I think too that hunting pressure is a lot of the problem. I lived in a very rural area area of Kentucky in a town of 1200 people. The closest town was po. 100 and 17 miles away, after that it was more than 20 miles in any direction to a town, and all the intervening land was farmed or vacant. It teemed with game but there were few hunters when I was a kid in the 50's and 60's. We lived on the edge of town and I literally walked out my back door and had the choice of three or four farms to hunt (close enough for my parents to watch me).
My family was a family of hunters but I realized later that we were a rarity. Outside of a few people who would shoot a few squirrels, hunting was not a big deal. My dad told me that during his childhood in the 20's he hardly ever heard of an adult hunting. If a farm kid had access to a 22, he might shoot a few squirrels and rabbits, but by and large it was not an adult thing. During the depression no one had the money to buy shotgun shells and certainly didn't wast them by shooting at flying birds. If a hunting dog was to be seen, it was a small cur that would tree squirrels.
I was raised on the stories of Daniel Boone and the pioneers and the myth of the American hunting legacy, but I really believe it was not as widespread as we imagine. Historians have written extensively about the expansion out of the colonies and across the plains, and the truth is that most people feared the outdoors and looked on it as a sinister and dangerous place. Hunting, camping and outdoor recreation only became popular as we entered the 20th century, and was the domain of people who could afford to do it. Fishing seems to havel always been popular, much more so than hunting.
The advent of recreational hunting around the mid century co-incides with the start of the deline of game.
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