That's not quite true. There are huge in number, small in overall size, amounts of public land east of the Mississippi. They're mostly all state forests, nature preserves, etc, etc and 99.9% of them are wholly unremarkable and barely utilized because you can only hike in so many identical forests or walk to the top of comparable hills before you get bored.

50+yr ago they were far more utilized (per capita) because they weren't closed to motorized recreation and hunting and fishing hadn't yet been regulated with intent to discourage participation.

But yes, the vast BLM lands out west have no analogue in the east.

Ironically this makes the lands in the east more wild, because nobody goes into them, because they're so boring. There's also some quite large areas of Eastern state land that're really far from most people, and they're not tourists destinations, so they only get a few locals.

But the comparison between West and East gets crazier. In the West, people'll drive for an entire day just to get to one specific remote area. Whereas in the East, some untouched forest could be an hour and a half away and "that's too far." You could walk through a forest which is actually 3 different forests in a half hour, whereas out West it's just miles and miles of the same desert or mountain.

We don't really know how to appreciate nature unless it's a majestic overlook.

The decline of hunting has little to do with recreation. Plenty of deer in the east. Also post COVID there was a wave of people heading out there.