Sunday hunting bill passes legislative hurdle
Advocates hope to attract more hunters
Last week, for the first time in 20 years, a perennial legislative proposal to lift a ban on Sunday hunting was voted beyond the committee level. This time, said one of its sponsors, it could go all the way to the governor’s office.
Senate Bill 147, a bipartisan proposal to authorize the state Game Commission to regulate Sunday hunting, was approved by the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee by a vote of 8-3.
“Someone made a comment after the meeting that it’s been 20 years and we made it happen. Maybe we should celebrate,” said co-sponsor Sen. Jim Brewster, DMcKeesport. “I said not yet; we still have some more to do.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Brewster, a lifelong hunter who has supported previous versions of the bill, said he sees momentum in Pennsylvania and nationwide moving in the Sunday hunting direction.
Historically, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau has been the primary roadblock to a Sunday hunt, and officially it opposes SB 147. But months ago the bureau presented Mr. Brewster and co-sponsor Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, chair of the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee, with a list of conditions by which the Farm Bureau would drop its opposition and assume a neutral policy on Sunday hunting.
“That was a first,” said Mr. Brewster. “They’re not saying no, they’re saying how, and most of what they’re saying seems reasonable.”
Nationwide, just three states — Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine — continue to ban all or most hunting on Sundays. In fact, after initial test runs, many states have expanded Sunday hunting opportunities.
Mr. Laughlin said despite resistance from some quarters, there are signs that perceptions about Sunday hunting are evolving. The bill was presented to the committee on a Friday and by the following Tuesday it had been approved and advanced to the Senate floor. Almost immediately the discussion was moved to a private conference room.
“This is a historic vote,” Mr. Laughlin told the Associated Press. “It takes a major step toward increasing recreational opportunities for the thousands of Pennsylvania sportsmen and women who enjoy hunting.”
Current Pennsylvania law bans Sunday hunting with the exceptions of targeting coyotes, foxes and crows, and some guided hunts on private wildlife preserves. The near-total ban has been in place since the 1870s when the practice was included in a long list of “blue laws” designed to encourage Sunday church attendance. Pennsylvanians were forbidden from opening stores for business, drinking alcoholic beverages and tilling their fields on Sundays. Fishing on Sunday was illegal until 1937, and as late as the 1970s many restaurants remained closed on Sundays. Restrictions on Sunday liquor sales are slowly falling away, leaving hunting and buying a car as the last of Pennsylvania’s religiously inspired restrictions.
But not everyone sees it like that. A Game Commission survey of hunting license holders found that while 53 percent supported or strongly supported Sunday hunting, 40 percent opposed or strongly opposed. Most of the opposition came from hunters age 55 or older.
Weeks before the Sunday hunting vote, the Keystone Trails Association, a Mechanicsville, Lancaster County-based hiking advocacy group, aligned with the Farm Bureau to oppose the bill.
“While the reasons for opposition to this issue are as many and varied as our membership, including fearing for their safety, the overwhelming majority do not want to see any expansion of Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania,” said Joe Neville, the group’s executive director.
Mr. Brewster said that unlike previous attempts to advance Sunday hunting, public safety has not been part of the backroom discussion.
“It’s not seen as a safety issue in 47 states,” he said. “Hunting is statistically safe and everybody we’re talking with knows it. The issue this time is protecting farms from the possible abuse of Sunday hunting, and they’ve got some valid points.”
The list of conditions presented by the Farm Bureau includes limiting the Sunday hunt to antlerless deer and groundhogs, dictating which of a year’s 52 Sundays would apply and requiring hunters to have signed permission from the landowner. If Sunday hunting is approved on state game lands and state forests, owners of adjacent properties must be provided with nohunting signage.
But the core issue — the main reason the bureau has historically opposed Sunday hunting — is trespass. Many rural landowners are frustrated with the illegal property intrusions of some hunters, and farmers complain of crops being trampled under hunting boots. In exchange for policy neutrality, fines for hunting-related trespass would have to increase substantially. Hunting-related trespass would become a primary offense; repeat offenders would lose hunting privileges for a year; Sunday hunting trespass fines would be doubled; and the Game Commission would have authority to enforce those laws.
Mr. Brewster said details need to be worked out including the need for increased Game Commission staffing, and he would like to see revenue from fines for hunting-related trespass directed to research and containment of chronic wasting disease, an always fatal brain disease afflicting deer, elk and moose that has spread across the U.S., including Pennsylvania.
“When we get this out on the floor we’ll need to be a little more flexible. I’ll be the first to present the bill to exclude [Sunday hunting] on farms, if that’s what they want. We could start with Sunday hunting on state game lands, which were purchased for hunting with hunter dollars,” said Mr. Brewster. “This is such an innocent thing. Let’s get this started and not bicker over who makes the final offer. We want this to be accepted by the Farm Bureau, bikers, runners, walkers and mainstream society as well as hunters.”
Increasing trespass penalties was the deal maker that encouraged the Ohio Farm Bureau to drop its opposition to Sunday hunting in 1998. Following a successful three-year trial run it became permanent in 2002.
Ultimately, said Mr. Brewster, the current bill is about the economics of wildlife management.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission, a semi-autonomous extension of the executive branch, is not supported by general tax revenue. Throughout the United States, hunting license sales and excise taxes on the purchase of ammunition and firearms, including guns not used for hunting, are collected by the federal government and reapportioned back to the states through an 82-year-old program operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
A similar program funds aquatic wildlife management. Purchases of outdoor recreation gear not used for hunting or fishing are not similarly taxed. States organize hunting seasons and bag limits, turning hunters, willingly or not, into the primary tools of wildlife management.
“So deer don’t eat the parks and wilderness areas. So research continues on managing healthy forests,” said Mr. Brewster. “That’s paid for by hunter dollars. The current generation is drifting away from hunting and without that revenue, money for wildlife management is getting harder and harder for states to find.”
With an annual budget of about $100 million and a declining reserve of hunters, the Game Commission has been tightening its belt for years. Mr. Brewster and Mr. Laughlin are convinced that giving working families a few extra weekend days to hunt will help to rekindle interest in the sport.
If SB 147l is passed by the full Senate and House, it would move to Gov. Tom Wolf for approval. Sunday hunting could be in the hands of the Game Commission by the fall of 2020.
“To me, this is a non-intrusive bill,” said Mr. Brewster. “I can’t control stupid, but we can get game wardens out there protecting farms from [law-breaking] hunters, and maybe get young people back in the habit of buying [hunting] licenses.”