Sounds like there might be a little jealousy involved in your post as well as a lack of experience hunting A-zone private ranches. Your right, on some ranches it's easy to go out and shoot a small buck, why is that ? Because most private ranches have some type of management program in effect and that's exactly why small bucks are so abundant. Criticizing private ranches for improving the quality and size of their deer herd is like criticizing a hunter for being a good shot. I suppose they could shoot every legal buck they see in order to make the hunting more difficult but that's not likely to happen. If more public land hunters would show the same restraint, California's public land hunting would improve greatly. As far as your "easy zone" comment, it's pretty obvious you have never tried to climb the steep costal California mountains in 100 degree heat for days at a time, in search of a good buck, or you would have a more realistic opinion of A-zone hunting.
I have no idea what type of hunting method your friends use, maybe they drive around in jeeps and shoot little bucks from the road, I don't know, but I assure you there are a lot of private land hunters who hunt their butts off in order to get their buck. In fact I happen to be one of them. I hunted nearly every day of the season this year but it wasn't until three days before the season closed that I finally killed the buck I had been looking for, a beautiful long tined 4x4. In the future do all us hard working A-zone hunters a favor and don't refer to A-zone as the "easy zone".