Most types of hunting in California can add up.
If you factor how much actual usable meat you get from an animal, it is often substantially less than the total weight of the animal.
For example resident hunting costs for a California resident (several times more for non-residents.) Here is what you need to take a deer:
Resident Hunting License
$41.50
Resident First-Deer Tag Application
$27.85
Then many of the areas with animals are considered a state operated hunting zone which requires these:
Permits and Passes for State-Operated Hunting Areas
Type A One-Day Entry Permit
$17.75
Type A Two-Day Pass
$30.20
Type A Season Pass
$140.20
How many days do you need?
Add tax of course, which is rather high in the state. Now you are easily around $100 or more to take a single deer.
Add the cost of gas to get to the area, and other potential costs (like the above person that has a butcher process the deer.)
How many scents and calls ad other doodads are you planning to buy?
Pretty quickly you are near or above the $200 mark to hunt a single deer.
On top of that many hunting zones require the person to enter a lottery for the chance to hunt, some people go years without being picked, so
even after paying all the fees many people just get a chance to possibly be picked in the state hunting lottery!
Here is a site I stumbled on in a quick search to show estimates of likely meat form a deer of a given weight:
http://www.butcher-packer.com/index.php?main_page=document_general_info&cPath=36&products_id=331
Let's say a hunter kills a mature buck, and it weighs 165 pounds field-dressed. Using the above equation, we estimate its carcass will weigh 124 pounds, and it will ideally yield 83.08 pounds of boneless meat. The deer's realistic meat yield is about 58.15 pounds.
So if it costs you nearly $200 to get a deer, let us say you get something similar to the above example and have nearly 60 pounds of meat.
Much of that meat is far from the best cuts.
What would it have cost to buy that much beef? Chicken is much cheaper and most pork is too.
You are paying over $3 a pound for that meat, and you are not even guaranteed to win the hunting lottery and be allowed to hunt in many zones.
So hunting deer wouldn't really save people much money in California.
The cost is a few times what is listed above for a non resident.