Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania – slow change
By Dave Bates
For the Observer-Reporter
Back when I coached baseball, we had a rule: no jewelry was to be worn. Period. On field, off field, locker room, buses, etc.
To me, jewelry served no legitimate purpose. Quite frankly, I find it absurd for a kid to be festooned in 24K gold while playing baseball. Players and parents did not always agree. Did Mickey Mantle wear his Yankee bling? Did Bill Mazeroski need a rope chain to hit the shot that won the 1960 World Series? Surely not.
Then, in one season, the ruling body of all things high school baseball, the NFHS or National Federation of High Schools, made a rule change. Wear what you want within reason. That’s a lot of change all at once for an old salt like me. And it’s really hard to enforce a team rule that says “no jewelry” when the powers that be say you can wear what you want. Call it a conundrum, maybe even chaos.
Well, I’ve been reading a lot, lately, about changes to Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania these past weeks. On July 9, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed House Bill 1431 into law, repealing the old “Puritancial Blue Laws,” that were designed to encourage church attendance. Love it, hate it, no matter. It is now law. After postponing its July meeting to allow for more time for public comment, the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners recently released 13 dates permitting Sunday hunting. Those dates are: Sept. 14, 21, 28, Oct. 5, 12, 19, and 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, and Dec. 7.
Is this necessarily a good thing? It depends who you ask.
The Game Commission is over the moon about “common sense changes.” I tend not to judge these things too harshly as I grow older. Looking at both sides of the argument, I guess I can understand both schools of thought. If you talk to a religious fundamentalist, or at least a traditionalist, Sunday hunting is probably not to their liking. Ask a coal miner who works six 10-hour days per week and he might tell you he’s grateful that he and his son can have the day together. Who am I to wag my finger? One of the things that makes us most American is that we are able to disagree about such things.
But why 13 Sundays? Why not keep it at one? Why not three? My bet? Slow change. Politics. Don’t make fundamental shifts overnight in the way we do things. Introduce a Sunday here. Sprinkle a Sunday in there. Over time, folks get used to it gradually. Pretty soon, Sunday hunting meets less and less resistance. When it’s all over, voila, we have arrived at Sunday hunting.
I have heard alternative arguments advocating Sunday hunting. Folks who eat venison as a family might require more days afield in order to fill the freezer. I find it difficult to believe that a Sunday or two is going to make a significant impact on the venison stores for the winter. Another argument I hear offered is that the Monday-through-Friday, 9-5 job is a thing of the past. Nurses, police officers, service industry workers don’t always have weekends off to pursue their hunting interests. With the waning influence of the Blue Laws over the past decades and more businesses open on Sundays, the time left for hunting might well be marginalized.
Crop damage is another pitch for Sunday hunting but again, I wonder how much of an effect can a handful of Sundays have on the overall makeup of the deer harvest?
Playing devil’s advocate, I vacillate between the rationale of spending more family time in the woods on Sundays or possibly opposed to ditching the wife and kids for one more day in the stand during season. Is one facet really going to win out quantifiably versus the other? Doubtful. And whose business is it anyways? It’s akin to the religion argument. If you aren’t going to church in the first place, Sunday hunting certainly isn’t going to keep you out of the pews come Sunday morning.
Some arguments that hold water in the “con” department are that the animals need a day off too. I tend to think so, but what other day do we offer? Recreationalists who don’t hunt have struck the argument that they can’t walk on the local walking trails without fear of being placed in harm’s way during the rifle season. Sunday is their only day for exercise without fear of injury. I’m not so sure I buy into this as the number of HRSI’s (Pennsylvania Game Commission lingo for hunting-related shooting incidents) would indicate that the percentage is incredibly low in regards to risk for bystanders. As for walking on the Gamelands, they are Gamelands. Nuff said.
At the end of the day, I am still not sure how I feel about this Sunday hunting business. It’s rare that I don’t hold a strong opinion one way or the other. In this regard, the jury is still out. I guess we’ll just have to wait 13 more Sundays to see how it all plays out.
Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com