Fishing Hunting Seasons (Fluctuations in prices and protected species)

I admire the idea to expand on hunting and fishing.
I have been monitoring it closely, making suggestions, reporting bugs, efforts on making it balanced for over a year now.
I do not see this working out due to a number of factors.
Population:
The majority of the server are felons and have limited access to getting the proper supplies to even go hunting.
Participation for hunting and fishing is at an all time low.
It has never been an activity that people want to do.
It's mainly a meantime activity to make money or a hobby/occupation for characters such as mine.
I create a group as often as I can and have notes on the wall at the lodge.
It's extremely rare there is 3-5 members in the group.
If the group is not at 4-5, a legal hunting trip is less than any of the legal fishing trips.
And the time/investment in expenses are significantly higher than fishing.
If you mean by "Promotes RP for civs, rangers, and highway patrol. Encourages people to leave city limits more and for scenarios to happen out there i.e. robberies"
focusing on the robberies, it makes no RP sense for gang bangers to leave the city and wander the woods to rob people of meat and skins.
It is also HIGHLY frowned upon and is considered LQRP, Low Effort RP and Punishable to do so.
A more detailed explanation can be found in the EchoRP discord in the link below. https://discord.com/channels/561258884719968257/842230337328906251/843005712351494174

Min-Maxing:
Yes people focus on fly fishing and target Deer.
Why you might ask?
Because they are the most convenient and easiest method to reach your limit.
Deer provide the most yield of raw meat, most valuable parts, slow moving/stationary, Large targets to hit and find.
It's pointless to hunt rabbits and coyotes.
Their parts are significantly lower in value, they provide less meat, and a lot of time when shooting a rabbit, they are difficult to find and commonly poof.
So not only did you waste a bullet, you get no reward and waste your time.
You will never reach your legal limit hunting either of those species unless you camp spawn points, (Easy way to catch a ban for exploiting) or hope your coyote decoy works out.
The decoys are inconsistent on spawn rate. And because the yield of items of coyote is significantly lower, it's easier to reach your limit with a deer decoy in the same/less time.
Fly fishing is the most common because the rivers are close by and the people who still go fishing meet up at the same spot because they know other people will be there.
You'll on average and most see 3-5 people on the river.
People don't go pan fishing because they are less value. But that comes with the fact that they are the easiest fish to catch.
Deep sea fishing is not worth the time either because you need to rent a boat go out in the water, and then hope you reel in legal fish.
If you want to get a decent fishing trip deep sea fishing, you'll need to take twice as much bait because half the species you catch are illegal.
So a minimum of $1,000 for a boat rental, (pray it doesn't poof on you, bug out, or game crashes because that's 1k gone right there and in the water) $200 bait, and x2 the time of a fly or pan fishing.
There is nothing significant to go salt or deep sea fishing because it's not easy to group up or do in a timely fashion, you can't casually find people and start chatting it up.
It's the same minigame for all fishing. If it was actually fun and unique to go deep sea fishing, you'd probably see more people doing it.
The only people who still go deep sea fishing are crim characters to go poaching.
They sell both the legal and illegal species, make the most money, easy to turn in the illegal fish, and never get caught because the entirety of the ocean can be fished in.
And the PD presence is ZERO for deep sea fishing because you could be ANYWHERE and their is significantly higher priority calls than people holding sticks with strings.
The fly fishing area is where you have the most PD and civ interaction because it's pretty much known by everyone in the city.

Fluctuating location/seasons:
A neat concept, but people will just choose the most convenient location regardless of the value changes because it's faster to get their limit and the seller is closer.
If the value goes down to a noticeable amount, people will just stop going.
Making people have to hunt down the hotspots with likely no info on those locations (who's gonna know unless it's announced) will just drive people away.
The reason why people quit fishing and hunting is because it's pay and minigame is not engaging in the first place. Making them have find or go to these spots has to be SIGNIFCANT in value for them to go to. as in higher than what it is now.

Big reason people quit.
Before the wipe back in July, there was usually two full groups of 5.
Pay was better and the locations for deer were more plentiful.
Those areas after the wipe were removed and a large massive area was added to the East side mountains.
However, people don't hunt in those areas because it's a long drive, there is LOW population of legal species. A lot of the other optional areas have more cougars than anything else.
The layout of the land is difficult to traverse, steep, and pitiful spots to make a nice decoy placement.
These locations are never patrolled by PD because it is far and away, death trap to traverse without a decent off-road vehicle because there are no roads and nothing but steep hills.
Fishing also used to pay more.
But the economical changes stripped it down to bones too.
After a month or so when adjustments were made to pay for jobs, fishing is closer to the old value before wipe but only if you're lucky to get more valuable fish. But to put things in perspective, the best fishing trip now is $400 less than the lowest fishing trips before wipe.
Hunting took a massive hit overall.
For an activity that requires more legal life practices/requirements to even do, it has downsides that hurt it even more.
Not only is a trip by yourself or even as a group is less profitable than all most of the fishing methods, it also has interference of outside influences.
Other hunters being in the area, firing at their target, and scaring the other deer away so the other hunter has to try to hit a moving target or not get a shot worth taking at all.
Not to mention people cruising around in the woods or police chases flying through the areas.
Where as fishing you can stand in the same spot all day and talk to people without them interfering with your catch.
The only way to consistently make it even worth while to do is find a nice spot where other hunters or traffic from players in the area and use a Deer Decoy and hope it has a timely spawn rate.

At the end of the day, hunting and fishing has been abandoned by the groups who used to do it because the pay was poor, they started fishing because it was better than hunting, then they left to go to do other things. Fishing is just a relaxing break from IRL and IC issues because it's so brain dead but comes with some reward.
I am one of like 3 people who still hunt out of the 20 or so who did before the wipe.
We used to put up tents and campfires at common hunting.
Visiting and chatting until the legal hunting times would roll around and we would then go back to our own camps/spots.
We all had our own spots because it was easier to get your own kills and not disturb one another's area.

Those times are gone.

Something significant has to come along and happen to where hunting/fishing is fun or "worth" doing.
Sending people out to find the "good spots" and restricting what species are legal/more valuable is just complicating things.
Increasing pay is one way of doing it.
But I feel that will lead to people just exploiting the spawn points again as opposed to "real" hunting or use decoys like they did before.
Which was one of the reasons certain hunting areas were made illegal hunting grounds because of the close proximity of large groups of Deer.
Easy to line up and hit multiple deer in one shot.
Turn around to the other herd, do the same thing, and repeat.
They could quickly get their limit, or easily go over it, and sell massive amounts at high value.
So that led to the value going down too.

I'd love to see hunting and fishing grow and have a community around it again.
But until it's made more fun and more valuable, it's not gonna happen.
People can only play stardew fishing for so long.

(I will say it is by far the most fun and engaging minigame I've seen for fishing and truly enjoy it myself. I've grown tired of press E, and despise the 1-2-3-4 radial skill checks.

I have some ideas that might spice things up a bit that enhance the current systems, but I need to spend more time brainstorming how it would work because I'm trying to make it better, group encouraging, but maintain balance so it's not a crazy money maker.