. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I move about 75 yds further through the junipers and I found a piss spot and tracks from a startled bull, they had deliberately spooked the bull. I found out from another hunter in the area that I wasn't the first, the guy owned the ranch next to where I was hunting and he was spooking the animals on public land and trying to push them on to his property where he charges to hunt them. I again called the state police and they said I couldn't prove malicious intent or that he was deliberately harrassing wildlife. The east and west are different as night and day and I realize where your at there is nowhere near the amount of public land that we have out here and if I were you and had access I'd hunt private land too. I'm not saying all lease or fee operations are as bad as the two I mentioned but it's enough to make me suspicious of all of them as well as resentfull towards those that do business with them.