Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Expanded Sunday hunting gets 1st OK
The Pennsylvania Game Commission recently gave preliminary approval to expanding Sunday hunting.
The proposal would not add more Sundays than the three that were added last year. It would, however, open the Sunday during archery deer and the Sunday during firearms bear season to other species, except migratory birds and wild turkey.
The game commission is expected to make a final decision at its April 17 meeting when it approves the hunting and trapping seasons for the 2021-22 license year. The commission takes comments via pgccomments@ pa.gov. Check www.pgc.pa.gov for meeting agenda prior to the meeting.
Sunday, Nov. 15, in the heart of deer archery season, was the first of three new days allowed for hunting in Pennsylvania. Bear hunters and rifle deer season also had a Sunday.
Sunday hunting had been prohibited in Pennsylvania since the 19th century — though crows, foxes and coyotes are an exception to the rule. The commonwealth was one of only 11 states with statutes that either ban or restrict hunting on Sundays.
Last year, the Legislature permitted Sunday hunting. A compromise was worked out that included hunters having to obtain written permission to hunt on private property.
The commission also voted to allow hunting and fur-taking eLicenses to be carried afield as an alternative to carrying certain paper licenses.
Pennsylvania’s new hunting and fur-taker licensing system, HuntFishPA, is expected to provide hunters and trappers electronic versions of the licenses they buy.
Www.HuntFish.pa.gov will features personalized dashboards, autorenewal for fishing licenses, and the ability to report game and furbearer harvests as required. Users who visit the agencies’ websites — www. pgc.pa.gov and www.fishandboat.com — for their licensing and other needs will be directed to the new system.
HuntFishPA replaces the previous Pennsylvania Automatic Licensing System platform known as The Outdoor Shop.
Harvest tags would continue to be issued in physical form on durable stock. No electronic versions of these documents would be issued or authorized for use, and durable-stock harvest tags would need to be carried in the field when hunting in big-game seasons or trapping in seasons where harvest tags are used.
But for other hunting and trapping opportunities, eLicenses would be a permitted substitute for hunters and trappers to carry in the field, based on the measure preliminarily approved by the board. The proposal will be brought back to the April meeting for a final vote.
The board also gave preliminary approval to:
• A measure to remove the three-license limit for antlerless deer hunters statewide. Hunters statewide could get the opportunity to apply for and receive additional antlerless deer licenses, as long as licenses remain available, and provided that a hunter holds no more than four unfilled antlerless deer licenses at a time. For the vast majority of hunters, the commission said, this change will not have direct impact. But under the proposed change, those who hunt in wildlife management units that have leftover licenses will have the opportunity to buy up to four licenses, instead of the previous limit of three.
• Eliminate the use of manually operated centerfire and rimfire rifles for fall-turkey hunting. The commission said this is an additional tool to respond to declining turkey populations without reducing fallturkey season length.
Recent survey data indicate only 14 percent of Pennsylvania fall-turkey hunters primarily use rifles, but rifles are responsible for 33 percent of the fall-turkey harvest. That’s because many who harvest fall turkeys with rifles do so opportunistically while hunting other game. By eliminating rifle use in fall turkey season, it’s estimated the statewide harvest could be reduced by 20 percent, while most turkey hunters would be unaffected by the change in requirements.
Reducing fall-turkey season length currently is the primary method to help out declining populations. Season-length adjustments are based on standards set forth in the Game Commission’s Wild Turkey Management Plan.
At present, turkey populations are declining in 15 of 23 Wildlife Management Units, and shorter season lengths have been proposed in response. Depending on the actual impact of removing rifles from fall turkey seasons, recent fall turkey season length reductions could eventually be reversed and more hunting opportunities added.
• Approved a slate of deer seasons for the 202122 license year that will allow for concurrent hunting for antlered and antlerless deer through the duration of the firearms deer season in all Wildlife Management Units (WMUs). The board had authorized concurrent seasons in 10 WMUs in the 2020-21 seasons, mainly in WMUs in which Chronic Wasting Disease had been detected in free-ranging deer.
By expanding the number of WMUs with a concurrent season, the board responded to hunters who requested this change in order to be provided with more opportunities to harvest antlerless deer, and to reduce confusion regarding which WMUs are open for concurrent seasons.