Much public land can't be use productively, usually because of a lack of water or terrain unsuitable for any commercial use. It's ideal for anyone wanting their own piece of paradise. The ultra-wealthy will bid very high prices for it then fence it off. We lose all access and paradise is lost for the other 99.9% of our citizens. Privatizing public land is one of the stupidest things we could do. Yeah, sell it off, idiots.
I don't know about public land out west but back east, the national forests were mostly once privately-owned. The federal government bought up land for the national forests, and the sellers were happy to sell the least valuable land but held on to all the good farmland.
But I agree, selling off our public lands would be about the stupidest thing we could do. People think tags are expensive, add trespass fees to that, if you could find a place that would let you hunt. These days, the people with enough money to buy huge tracts of land aren't exactly hunter-friendly. If you want to see what hunting would look like on all private land, look to Europe.
