A few things here. I hunted the last year of unlimited rifle tags- 1992. It was FREAKING CRAZY back then. You really had to go deep to get 300 yards from another hunter. Opening morning was a veritable war zone once the deer started moving and shots started. That season especially - winter came really early after 4-5 years of bumper crops of fawns, and deer were everywhere, and so were hunters. That winter that came so early, following such a fruitful hunt, was the direct reason that tags got limited to under 100,000. But back in those days, must hunts were AT LEAST 7 day hunts - which meant that it spanned two weekends.
Today, we have a fraction of the tags, but some of the rifle hunts were reduced to 5, or even 3 days. Which means that everyone will be hunting on those days - so hunters are concentrated by time, which means they will be concentrated by space as a result.
The biggest thing I see isn't that things are as bad as they were prior to '93. Rather with people that don't have that same baseline comparison are finding things more crowded on their particular unit, as in huntinfanatic's example, than prior to the Option 2 approach.
I've gone back to the area I used to hunt in the 90s, the place I shared with hundreds of my not-closest friends - and had the place totally to myself.
The biggest thing is that significant changes in management, such as switching to total draw system after the '92 season, or shifting to Option 2, will result in a major shift in experience, especially related to crowding issues. That is to be expected.
I don't buy in to the concept about a huge reduction in lands. Outside the habitat encroachment of the urban expansion in northern Utah, there hasn't been habitat lost. And really, most of that urban expansion was into private lands that most people couldn't hunt anyway.
As for the safety, there have been a number of hunting deaths in recent years, certainly been a couple of dozen in the last 20 years. For some reason, they always continue, no matter what happens. And the reasons is because people hunt together with others. Most seem to be people walking trails with loaded weapons and then trip and fall or drop their gun, or something like that, and end up shooting a hunting partner.